228
NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. xn. SEPT. is, 1915.
in ' Onward, Christian Soldiers,' before is
made to do duty. But let me cite a few
instances from the poets, who are compelled
in this case to go chiefly by the eye :
As when a youth, bound for the Belgick warre, Takes leave of friends upon the Kentish shore ; Now are they parted, and he sail'd so farre, They seen not now, and now are seen no more. Phineas Fletcher, 'Purple Island,' xi. 16.
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, How to divide the conquest of thy sight ; Mine eye my heart their [thyj picture's sight would bar. Shakespeare, Sonnet xlvi
Till then thy war was but a civil War, For which to triumph none admitted are. Donne, 'Poems,' p. 249, ed. 1669. (See also p. 379.)
[He] views astonish'd, from the hills afar, The floods descending, and the wat'ry war.
Pope, ' Thebais,' 11. 512-13.
When leagued Oppression pour'd to Northern
wars
Her whisker'd pandoors and her fierce hussars. Campbell, ' Pleasures of Hope.'
[Who] launched that thunderbolt of war
On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar.
Scott, 'Marmion,' i. In ii.^23, 24, he uses afar and far.
Not to prolong a trifling subject, I end with the most successful solution of the problem that I know :
Blockheads with Reason Men of Sense abhor ; But Fool 'gainst Fool is barb'rous Civil War.
Prologue to ' Three Hours after Marriage,' perhaps by Pope.
RICHARD H. THORNTON. 8, Mornington Crescent, N.W.
ST. S WITHIN is merciful when noting the difficulties presented to poets by the marked absence of good rimes for a word now on every poet's pen, and does not refer to the really shocking and frequent outrages on good English which have been perpetrated in the last year in the interests of patriotism.
I began by noting down sundry sorry attempts to link flower, thaw, roar, and the like, to the dominating word war. But I had to desist ; for the frequent failures to make the written word look like the one it was meant to jingle with gave so unpleasant an impression of vulgar pronunciation even amongst well-known writers that one pre- ferred to forget it. When Mrs. Browning took liberties with sound for the sake of sense , there was generally enough of fire and enthusiasm to make pedants forgive her atrocious rimes. But in the forty years since she charmed us against our own will, cockney speech has been gradually elimi- nated from English literature, and it gives
a shock to any critic with an ear for pure
English, purely pronounced, to realize from
war poetry how defective many ot us still
remain in" the use of our own beautiful
language. Y. T.
[MR. J. T. PAGE also thanked for reply.!
CLERKS IN HOLY ORDERS AS COMBATANTS (11 S. xii. 10, 06, 73, 87, 110, 130, 148, 168, 184). In The Morning Post, 24 Aug., 1915, there is a letter published under the heading ' The Ancient Defence of England,' signed by Mr. S. O. Addy. This letter forms a valuable contribution to the subject of the clergy as combatants, and the principal part of it should, I think, be enshrined in ' N. & Q.' :
" The bishops and parish priests of England once headed the militia of their dioceses, or of their parishes. Three proofs of this statement may here suffice, though many more could be given. In 1056 Leofgar, Bishop of Hereford, ' forsook his chrism and his rood, and took to his spear and his sword, after his bishophood ; and so went to the field against Griffin the Welsh King, and was there slain and his priests with him ' (' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,' anno 1056). In 1138 Thurstan, Arch- bishop of York, called up every parish priest at the head of his parishioners, and won the Battle of the Standard (Stubbs's ' Select Charters,' 9th ed., p. 182). In 1463 the English King wrote to the Archbishop 'of York to warn his clergy to be in defensible array at Durham to assist him in battle against the Scots (Raine's ' Priory of Hexham,' vol. i. p. cviii).
" Statements like these are illustrated and confirmed in various ways. Thus the Bayeux Tapestry represents Bishop Odo at the battle of Hastings on horseback, clad in full armour, with his mace in his hand, rallying the young troops. In the fourteenth century Langland writes of priests who hung bucklers, swords, and other weapons about their necks. A manuscript of this century exhibits a group of clergymen clad in blue tunic and red hose, with swords hanging from their belts. About a century ago soldiers were recruited in church. There are passages in Ordericus Vitalis and other writers which prove that in the eleventh century the parish priests of France led the inhabitants of their villages to battle. The English and French priest of this period was not unlike the Scandinavian god, who was chief, as well as priest, of his district, and whose liegemen had to follow him to battle when- ever he found it expedient to assert his power as a military leader."
A. L. HUMPHREYS.
187, Piccadilly, W.
At the present time the Rev. W. E. Wingfield, Reserve of Officers, is serving on the active list of the Army as a Major in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, in which he had previously served for twenty-one years, prior to his retirement from the Army in 1907. He was ordained in 1909.
J. H. LESLIE, Major R.A.
