rapid generalizations of single cases.-MAX to write one without the usual addition; but MULLER, in The Fortnightly Review. FOUNDLING QUOTATIONS. Quotations play no small part in conversation and general literature. There are some which we know must inevitably be made under certain circumstances. It is almost impossible, for instance, for the conventional novelist, when he wants to convey to his readers the fact that his heroine's nose is of a particular order—which, formerly, through our lack of invention, we could only describe by a somewhat ungraceful term-to avoid quoting Lord Tennyson's description of the feature as it graced Lynette's fair face-“Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower." We feel sure that it must come; and there is now, happily, no occasion for a young lady in the position of one of Miss Braddon's earlier heroines, when listening to a detailed description of her appearance, to interrupt the speaker, as he is about to mention the characteristics of her nose, with a beseeching, "Please, don't say pug!” And then, does anybody ever expect to read a description of a certain celebrated Scotch ruin, without being told that "If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, or to get through an account of the ancient gladiatorial games at Rome without coming across the line, "Butchered to make a Roman holiday?" You know, perhaps, what praise Mark Twain took to himself because he did not quote this line. 'If any man has a right," he says, "to feel proud of himself and satisfied, surely it is I; for I have written about the coliseum, and the gladiators, the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never used the phrase, Butch ered to make a Roman holiday.' I am the only free white man of mature age who has accomplished this since Byron originated the expression.' This little piece of self-congratulation rather reminds one of the lady who was accused of never being able to write a letter without adding a P.S. At last, she managed when she saw what she had succeeded in doing, she wrote: " P. S.-At last, you see, I have written a letter without a P.S." And so, though Mark Twain managed to steer clear of the hackneyed quotation in the body of his account, he could not help running against it in a P.S. Then we have all the multitude of Shaksperean quotations which are sure to be heard in their accustomed places, many of which, indeed, have become-to quote again-such "household words," that to very many people they do not appear to be quotations at all, but merely every-day expressions, of the same order as A fine day" or "A biting wind." 66 Again, when we read of some cheerful fireside scene, when the curtains are drawn closely against the winter wind that is roaring round the house, and the logs are crackling and spitting in the grate, and the urn is hissing and steaming upon the table, don't we know that a reference to the “cup which cheers but not inebriates' is certainly coming? This, by the way, is a line that is almost invariably incorrectly quoted, and it is the usual and incorrect form that we have given. We shall leave our readers to turn up the line for themselves, and see what the correct form is, and then, perhaps, the trouble they will thereby have had will serve to impress it upon their minds, and prevent them again quoting it incorrectly. But it was not with the intention of talking about these well-known and every-day quotations from Tennyson, Scott, Byron, Shakspeare, and Cowper that we thought of writing this paper. We want to talk about a few quotations, quite as well known as those to which we have already alluded, which have been so bandied about that all trace, or nearly all trace, of their original parish and paternity has been lost; and, though they are as familiar to us as the most hackneyed phrases from our best known poets, no one can say with certainty by whom they were first spoken or written. A good many wagers have been made as to the source of the well-known and much-quoted couplet : : "He that fights and runs away, John Mennis, written in the reign of Charles II. With this book, however, we are unacquainted, and cannot, therefore, discuss the appearance of the foundling lines in it, or what claims its author may have to be their legitimate parent. All readers of Tennyson - and who that reads at all is not numbered among them ?