Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/293

i2S.x.MAR.25,i922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 239 HIGHGATE (12 S. x. 132). This word naturally occurs, or has been recorded, as a place-name in many hilly districts, although the places so described may be too obscure to be mentioned in gazetteers or marked on maps. In the three south- eastern counties alone there is one at Forest Row, Sussex ; at Hawkhurst, Kent ; and there was one formerly at Dorking, Surrey. An early instance of its use as a surname is a " de Hygate " in Kent, 1263. Some well-known names derived from it are Haygate, Heygate, and, in most cases, Hyatt, Highett, &c. The variations in the first syllable of these names are due to the unsettled spelling and pronunciation of Ugh in Middle English. E. G. T. HOLBOBN, MIDDLE Row (12 S. x. 94). The exact date of the demolition could easily be obtained by application to the clerk of the Holborn Town Council. So far as my memory goes I should say it was in the seventies. As the object of the re- moval of Middle Row was to widen the main thoroughfare, the then existing owners of the property must have received compensation in the usual way. G. W. YOUNGER. 2, Mecklenburgh Square, W.C.I. This was demolished in 1868. J. ABDAGH. AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (12 S. x. 191). These lines should be : " That there's on earth a yet auguster thing, Veil'd though it be, than Parliament or King." They are by George Wither. The passage of his ' Vox Pacifica ' at the end of which they come is given with the reference p. 119, ed. 1645, under the heading ' Parliamentary Quotation,' at 10 S. iii. 494. A correspondent in an earlier number of the same volume, p. 206, had sent a ludicrous account of the different forms in which the quotation was reported when made in the House of Commons (Feb. 14, 1905) by Sir Henry Camp- bell-Bannerman. To drop " that " and expand " there's " to " there is " is of course legitimate. It may be remembered that when the late Marquess of Salisbury enlivened a speech with a saying from Tacitus hardly any daily paper got the words right. For this the acoustic deficiencies of the House of Lords were in part responsible. EDWARD BENSLY. on JSoofe*. Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy. By F. L. Lucas. (Cambridge University Press. 7s. 6d. net.) MR. LUCAS begins by drawing out before us the old contrast between classic and romantic. His own mind leans towards the romantic. He uses whatever he finds ; sets things down as they come into his head ; ignores differences of key or tone, and rejoices in flights which carry him in an instant from Sophocles to Mr. Wells. Litera- ture being one and -eternal, how should he be tied to observance of succession in time ? What we may call a trick of anachronism strikes one in a few instances as amusing though awkward for example, " Schopenhauerianism. " said to be ill-fitted for Seneca ; but becomes somewhat wearisome by repetition. He waxes sometimes extremely fierce (so he speaks of "that lewd- minded fiend Tertullian "), sometimes pontifical. He confides to us a belief that the majority of mankind are such hypocrites as to take in even themselves ; and goes on to say that there are few abominations worse than a conscious hypo- crite. Needless to say, paradox, epigram and challenge abound ; and we perceive at every turn the design to startle. Truth constrains us to say that we regret some of this, but it also constrains us to say that in spite of faults of treatment some more and some less superficial we have enjoyed this study and recommend it as intrinsically a good contribution to the history of the drama. The account of that history before Seneca takes us, inevitably, over very well-travelled ground. Yet our guide has so fixed his halting-places and so contrived the grouping of his facts and the arrangement of vistas that the reader's interest becomes as lively as if the subject were new. A disputable statement here and there (take, for instance, the characterization of the Latin lan- guage) does not affect the value of the outline as a whole. The study of Seneca as a man impresses one as having been very congenial to Mr. Lucas, in the sense that Seneca presents a type of character for which he has much shrewd insight. He sums up both justly and sympathetically, after a sufficiently full account of Seneca's life and times. Not less successful is the treatment of the tragedies of Seneca. The relations be- tween literature and the life of the time have, indeed, never furnished more instruc- tive albeit one may call it pathological material for consideration than in the days of the Empire. Mr. Lucas again handles a well-worn theme with admirable freshness, which probably arises from a perception of not a little similaiity as well as some notable contrast, in this respect, between the days of Seneca and our own. The essential qualities of the plays have been well apprehended, and they are illustrated with skill and judgment, both as to what repels and as to what is fine in them. In turning from this chapter to those which deal with the main subject of the book, the influence of Seneca on the Eliza- bethans, the reader will find himself with a sufficiently clear and vital conception of Seneca's woik and spirit. " The rising infancy of English drama could find nothing in classics so near its own level as the declining senility of Roman. Nero's Borne had the crudity of surfeit, Elizabethan England the crudity of hunger, his Rome the cruelty of over-sophistication and decadence, her England the cruelty of raw and primitive youth." In these sentences Mr. Lucas sums up his lively account of the earlier development of the English drama and gives his explanation of the strange preference of Latin to Greek, of Seneca to Sophocles, in the Renaissance. The explanation