Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/165

ns.vii.fkb.2-2,1913] NOTES AND QUERIES. i:>7 ■of his youth. The 'Supper of Beaueaire' is a con- versation—imaginary, of course—between citizens of the towns in revolt and a republican soldier; it is the first extant specimen of the clear insight, .ind of the close logic which, with other qualities, distinguished Napoleon's writings .in war. As was natural, too, at a terrible time, when the minds of men were unloosed from their moorings, when faith and principle were forgotten names, and when T>rute force was the only law, there is much of the doctrine that might is right; an argument which Xapoleon presses home with an energy that would delight Carlyle. But the most striking feature of the piece is this: the author stands aloof from the faotions which were tearing France and social order to pieces: he regards the scenes before him with evident disgust." A. R. Bayley. Samuel Johnson of Canterbury (11 S. vii. 88).—There were many persons with the surname of Johnson living in Canter- bury and the district about the middle of the eighteenth century. In the 'Kent Poll Book' of 1754 two Samuel Johnsons were freehold voters, and their abodes were in Canterbury : one had woodland at Crundall in his own occupation ; the other lund at St. Stephen's, near Canter- bury, in the occupation of William Cooke. In Cowper's ' Canterbury Marriage Licences,' Sixth Series, is the following entry :— " 1728, June 28. Samuel Johnson of Canterbury, ba.. and Mary Birch of Coldred, sp." At the end of the eighth volume of the Registers of St. Alphage, Canterbury, are some notes in the handwriting of the Rev. William Temple. The first is an extract from the will of the Rev. George Hearne, dated 14 March, 1804 :— "Mr. John Hayward and Mr. Samuel Johnson gave to my school nine pounds seventeen shillings and four pence in the Reduced Stock per an'm." Samuel Johnson was a witness at the marriage of Thomas Eastman and Mary Devine on 20 June, 1763 (Reg. of St. George, Canterbury). Samuel Johnson was a witness at the marriage of William Goldfinch and Phila- delphia Rayner on 16 April, 1782 (Reg. of St. Alphage, Canterbury). W. J. M. The Alchemist's Ape (US. vii. 110).—• The druggists used the sign of a unicorn because the unicorn was the symbol of purity. Even to-day a well-known firm of manufacturing chemists use the trade- mark of a unicorn, presumably as a symbol of the purity of their drugs. The alchemist or physician claimed to be a learned man. He probably used the sign of an ape because the ape was an emblem of wisdom " from its serious expression and human ways." The lizard or crocodile was similarly an emblem of wisdom, and the lizard was identified with Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom. The. reasons for the crocodile's elevation into this symbol (ire given in Plutarch's ' Isis and Osiris.' Harold Bayley. Thomas Bacshaw (11 S. vii. 50. 97).— Thomas Bagshaw. M.A., was a Demy of Magdalen College. Oxford. He died 20 March, 1787. An account of him, including notice of his acquaintance with Dr. Johnson, is given by Dr. J. R. Bloxam in vol. iii. of his 'Register of the Demies' (187!>), pp. 215-17. To this it may be added that Latin lines by Bagshaw are to be found in the University ' Epithalamia ' on the marriage of Princess Anne to the Prince of Orange in 1734. W. D. Mac-ray. Battle of Maldon (11 S. vii. 110).— A version of ' The Battle of Maldon,'in modern English, by F. W. L. B. (? F. W. L. Butter- field), was published in 1900 by James Parker & Co. at Oxford. A copy of this is in the Essex Collection at the West Ham Central Library, Water Lane, Stratford, E. C. Whitwell, Librarian. Central Public Library, Stratford, E. For an adequate and vigorous translation see Miss Emily Hickey's ' Verse Tales ' (Liverpool, 1889). In an appendix to his ' English Literature from the Beginning to the Xorman Conquest ' (Macmillan, 1898) Mr. Stopford Brooke supplies a complete English version by Miss Kate Warren. The translator gives the narrative portions of the poem in prose, rendering the speeches of the warriors in fairly literal verse. In the bibliography appended to his volume Mr. Stopford Brooke includes Miss Hickey's work, and also mentions a translation that appeared in MacmiUan's Magazine for March, 1887, and a literal translation by J. M. Garnett (Boston, 1889). Thomas Bayne. Prof. E. A. Freeman, in his ' Old-English History ' (1876), pp. 192-204, gives a version of the ' Song of the Fight of Maldon,' with numerous notes and explanations. A. R. Bayley. 'The Story of the Fight of Maldon' appears in E. A. Freeman's ' Old English History,' and also in E. A. Fitch's' Maldon and the River Blackwater.' G. H. W.