— know well the opening stanza of In Memoriam :— "I held it truth, with him who sings The popular belief is that they are to be found in Butler's Hudibras. But the pages of that poem may be turned over and over again, and the lines will not be found in them. We may as well say at once that they cannot be found anywhere in the exact form in which they are usually quoted. The late Mr. James Yeowell, formerly sub-editor of Notes and Queries, once thought that he had discovered their author in Oliver Goldsmith, as a couplet, varying very slightly from the form we have given, occurs in The Art of Poetry on a New Plan, which was compiled by Newbery-the children's These lines contain another quotation of the publisher-more than a century ago, and re-order we have designated as Foundling vised and enlarged by Goldsmith. But the Quotations." Who is the singer, "to one lines are to be found in a book that was pub-clear harp in divers tones," to whom Lord lished some thirteen years before The Art of Tennyson refers? Passages from Seneca and Poetry, namely, Ray's History of the Rebellion. from St. Augustine (Bishop of Hippo) have There they appear as a quotation, and no hint been suggested as inspiring the poet when he is given as to the source from which they are penned the lines; but neither Seneca nor St. taken. Ray gives them as follows:Augustine can be said to sing "to one clear harp in divers tones." Perhaps the most reasonable hypothesis is that Lord Tennyson had in his mind Longfellow's beautiful poem of St. Augustine's Ladder, the opening lines of which "He that fights and runs away, --: May turn and fight another day." are: 66 "Saint Augustine! well hast thou said A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame!" "Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, Though this is the earliest appearance in print of the exact words, or almost the exact words, in which the quotation is now usually given, it is by no means the earliest appearance of a similar thought. Even as far back as Demosthenes we find it. It appears, too, in Scarron, in his Virgile Travesti, if we remem- and the closing ones :ber rightly. And now we must confess that the still prevailing belief that the lines occur in Hudibras is not entirely without a raison d'être, and it is not impossible that Ray may have thought he was quoting Butler, preserving some hazy and indistinct recollection of lines read long ago, and putting their meaning perhaps quite unwittingly and unconsciously, into a new and unauthorized form. This, however, is mere conjecture. The lines, as they appear in Hudibras (part iii. canto iii., lines 243, 244), are as follows:- "For those that fly, may fight again, To something nobler we attain." The question, however, though Lord Tennyson is still alive, is one that is not likely ever to be clearly solved; for we have very good authority for saying that he has himself quite forgotten.of what poet or verses he was thinking when he composed the first s anza of In Memoriam. The equally well-known "This is truth the poet sings, That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," in Locksley Hall, refers, of course, to the line We may just add that Collet, in his Relics of Literature, says that the couplet occurs in a small volume of miscellaneous poems by Sir | in Dante's Inferno. The trite "Not lost, but gone before,' There is a Latin line familiar to all of us, might alone provide subject-matter for a fairly Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis long essay. Like the other quotations which (The times change, and we change with them), we are discussing, it can be definitely assigned which we are frequently hearing and seeing. to no author. The thought can be traced back This is a much-abused line; probably there is as far as the time of Antiphanes, a portion of none more so; and we do not think we shall whose eleventh "fragment," Cumberland has be guilty of exaggeration if we say that it is translated, fairly literally, as follows:- misquoted ten times for every time it is correctly cited. The positions of the nos and the et are usually interchanged; the result being, of course, a false quantity; for the line is a hexameter. Now, who first wrote this line? The answer must be, as in the cases of all our other "Foundling Quotations," that we do not know. But in this particular instance we may venture to be a little more certain and definite in our remarks concerning its pedigree than we have dared to be in previous ones. There can be little doubt that the line is a corruption of one to be found in the Delitiæ Poetarum Germanorum, among the poems of Matthias Borbonius, who considers it a saying of Lotharius I., who flourished, as the phrase goes, about 830 A.D. We give the cor "Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, Advanced a stage or two upon that road Which you must travel, in the steps they trod." Seneca, in his ninety-ninth Epistle, says: Quem putas periisse, præmissus est (He whom you think dead has been sent on before); and he also has: Non amittuntur, sed præmittuntur (They are not lost, but are sent on before), which corresponds very closely with the popular form of the quotation. Cicero has the remark that "Friends, though absent, are still present;" and it is very probable that it is to this phrase of Cicero that we are really indebted for the modern, "Not lost, but gone before." We may note that Rogers, in his Human Life, has, "Not dead, but gone be fore." "Sweetheart, good-bye! the fluttering sail My ship shall bound upon the