Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850

(17.) Who was the author of Peniteas cito? And is it not evident that the impression at Cologne by Martinus de Werdena, in 1511, is considerably later than that which is adorned on the title-page with a different woodcut, and which exhibits the following words proceeding from the teacher: "Accipies tanti doctoris dogmata sancta?"

    R.G.

DRYDEN'S "ESSAY UPON SATIRE."

On what evidence does the statement rest, that the Earl of Mulgrave was the author of the Essay upon Satire, and that Dryden merely corrected and polished it? As at present advised, I have considerable doubt upon the point: and although, in modern editions of Dryden's Works, I find it headed An Essay upon Satire, written by Mr. Dryden and the Earl of Mulgrave, yet in the State Poems, vol. i. p. 179., originally printed in the lifetime of Dryden, it is attributed solely to him—"An Essay upon Satyr. By J. Dryden, Esq." This gets rid of the assertion in the note of "D.," in the Aldine edition of Dryden (i. 105.), that "the Earl of Mulgrave's name has been always joined with Dryden's, as concerned in the composition." Was it not first published without notice that any other person was concerned in it but Dryden?

The internal evidence, too, is strong that Dryden was the author of it. I do not here refer to the free, flexible, and idiomatic character of the versification, so exactly like that of Dryden; but principally to the description the Essay upon Satire contains of the Earl of Mulgrave himself, beginning,

"Mulgrave had much ado to scape the snare,
Though learn'd in those ill arts that cheat the fair;
For, after all, his vulgar marriage mocks,
With beauty dazzled Numps was in the stocks;"

And ending:

"Him no soft thoughts, no gratitude could move;
To gold he fled, from beauty and from love," &c.

Could Mulgrave have so written of himself; or could he have allowed Dryden to interpolate the character. Earlier in the poem we meet with a description of Shaftesbury, which cannot fail to call to mind Dryden's character of him in Absalom and Achitophel; which, as we know, did not make its appearance, even in its first shape, until two years after Dryden was cudgelled in Rose Street as the author of the Essay upon Satire. Everybody bears in mind the triplet,

"A fiery soul, which working out its way,
Fretted his pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay;"

And what does Dryden (for it must be he who writes) say of Shaftesbury in the Essay upon Satire?

"As by our little Machiavel we find,
That nimblest creature of the busy kind:
His limbs are crippled, and his body shakes,
Yet his hard mind, which all this bustle makes,
No pity on its poor companion takes."

If Mulgrave wrote these lines, and Dryden only corrected them, Dryden was at all events indebted to Mulgrave for the thought of the inequality, and disproportion between the mind and body of Shaftesbury. Moreover, we know that Pope expunged the assertion subsequently made, that Dryden had been "punished" (not beaten, as "D." quotes the passage) "for another's rhimes," when he was bastinadoed, in 1679, at the instigation of Rochester, for the character of him in the Essay upon Satire.

It might suit Mulgrave's purpose afterwards to claim a share in this production; but the evidence, as far as I am acquainted with it, seems all against it. There may be much evidence on the point with which I am not acquainted, and perhaps some of your readers will be so good as to point it out to me. The question is one that I am, at this moment, especially interested in.

    THE HERMIT OF HOLYPORT.

MINOR QUERIES

Æneas Silvius (Pope Pius II.).—A broadsheet was published in 1461, containing the excommunication and dethronement of the Archbishop and Elector Dietrich of Mayence, issued and styled in the most formidable terms by Pius II. This broadsheet, consisting of eighteen lines, and printed on one side only, appears from the uniformity of its type with the Rationale of 1459, to be the product of Fust and Schöffer.

No mention whatever is made of this typographical curiosity in any of the standard bibliographical manuals, from which it seems, that this broadsheet is UNIQUE. Can any information, throwing light upon this subject, be given?

    QUERIST.
    November, 1850.

