ce_ or _l'once_
(pronounced _l'onchey_).--From Ford's _Gatherings in Spain_.
A. L.
_Charade upon Nothing translated._--In your No. for July a correspondent
asks who was the author of the very quaint charade upon "Nothing:"
"Me, the contented man desires,
The poor man has, the rich requires,
The miser gives, the spendthrift saves,
And all must carry to their graves."
Possibly he may not object to read, without troubling himself as to the
authorship of, the subjoined translation:
"Me, qui sorte sua contentus vixerit, optat,
Et quum pauper habet, dives habere velit;
Spargit avarus opum, servat sibi prodigus aeris,
Secum post fati funera quisque feret."
EFFIGIES.
_Giving the Lie._--The great affront of giving the lie arose from the
phrase "Thou liest," in the oath taken by the defendant in judicial combats
before engaging, when charged with any crime by the plaintiff, and Francis
I. of France, to make current his giving the lie to the Emperor Charles V.,
first stamped it with infamy by saying, in a solemn Assembly, that "he was
no honest man that would bear the lie."
BLOWEN.
_Anachronisms of Painters._--An amusing list is given in D'Israeli's
_Curiosities of Literature_ (edit. 1839, p. 131.). The following are
additional:
At Hagley Park, Worcestershire, the seat of Lord Lyttleton, is a painting
by Varotari, a pupil of Paul Veronese, of Christ and the Woman taken in
Adultery. One of the Jewish elders present wears spectacles.
At Kedleston, Derbyshire, the seat of Lord Scarsdale, is a painting by
Rembrandt, Daniel interpreting Belsazzar's Dream. Daniel's head is covered
with a peruke of considerable magnitude.
J. E.
_Spenser's Faerie Queene._--The following brief notes may perhaps prove
interesting:--
1. Spenser gives us a hint of the annoyances to which Shakspeare and
Burbage may have been subject:--
"All suddenly they heard a troublous noise,
That seemed some perilous tumult to design,
Confused with women's cries and shorts of boys,
Such as the troubled theatres oft-times annoys."--B. IV. iii. 37.
2. Spenser's solitary pun occurs in book iv. canto viii. verse 31.:
"But when the world wox old, it wox _war-old_,
Whereof it hight."
3. Cleanliness does not appear to have been a virtue much in vogue in the
"glorious days of good Queen Bess." Spenser (book iv. canto xi. verse 47.)
speaks of
"Her silver feet, fair washed against this day,"
_i. e
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