sea. Though lost to sight, to memory dear." Mr. Bartlett, however, in the last edition of his Dictionary of Quotations, has demolished this story of Mr. Ruthven Jenkyns; and the line is still unclaimed and fatherless. Probably, as in the case of the last mentioned, "Not lost, but gone before," its germ is to be found in an expression of Cicero. rect form of the line in question, and the one which follows it : "Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis; Illa vices quasdem res habet, illa suas,” There is another foundling Latin line, almost as frequently quoted as the one we have just been discussing. namely, Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat (Whom the gods would destroy, they first madden). Concerning this there is a note in Mr. Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, in which it is said to be a translation from a Greek iambic of Euripides, which is quoted; but no such line is to be found among the writings of Euripides. Words, however, expressing the same sentiment are to be found in a fragment of Athenagoras; and it is most likely that the Latin phrase now so commonly quoted is merely a translation from this writer's Greek, though by whom it was first made we cannot say. The same sentiment has been expressed more than once in English poetry. Dryden, in the third part of The Hind and the Panther, has : "For those whom God to ruin has designed, And Butler writes in Hudibras : "Like men condemned to thunder-bolts, Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts." Further consideration will probably bring to the reader's mind other examples of these "Foundling Quotations" which have won for themselves an imperishable existence; though their authors, whose names these few-syllabled sentences might have kept alive forever, if they were only linked the one with the other, are now utterly unknown and forgotten. Any one who can succeed in discovering the real authorship of the quotations we have been considering will win for himself the credit of having solved problems which have long and persistently baffled the most curious and diligent research.-Chambers's Journal. SISTERS-IN-LAW, of theology than of astrology. Divines, perhaps will remark from their point of view, that their own science is not so easily set aside as lawyers or astrologers suppose. It has an awkward way of reappearing after it has been declared to be dead and buried by general consent. Even when polemics slumber, popular literature has a curious tendency to clothe itself in theological language, and to adapt An Scriptural phraseology to its own use. attentive reader of the Parliamentary debates of the late brief session could not fail to notice that there was hardly one speech of importance in which illustrations from Bible history or adaptations of Scriptural language, did not occur. Men do not so easily unlearn even that which they repudiate, or wholly throw off the authority they have resolved to dethrone. Be this as it may, Lord Bramwell certainly devotes half his article to the theology of which he speaks so lightly. It would be foreign to my immediate purpose to follow the facts that marriage between persons near of kin is prohibited in the Scripture, and that no distinction between relationship by affinity or consanguinity is there to be found. From time to time during the last five-and-him on this track. It is sufficient to reassert forty years efforts have been made to alter the marriage law of England in the matter of the prohibited degrees. It is not surprising that many persons are tired of the discussion. Rather than listen to any further arguments they will vote for the change which is so persistently demanded, and hope to be troubled with it no more. I wish to point out that the bill advocated by Lord Bramwell in the House of Lords, and more recently in THE LIBRARY MAGAZINE will not, if enacted, fulfill | their desire. It will be but the beginning of troubles to those whose chief anxiety is to lead a quiet life. It will unsettle the whole law of marriage and decide nothing. Its inherent unreason is a fatal defect. It is on this last point that the whole subject at present really turns. In England no one openly denies that it is necessary to put some restrictions on the general liberty to contract marriage, even apart from any Scriptural or ecclesiastical rule; or that nearness of relationship between the parties to the proposed marriage constitutes a valid impediment. But what degree of nearness? This is the point in dispute. I am assuming that the idea of nearness includes the notion of degrees in nearness; although to hear some For my present purpose it is not necessary persons talk on this subject, one might think to enter into the theological argument. It that all relationships were the same. As they seems, indeed, but yesterday that a theologi. attach no particular meaning to the words cal treatment of the question was generally they use, argument