Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851

    J. B. Colman.

Lunardi (Vol. ii., p. 469.).—I remember seeing Lunardi's balloon pass over the town of Ware, previous to its fall at Standon. I have seen the moonstone described by your correspondent C. J. F., but all that I can remember of an old song on the occasion is. "They thought it had been the man in the moon," alluding to the men in the fields, who ran away frightened. But a servant girl had the courage to take the rope thrown out by Lunardi, and was well rewarded. It caused a great sensation, and many of the principal inhabitants of Ware and Wadesmill assembled with Lunardi at the Feathers Inn, at the latter place.

    J. Taylor.

Newick, Sussex.

Outline in Painting.—J. O. W. H. (Vol. i., p. 318.) and H. C. K. (Vol. iii., p. 63.) are earnestly referred, for resolution of their doubts, to the work by Mr. Ruskin, in 2 vols. large 8vo., entitled Modern Painters, by a Graduate of Oxford, published by Smith and Elder, 1846.

    Robert Snow.

Handbell before a Corpse (vol. iii., p. 68.).—Your correspondent ב. has too inconsiderately dismissed the Query which he has undertaken to answer touching the custom of ringing a handbell in advance of a funeral procession. He says, "I have never considered it as anything but a cast of the bell-man's office, to add more solemnity to the occasion."

The custom is invariably observed throughout Italy, and is common in France and Spain. I have witnessed at least some hundreds of funerals in various cities and villages of Piedmont, Sardinia, Tuscany, the Roman States, Naples, Elba, and Sicily; and in Malta; yet never knew I one without the handbell.

Its object, as first explained to me in Florence, is to clear the way for the procession; to remind passengers and loiterers to take off their hats; and to call the pious to their doors and windows to gaze upon the emblems of mortality, and to say a prayer for the repose of the departed soul.

    Nocab.

Brandon the Juggler (Vol. ii., p. 424.).—Your correspondent T. Cr. is referred to Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 308. (edit. 1584) for a notice of this person and his pigeon.

    Jas. Crossley.

"Words are Men's Daughters" (Vol. iii., p. 38.).—This line is taken from Dr. Madden's Boulter's Monument (Dublin, 1745, 8vo.), a poem which was revised by Dr. Johnson, but to which little attention has been paid by his biographers. Mr. Croker observes (edit. of Boswell, 1848, p. 107. note)—

"Dr. Madden wrote very bad verses. The few lines in Boulter's monument which rise above mediocrity may be attributed to Johnson."

Those who take the trouble to refer to the poem itself, will, notwithstanding Mr. Croker's hasty criticism, find a great many fine and vigorous passages, in which the hand of Johnson is clearly distinguishable, and which ought not to be allowed to remain unnoticed. Perhaps on a future occasion I may, in support of this opinion, give some specimens from the poem. The line as to which T. J. inquires,—

"Words are men's daughters, but God's Sons are things,"—

and which is in allusion to Genesis vi. 2. 4., is, I entertain no doubt, one of Dr. Johnson's insertions.

    Jas. Crossley.

"Fine by degrees, and beautifully less" (Vol. iii., p. 105.).—This line is from Prior's "Henry and Emma," a poem, upon the model of the "Nut-brown Maid." I copy part of the passage in which it occurs, for the sake of any of your readers who may be lovers of context, and may not have the poem at hand to refer to.

"Henry [addressing Emma].
"Vainly thou tell'st me what the woman's care
Shall in the wildness of the woods prepare;
Thou, ere thou goest, unhappiest of thy kind,
Must leave the habit and the sex behind.
No longer shall thy comely tresses break
In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck;
Or sit behind thy head, an ample round,
In graceful braids with various ribbon bound:
No longer shall the bodice aptly lac'd
From thy full bosom to thy slender waist,
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less:
Nor shall thy lower garments' artful plait,
From thy fair side dependent to thy feet,
Arm their chaste beauties with a modest pride,
And double every charm they seek to hide."

    C. Forbes.

Temple, Feb. 10.

[We are also indebted for replies to this Query to Robert Snow, Fras. Crossley, A. M., J. J. M., A. H., S. T., E. S. T. T., V., W. K., R. B., and other correspondents. C. H. P. remarks:

"Pope, who died in 1744, twenty-three years after Prior, evidently had this line in view when he wrote as follows:—

"'Ladies, like variegated tulips, show;
'Tis to their changes half their charms they owe;
Fine by defect, and delicately weak,
Their happy spots the nice admirer take.'"

And J. H. M. tells us, "The late Lord Ellenborough applied the line somewhat ignobly, when speaking of bristles, in a dispute between two brushmakers."]

"The Soul's dark Cottage" (Vol. iii., p. 105.).—The couplet "Effaress" inquires for, is to be found in Waller's poems. It is a production of his later years, and occurs in the epilogue to his "Poems of Divine Love," and "Of the Fear of God," &c., thus:—

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made,
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become,
As they draw nigh to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new."

There is another couplet worth citing—

"The seas are quiet, when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we, when passions are no more."

How different were the effusions of Waller's earlier muse! In the year 1645, Humphrey Mosley published "Poems, &c., written by Mr. Ed. Waller, of Beaconsfield, Esquire, lately a Member of the Honourable House of Commons." The title-page also states that—

"All the Lyrick Poems in this Booke were set by Mr. Henry Lawes of the King's Chappell, and one of his Majesties Private Musick."

It is not a little remarkable that the same publisher, in the same year, should have also given to the world the first edition of that precious volume—Milton's Minor Poems; and, in the advertisement prefixed, he thus adverts to the circumstance:—

"That incouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men, in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late choice Peeces, hath onece more made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these ever-green and not to be blasted laurels."

Had Humphrey Mosley any presentiment of the deathless fame of Milton?

    S. W. Singer.

"The Soul's dark Cottage," &c. (Vol. iii., p. 105.).—This admired couplet can never escape recollection. It was written by Waller. From the tenor of some preceding lines, and the place which the verses occupy in the edition of 1693, they must be among the latest of his compositions.