I had a good deal of correspondence with Mr. Schroeter on the subject of this bibliography, and was indebted to him for many curious American issues; but owing, I fancy, to a change of residence on my part, the correspondence abruptly ceased, and I do not know anything further about the bibliography, except that it was not issued at the date announced.
A remarkable item with which I was favoured by Mr. Schroeter was a mélange of the 'Rubáiyát' and Browning's 'Rabbi ben Ezra,' arranged in dramatic form by Mr. Frederick Le Roy Sargent, and published by the Harvard Coöperative Society, Cambridge, in 1909. W. F. Prideaux.
A Norman "Motte" Theory (11 S. v. 482).—We are told that certain hillocks were called "mottes," as "being the only specific name which they ever had."
What I desire to know is—at what date and in what country was this name of "motte" in use? The English name was "mote," now spelt "moat." The 'N.E.D.' gives "mote" as being first used in 1272, but no example in which the word was spelt with a double t. I, for one, decline to accept the name of "motte" until it can be shown that there is some early authority for it. Certainly, it is not "Early Norman." For the Norman spelling is "mote."
There is a famous instance of its use. In the account by Lord Berners of "the battle of Cressy," Edward III. is said to have been "on a lytel wyndmyll hyll." The original account in Froissart has "sus le mote [sic, though mote is feminine] d'un moulin a vent." Walter W. Skeat.
Honest Millers (11 S. ii. 508; iii. 12, 57, 95).—Forty years ago the children in my native parish in Cornwall used to torment the local grist millers by shouting at them,
Millerdy, millerdy, dusty poll,
How many bags hast thee a stole?
Vower and twenty and a peck…
Hang th' old millerd up by the neck.
It was, however, usual to calculate the length of the miller's whip before indulging in this recreation. F. S. Hockaday.
"Shire": its Derivation (11 S. v. 486).—Let me correct an erroneous statement of your eminent contributor's which I find in his instructive note on this subject. He refers to Walde's 'Et. Lat. Dict.' (1906), s.v. 'Cura,' and quotes from it: "Oder zu A.S. scïr … Besorgung." But the "Zweite Umgearbeitete Auflage" of Dr. Walde's 'Latein.-Etymolog. Wörterbuch' (1910), which lies before me, entirely differs from the first one of 1906, it appears, on this point, and remarks: "Ganz fraglich ob … zu ags. scīr … Besorgung" (i.e., "Whether A.-S. scīr may be derived from a supposed Old Lat. form scoira, and thus etymologically connected with cura, is quite an open question"). H. Krebs.
Authors of Quotations Wanted (11 S. v. 468).—"Transient and embarrassed phantom." Lord Beaconsfield in 'Endymion'; applied to Lord Goderich. G. W. E. R.
The line
(
Greek characters)
is given in the fragments of Epicharmus, 255, in Mullach's 'Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum.' As authorities for the fragment, Mullach refers to Polyb., xviii. 23, 4; Dio Chrysost., lxxiv. p. 636, ed. Morell.; 'Cicero ad Attic.,' i. 19, &c. I find it stated that the line is translated by Sir W. Hamilton in his notes on Reid:
Be sober, and to doubt prepense,
These are the sinews of good sense.
Dr. Krueger will find (Greek characters) in Ahrens, 'De Dialecto Dorica,' 119. It is, as the Editor has pointed out, by Epicharmus.
The remark made by "one of the popes," according to the passage quoted from Matthew Henry by Mr. McGovern, was commonly attributed to Leo X. See John Bale's 'Acta Romanorum Pontificum,' p. 533 in the Leyden edition of 1615 (the book was first published in 1558):—
"Proponenti enim semel Cardinali Bembo quiddam ex læto. illo Dei nuncio, dissolute respondebat: Quantum nobis ac nostro cœtui profuerit ea de Christo fabula, satis est seculis omnibus notum."
Pierre Bayle, 'Léon X.,' in his 'Dictionnaire historique et critique,' tome ii. p. 1684, Rotterdam, 1720, gives the saying as "quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo fabula profuerit satis est omnibus seculis notum." He adds:—
"On voit ce Conte dans le Mystère d'lniquité [i.e., the book by Philippe de Mornay, sieur du Plessis, cited in the margin], & dans une infinité d'autres Livres, toujours sans être muni de citation ou n'aiant pour toute preuve que l'autorité de Baleus: desorte que trois ou quatre cens Auteurs plus ou moins, qui ont débité cela en se
