426
NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. iv. NOV. 25, 1911.
three following instances form a complete
list of the tenancy by medical men of such
positions: (1) Thomas Morestede, surgeon to
Henry IV. and Henry V., was Sheriff in
1436 ; (2) Sir John Ayliffe, sergeant-surgeon
to Henry VIII. and Edward VI., was Sheriff
in 1548 ; and (3) Edward Arris, surgeon to
Oliver Cromwell, was Alderman in 1651.
S. D. CLIPPINGDALE, M.D.
A SHAKESPEARE AT BARKING, ESSEX, 1595. At the Archdeaconry of Essex Court, held at Romford, 26 May, 1595, William Nevell brought in the inventory of Edward Snaggs of Barking, deceased. The mention of his shears and iron shows him to be a tailor. The " flagen chare " was, no doubt, a rush-bottomed chair ; and the " shurtt ban," shirt band, suggests a shirt, not included in the list, possibly because he was buried in it.
" A not of the aparelle ande goodes of Edward Snagges, Praysed by Jains Shackespere, Thomas Duntone, Thomas Fisher, as foWellethe :
" Item, wone flocke bed, won bowster, won owlld rownd tabelle, won flagen chare, iiiis.
" Item, won fres Jurkine, wone canuis dub let* .a pare of hose, a shurtt ban, a hatt, a pare of stokins, a payre of showes, a payr of sheres, a presing Irene, vis."
A. CLARK.
Great Leighs.
RHYTHM AND Music. The reviewer of Mr. Sidney Low's ' De Quincey ' (ante, p. 300) quotes a criticism to the effect that since Charles Lamb was deficient in musical perception, he also lacked a sense of the rhythmical in prose composition.
My own personal experience is that the faculty of detecting metre has little to do with music. I have an ear so dull, musically, that I do not distinguish one note from the next above or below it in the scale, yet I still remember trivial sentences which people used in my early childhood, simply because they fell into metre. Further, in reading prose I have no difficulty in distinguishing a line which is accidentally metrical, though I have never been able to discover how sight alone tells the brain that the words are rhythmical. One of my acquaintances who has a very sensitive musical ear said to me not long ago : " What a pity it is that you are not musical ! for when you hum or chant metre, you have an accurate sense of time."
This same acquaintance and others simi- larly gifted have no delight in the rhythmical beauty of some parts of the Old Testament. They fail to notice it, in fact.
How many poets have had acute musical
perception ? and how many composers have
shown an artistic pleasure in the rhythm of
prose or of blank verse ? Was the metrical
genius Swinburne strikingly musical ?
People who are unable to dance, because they have no musical sense, yet appreciate the cadences of prose and poetry. Their dullness of ear in one respect does not prevent acuteness in a more general way. The person who cannot tell one tune from another may hear the high-pitched shriek of a bat when his companions are unable to do so.
The effect of the vibrations which cause one note to be unlike another was not per- ceived by Lamb ; but a man may fail to detect the quality of such differing vibra- tions, and yet exercise discrimination in verbal sounds and cadences. This discrimi- nation, however, is not necessarily accom- panied by the power of writing rhythmically. Not all the worshippers of inspired prose can attain to beauty of style. L. C.
METRICAL PROSE. " Metrical," in what your reviewer (ante, p. 300) says of the " quality of the best prose," is, I presume, a slip for " rhythmical " ; he would scarcely praise metrical prose, or attribute it to De Quincey. Such sentences as Dickens almost invariably writes when he becomes emo- tional e.g., " And still her former self lay there, unaltered in this change " are surely vicious in any prose, and they will not be found, I fancy, in any great master. They occur on almost every page of the last few chapters of ' The Old Curiosity Shop,' from which the one I quote is taken. C. C. B.
We do not defend blank verse in prose, but there is a subtle interchange of syllables which approaches metre, and Which is found in the best prose. Readers of Cicero must, for instance, have recognized certain favourite endings to his sentences. It is certain that a delicate sense of rhythm in writing can coexist with ignorance of, or indifference to, music-]
" ALL WHO LOVE ME FOLLOW ME." In Lever's ' Tom Burke of Ours,' chap. Ixxxii., near the end, the writer says that Eugene. Beauharnais, having fallen back on Magde- bourg (in the retreat from Moscow), sent repeated dispatches to the Emperor entreat- ing his immediate presence among the troops, and that his brief reply was " I am coming ; all who love me follow me." " How the words rang in my ears : ' Tous ceux qui m'aiment.' '
In Creasy' s ' History of the Ottoman Turks,' at the beginning of chap, v., it is
