Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 | Page 6

of a faithful friend: but he who shall traduce him in absence for what in presence he would seem to applaud, incurres the double guilt of flattery and slander: and he who wounds him with ill reading and misprision, does execution on him before judgement."
G. A. S.
Traditions from remote Periods through few Links (Vol. iii., p. 206.).--The communication of H. J. B., showing how a subject of our beloved Queen Victoria can, with the intervention, as a lawyer would say, of "three lives," connect herself with one who was a liegeman of that very dissimilar monarch, Richard III., reminds me of a fact which I have long determined in some way to commit to record. It is this: My father, who is only sixty-eight years old, is connected in a similar mode with a person who had the plague during the prevalence of that awful scourge in the metropolis in the year 1665, with the intervention of one life only. My grandfather, John Lower of Alfriston, co. Sussex, distinctly remembered an aged woman, who died at the adjacent village of Berwick at about ninety, and who had, in her fourth year, recovered from that frightful disease. Should it please Providence to spare my father's life to see his eighty-third birthday, the recollections of three persons will thus connect events separated by a period of two centuries.
I may take this opportunity of mentioning a fact which may interest such of the readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES" as are students of natural history. My grandfather, who was born in the year 1735 (being the son of Henry Lower, born on the night of the memorable storm of November, 1703), was among the very last of those who engaged in the sport of bustard-hunting in the South Downs. This bird has been extinct, on at least the eastern portion of that range, for upwards of a century. The sport was carried on by means of dogs which hunted down the poor birds, and the sticks of the human (or inhuman?) pursuers did the rest. My ancestor was "in at the death" of the last of the bustards, somewhere about 1747, being then twelve years old.
MARK ANTONY LOWER.
Lewes.
Longevity.--Some few years since I had occasion to search the parish registers of Evercreech in Somersetshire, in one of which I met with the following astounding entry:--
"1588. 20th Dec., Jane Britton of Evercriche, a Maidden, as she afirmed of the age of 200 years, was buried."
I can scarcely believe my own note, made however, with the register before me.
C. W. B.
The Thirty-nine Articles.--The following MS. note is in a copy which I have (4to. 1683):
"Sept. 13. 1702.
"Memor. That Mr. Thomas King did then Read publickly and distinctly, in a full Congregation during the Time of Divine Service, the nine and thirty Articles of Religion, and Declare his Assent and Consent, &c., according as is Required in the Act of Uniformity, In the Parish Church of Ellesmere, In the Presence of Us, who had the said Articles printed before Us.
E. KYNASTON. THO. EYTON. AR. LANGFORD. WILL. SWANWICK."
J. O. M.
Emendation of a Passage in Virgil.--Allow me to send you an emendation of the usual readings of the 513th line of the first Georgic, which occurred to me many years ago, and which still appears to me more satisfactory than any which have hitherto been suggested.
"Ut, cum carceribus sese effudere quadrig?, Ac sunt in spatio,--en frustra retinacula tendens, Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas."
"When the chariots have passed the barriers, And are now in the open course,-- Lo, the charioteer vainly pulling the Reins, is carried along by the steeds."
The usual readings are "addunt in spatio," or "addunt in spatia," which are difficult to be {238} explained or understood. The emendation which I suggest is, I think, simple, easy, and intelligible; and I can imagine how the word "addunt" arose from the mistake of a transcriber, by supposing that the MS. was written thus:--ac[s]vnt, with a long [s] closely following the c, so as to resemble a d.
SCRIBLERUS.
Poems discovered among the Papers of Sir K. Digby.--In page 18. of your current volume is a poem of which I am anxious to know the author: it is entitled the "Houre-Glasse." Among the poems of Amaltheus I have discovered one so like it, that it appears to be almost a translation. It is curious, and but little known, so that I trust you can find it a place in "NOTES AND QUERIES."
"HOROLOGIUM PULVERUM, TUMULUS ALCIPPI.
Perspicuo in vitro pulvis qui dividit horas Dum vagus augustum s?pe recurrit iter, Olim erat Alcippus, qui Gall? ut vidit ocellos, Arsit, et est c?co factus ab igne cinis.-- Irrequiete cinis, miseros testabere amantes More tuo nulla posse quiete frui."
H. A. B.
Matter-of-fact Epitaph.--May I venture to ask a place for the following very matter-of-fact epitaph in the