with them is impossible. deprecated. Speakers in Parliament a few Rational men will allow that all who are years since disclaimed all intention of defend-related to one another are more nearly or more ing or attacking the law on that side. Nor would any one have expected that the Scriptural controversy should be revived under the auspices of a veteran lawyer who is careful to remind the world that he knows no more distantly related: parents more nearly related to children than uncles and aunts to their nephews and nieces. They will hardly deny that kinsfolk related in the same degree must all be equally allowed, or forbidden, to intermarry; and that permission to marry given to the | may be right, or it may be wrong, to marry nearly related, and denied to those more dis- your wife's near kinswoman; it cannot be tantly related, would be an arbitrary indul- right and wrong at the same time. It cannot gence to the one, an intolerable wrong to the be right to favor a particular case by excepother. These positions have not been, to my tional treatment, or to draw lots for indulknowledge, disputed in the abstract by any gences among those whose status of affinity is the same. It is not a question of being asked, as Lord Bramwell says, to do a wrong thing, but of being asked to do that which your own line of action has compelled you to acknowledge to be right. one. But it is exactly with these positions that the law, in the proposed form, would be in direct conflict. The man would be allowed to marry two or more sisters; the woman forbidden to marry two brothers. Marriage with a wife's sister would be lawful; marriage with her niece absolutely contrary to law. Further, the only reason for prohibiting half the marriages named in the Table of Degrees would cease to exist. Marriage with a wife's near kinswomen is forbidden now because they are the wife's kinswomen, and for no other reason. Remove that reason, and they would be forbidden for no reason at all. Could it be expected that the persons subject to these disabilities would contentedly bear them? Once declare it lawful and right for a man to marry a near kinswoman of his wife, and it is inevitable that, if his affections were set on any other of her kinsfolk, he should feel himself the victim of a senseless tyranny, were he not allowed to gratify those affections with the sanction of the law. I am unable to think of any rational answer to the protest which such flagrant inequality would call forth. It is natural to ask, if this be so, why the bill does not include all the kindred whom the majority of its supporters admit to be within the scope of its principle. An alteration of a very few words would make it consistent with itself and with the arguments used in support of it. What hinders the alteration from being made? The answer to this question has more policy than honesty on its face. Shortly stated it is, “One thing at a time. This is a world of expediency and compromise. We cannot❞—say the advocates of the bill-"persuade the great body of our countrymen that it is right to allow all these marriages, but there is a certain sentiment in favor of one of them. Kindly grant a privilegium for that one, then we shall have the lever we require for further action; we shall be able to show that the principle has been conceded, and that the rest must follow." Truly this reasoning assumes a simplicity of character among those to whom it is addressed which can hardly be imputed without some disparagement of their understanding. Two answers, indeed, have been attempted, but they are mutually destructive. On the one hand, it is said that further relaxations would be so shocking that no one would ask "Only just this little bill, this innocent little for them; on the other, that as soon as they bill," they entreat us to pass; then aside to were asked for, they would be granted with their friends and allies, "You shall soon be out demur. Taking the former line of argu- set at liberty to marry all your wives' relament, Lord Bramwell has urged that it is tions, if we can only just carry this little bill. very foolish not to do a right thing be- Don't mention-for the world-those nieces, cause you may be asked thereafter to do a and brothers' widows, and all the rest, while wrong one-forgetting, apparently, that the we have this bill in hand; but you shall soon "wrong" thing would cease to be wrong in see that we have done your business for you Parliamentary and legal eyes in the event of as effectually as if the whole list had been his bill becoming law. The wrong, indeed, enumerated in our act." Let it not be would be on the other side. It would be thought I am imputing motives to opponents; wrong to withhold the permission, which you I am saying only what they have said for had granted in one case, from others whose themselves wherever it was politic to say it, plea for it rested on the same grounds. It and I am thinking of cases, not a few, in |