Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853

On the whole, I should venture to say that so uncouth a slip as mythe, when set in our soil, was unlikely to thrive. Still myth is objectionable, though we at Cambridge might quote gyp. However I may seem to be a breaker of my own laws, I suggest, if we must have an English form of the word, that we should write and pronounce myth. Several words ending in th have the preceding vowel lengthened, e.g.both, sloth, ruth, truth (though with the inconsistency attributed to us, one, by the way, generally of orthography rather than pronunciation, we shorten the diphthong in breath, death). Compare also the sound of the endings ild and ind.

I have already troubled you with a very long Note; but, before I close, allow me to add that in what I have advanced I have had in view only our modern mode of spelling, without binding myself to an opinion of its inferiority or superiority to that of our forefathers. I beg also to protest against Mr. Keightley's wish to banish mythical from our vocabulary. It may be hybrid, but equally so are critical, grammatical, musical, physical, poetical, with a long string of et ceteras.

    Charles Thiriold.

"INQUIRY INTO THE STATE OF THE UNION, BY THE WEDNESDAY CLUB IN FRIDAY STREET."

(Vol. vii., pp. 261. 409.)

This very able and valuable work, as to which your correspondent inquires, was written by Wm. Paterson, the projector of the Bank of England and the Darien scheme; a great and memorable name, but which, to the discredit of British biography, will be sought for in vain in Chalmers's or our other biographical dictionaries. The book above noticed appears to be a continuation of another tract by the same author, entitled An Inquiry into the Reasonableness and Consequences of an Union with Scotland, containing a brief Deduction of what hath been done, designed, or proposed in the Matter of the Union during the last Age, a Scheme of an Union as accommodated to the present Circumstances of the two Nations, also States of the respective Revenues, Debts, Weights, Measures, Taxes, and Impositions, and of other Facts of moment: with Observations thereupon, as communicated to Laurence Philips, Esq., near York: London, printed and sold by R. Bragg, 1706, 8vo., 160 pages. This was preceded by an earlier tract by the same author: Conferences on the Public Debts, by the Wednesday's Club in Friday Street: London, 1695, 4to. The last is noticed, with a short account of the author, by Mr. M

Culloch (Lib. of Political Economy, p. 159.), but he has not mentioned the two other works previously adverted to. In all of them the author adopts the form of a report of the proceedings of a club; but, without attempting to deny the actual existence of a Wednesday's club in Friday Street (the designation he assumes for it), nothing can be more clear to any one who reads the three tracts than that the conversations, proceedings, and personages mentioned are all the creatures of his own fertile invention, and made use of, more conveniently to bring out his facts, arguments, and statements. The dramatic form he gives them makes even the dry details of finance amusing; and abounding, as they do, in information and thought, these works may always be consulted with profit and pleasure. The Inquiry into the State of the Union, 1717, 8vo., for which Walpole is said to have furnished some of the materials, was answered, but rather feebly, in an anonymous pamphlet entitled Wednesday Club Law; or the Injustice, Dishonour, and Ill Policy of breaking into Parliamentary Contracts for public Debts: London, printed for E. Smith, 1717, 8vo., pp. 38. The author of this pamphlet appears to have been a Mr. Broome. Those who would wish see one of the financial questions discussed in the Inquiry treated with equal force and ability, and with similar views, by a great cotemporary of Paterson, whose pamphlet came out simultaneously, may read Fair Payment no Spunge; or some Considerations on the Unreasonableness of refusing to receive back Money lent on public Securities, and the Necessity of setting the Nation free from the unsupportable Burthen of Debt and Taxes, with a View of the great Advantage and Benefit which will arise to Trade and to the Landed Interest, as well as to the Poor, by having these heavy Grievances taken off: London, printed and sold by Brotherton: Meadows and Roberts, 1717, 8vo., pp. 79. This is one of the pamphlets which, though it has been sometimes erroneously assigned to Paterson, both on external and internal evidence may be confidently attributed to Defoe, but which has unaccountably escaped the notice of all his biographers.

    James Crossley.

UNPUBLISHED EPIGRAM BY SIR W. SCOTT (?)

(Vol. vii., p. 498.)

The lines which your correspondent R. Vincent attributes to Sir Walter Scott are part of an old English inscription which Longfellow quotes in Outremer, p. 66., and thus describes in a note:

"I subjoin this relic of old English verse entire.... It is copied from a book whose title I have forgotten, and of which I have but a single leaf, containing the poem. In describing the antiquities of the church of Stratford-upon-Avon, the writer gives the following account of a very old painting upon the wall, and of the poem which served as its motto. The painting is no longer visible, having been effaced in repairing the church:

"'Against the west wall of the nave, on the south side of the arch, was painted the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, while kneeling at the altar of St. Benedict, in Canterbury Cathedral. Below this was the figure of an angel, probably St. Michael, supporting a long scroll, upon which were seven stanzas in old English, being an allegory of mortality.'"

The lines given at p. 498. of "N. & Q." seem to be taken from the two following stanzas, which stand third and fourth in the old inscription:

"Erth apon erth wynnys castellys and towrys,
Then seth erth unto erth thys ys all owrys.
When erth apon erth hath bylde hys bowrys,
Then schall erth for erth suffur many hard schowrys.

"Erth goth apon erth as man apon mowld,
Lyke as erth apon erth never goo schold,
Erth goth apon erth as gelsteryng gold,
And yet schall erth unto erth rather than he wold."

Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 517., tells us that John de Stratford, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Edward III., built a chapel on the south side of the church, "to the honour of God and of St. Thomas the Martyr;" and as at p. 521. he describes it as "in the south ile of the said church," the west wall of this chapel answers very well the description of the position of the painting, and inscription. But in The Beauties of England and Wales, vol. xv. p. 238., the chapel of the gild of the Holy Cross, in the centre of the town, is mentioned as the place in which the pictures were discovered, during some repairs which it underwent in the year 1804.

I have since ascertained that the work to which Longfellow refers is Weaver's Account of Stratford-upon-Avon.

    Erica.

As a companion to the unpublished epigram in No. 186. of "N. & Q.," I beg to hand you the following epitaph, copied by myself about thirty years since, and referring, as I believe, to an old brass in the church of St. Helen's, London:

"Here lyeth y

bodyes of
James Pomley, y

sonne of ould
Dominick Pomley and Jane his
Wyfe: y

said James deceased y

7

day of Januarie Anno Domini 1592
he beyng of y

age of 88 years, and
y

sayd Jane deceased y

– day
of – D–.

Earth goeth upō earth as moulde upō moulde;
Earth goeth upō earth all glittering as golde,
As though earth to y

earth never turne shoulde;
And yet shall earth to y

earth sooner than he woulde."

    William Williams.

CHURCH CATECHISM

(Vol. vii., pp. 190. 463.)

In accordance with the request of Z. E. R., I have pleasure in forwarding the extracts from the Catechismus brevis et Catholicus, referred to at pp. 190. 463. of the present volume. It is needful to premise, 1. That the pages of the catechism are not numbered. This will account for the absence of precise references. 2. That only so much is quoted as may exhibit the parallelism; and, 3. That the citations are not consecutive in the original, but arranged in the order of the questions and answers of the Church Catechism, beginning with the fourteenth question, "How many sacraments hath Christ ordained in His Church?"

Q. 14. How many, &c.

"Quot sunt Ecclesiæ Catholicæ Sacramenta?

Septem sunt in universum," &c.

"Quis instituit Baptismum?

Ipse Servator ac Dominus noster Jesus Christus."

[Similarly of the Eucharist.]