474
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. JCXE n, 100*.
reading such few portions of entries in the
-original as he admitted his inability to make
out. The name of such to him illegible
passages must, in truth, have been legion.
W. I. JR. V.
"THEKE WAS A MAN" (10 th S. i. 227, 377). MR. SNOWDEN WARD might perhaps find in the Scotch version on which I was brought up some more reason for the tragic ending of the nursery rime than in his own. Ours is not historical, but didactic, and addressed to a man, a boy, or a girl, as the case may be. It begins :
A man of words and not of deeds Is like a garden set with weeds, And when the weeds begin to grow.
The lines run the same as MR. WARD'S version until the end :
And when my heart begins to bleed, Then I 'm dead, dead, dead indeed.
To avoid which tragedy the culprit is expected to mend. C. C. STOPES.
I recollect hearing the verse repeated over twenty years ago, though in the south of England in fact, in London; but, unlike the rendering recorded at the second reference, the first two lines were :
A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds.
The whole verse, then, would seem to suggest the antithesis of enduring deeds the ephemeral nature of words in mere passive promises unless followed by action.
H. SIRR.
AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10 th S. i. 428). The lines given by Miss QURNEY as "Rest after toil," &c., are from Spenser's 'Faerie Queen,' Book I. canto ix. verse 40, but are entirely misquoted. They begin, "Sleep after toil." H. K. H.
No endeavour is in vain, &c. See Longfellow, ' The Wind over the Chim- ney ' (last verse). J. FOSTER, D.C.L.
The third quotation asked for by Lucis, "Everything that grows," is the opening of Shakespeare's fifteenth Sonnet (somewhat imperfectly rendered) : When I consider everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment, That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.
C. C. S.
re
[Several correspondents are thanked for similar
iferences.]
DOCUMENTS IN SECRET DRAWERS (10 th S. i. 427). The classical stories of the recovery of lost documents are by Sir Walter Scott, one
in 'The Antiquary,' vol. i. ch. ix., being the
ghost story told by Miss Old buck, how the
ghost showed Rab Tull that the paper for
the want whereof they were "to be waured
afore the session " was hidden in a " taber-
nacle of a cabinet" in "the high dow-cot";
the other in 'Redgauntlet,' of the rent-receipt
abstracted by the monkey.
E. A. Poe, in his ' Purloined Letter, 1 con- ceives many such possibilities.
Dickens is very fond of making his plots hinge upon the loss or discovery of a will or deed. The "Golden Dustman "in 'Our Mutual Friend ' made many wills, and deposited them in strange places.
There is a well-known ghost story, attri- buted to Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, of a similar sort.
Some years ago, on the breaking-up of a worn-out mail-cart, a letter many decades old was found in one of its crevices.
When the dishandled box of an old City pump was removed it was found to contain many letters, dropped therein by ignorant persons, who had mistaken the handle-hole for the slit of a letter-box.
These, however, were unintentional hidings. The two following instances, taken from old sources, are perhaps nearer to the subject.
The monks of Meaux, in Holderness, were like to have lost the manor of Waghen because they could not produce the record of the agreement between themselves and the Archbishop of York. At last they found it in a hole between the roof and the ceiling of their record - room (1372-96). ' Chronica Monasterii de Melsa,' iii. 175.
Bishop Joseph Hall says that he knew a man, " Mr. Will. Cook, sen., of Waltham Holy Cross," who was "informed in his dream in what hole of his dove-cote " he should find "an important evidence" for the missing whereof he was " distressed with care " ('Invisible World,' 1652; Pickering's reprint, 1847, p. 85). This may well have suggested the "dow-cot" of Monkbarns. W. C. B.
The following is an instance of an undis- covered drawer in an old oak desk passing through various owners' possession, from Queen Anne's time until a few years since:
The Hidden Briefs. A Queen Anne Brief for a Collection at All Saints' Church, Claverley, Shrop- shire. It is now more than seventeen years ago since the brother of a tenant of mine bought an old oak desk at a country sale. Being a joiner by trade, after careful examination he arrived at the con- clusion that it might have a secret drawer. All attempts to find it baffling his ingenuity, as a last resource he took out the bottom of the desk. By this means he discovered a long secret drawer, admirably contrived for secrecy, with a spring to