"Please the Pigs" is a phrase too vulgarly common not to be well known to your readers. But whence has it arisen? Either in "NOTES AND QUERIES," or elsewhere, it has been explained as a corruption of "Please the pix." Will you allow another suggestion? I think it possible that the pigs of the Gergesenes (Matthew viii. 28. et seq.) may be those appealed to, and that the invocation may be of somewhat impious meaning. John Bradford, the martyr of 1555, has within a few consecutive pages of his writings the following expressions:

"And so by this means, as they save their pigs, which they would not lose, (I mean their worldly pelf), so they would please the Protestants, and be counted with them for gospellers, yea, marry, would they."—Writings of Bradford, Parker Society ed., p.390.

Again:

"Now are they willing to drink of God's cup of afflictions, which He offereth common with His son Christ our Lord, lest they should love their pigs with the Gergenites." p. 409.

Again:

"This is a hard sermon: 'Who is able to abide it?' Therefore, Christ must be prayed to depart, lest all their pigs be drowned. The devil shall have his dwelling again in themselves, rather than in their pigs." p. 409.

These, and similar expressions in the same writer, without reference to any text upon the subject, seem to show, that men loving their pigs more than God, was a theological phrase of the day, descriptive of their too great worldliness. Hence, just as St. Paul said, "if the Lord will," or as we say, "please God," or, as it is sometimes written, "D.V.," worldly men would exclaim, "please the pigs," and thereby mean that, provided it suited their present interest, they would do this or that thing.

    ALFRED GATTY.
    Ecclesfield.

[We subjoin the following Query, as one so closely connected with the foregoing, that the explanation of the one will probably clear up the obscurity in which the other is involved.]

To save One's Bacon.—Can you or any of your correspondents inform me of the origin of the common saying, "He's just saved his bacon?" It has puzzled me considerably, and I really can form no conjecture why "bacon" should be the article "saved."

    C.H.M.

Arabic Numerals.—I should be glad to know something about the projected work of Brugsh, Berlin, referred to in Vol. ii., p. 294.,—its size and price.

    J.W.H.

Cardinal.—"Never did Cardinal bring good to England."—We read in Dr. Ligard's History (vol. iv. p. 527.), on the authority of Cavendish, that when the Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey adjourned the inquiry into the legality of Henry VIII.'s marriage with Catharine of Arragon, "the Duke of Suffolk, striking the table, exclaimed with vehemence, that the 'old saw' was now verified,—'Never did Cardinal bring good to England.'" I should be glad to know if this saying is to be met with elsewhere, and what gave rise to it?

    O.P.Q.

"By the bye," &c.—What is the etymology of the phrases "by the bye," "by and by," and such like?

    J.R.N.

Poisons.—Our ancestors believed in the existence of poisons made so artfully that they did not operate till several years after they were administered. I should be greatly obliged by any information on this subject obtained from English books published previously to 1600.

    M.

Cabalistic Author.—Who was the author of a chemical and cabalistical work, not noticed by Lowndes, entitled:

"A philosophicall epitaph in hierogliphicall figures. A briefe of the golden calf (the world's idol). The golden ass well managed, and Midas restored to reason. Written by J. Rod, Glauber, and Jehior, the three principles or originall of all things. Published by W.C., Esquire, 8vo. Lond. Printed for William Cooper, at the Pellican, in Little Britain, 1673."

With a long catalogue of chemical books, in three parts, at the end. My copy has two titles, the first being an engraved one, with ten small circles round it, containing hieroglyphical figures, and an engraved frontispiece, which is repeated in the volume, with some other cuts. There are two dedications, one to Robert Boyle, Esq., and the other to Elias Ashmole, Esq.; both signed "W.C. or twice five hundred," which signature is repeated in other parts of the book. What is the meaning of "W.C. or twice five hundred"?

    T. CR.

Brandon the Juggler.—Where is any information to be obtained of Brandon the Juggler, who lived in the reign of King Henry VIII.?

    T. CR.