Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851

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Various. Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851

Notes

LATIN DRINKING SONG BY RICHARD BRAITHWAIT

STRANGE APPEARANCES IN THE SKY

"AFTER ME THE DELUGE."

BISHOP THORNBOROUGH'S MONUMENT

Minor Notes

Queries

PORTRAITS OF SPENSER

THE VENDACE

Minor Queries

Minor Queries Answered

Replies

SIR BALTHAZAR GERBIER

THE TRAVELS OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN

Replies to Minor Queries

Miscellaneous

NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES WANTED TO PURCHASE

Notices To Correspondents

Отрывок из книги

I have been surprised, from the facility with which the author of "Drunken Barnaby" seems to pour out his Leonine verse, that no other productions of a similar character are known to have issued from his pen. I am not aware that the following drinking song, which may fairly be attributed to him, has ever appeared in print. It was evidently unknown to the worthy Haslewood, the crowning glory of whose literary career was the happy discovery of the author, Richard Braithwait. I transcribe it from the MS. volume from which James Boswell first gave to the world Shakspeare's verses "On the King." Southey has somewhere said that "the best serious piece of Latin in modern metre is Sir Francis Kinaston's Amores Troili et Cressidæ, a translation of the two first books of Chaucer's Poem1; but it was reserved for famous Barnaby to employ the barbarous ornament of rhyme, so as to give thereby point and character to good Latinity."

Southey does not seem to have known those remarkable productions of the middle ages, which have been made accessible to us by the researches of Docen, of Grimm, of Schmeller, and of Mr. Wright; and, above all, of that exquisite gem, "De Phyllide et Flora," first printed by Docen2, and since given by Mr. Wright in his collection of Poems attributed to Walter de Mapes. We have, however, a much better text from the hand of Jacob Grimm, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin for 1843, p. 239. Of this poem it is perhaps not exaggeration to say, that it is an Idyll which would have done honour to the literature of any age or country; and if it is the production of Walter de Mapes, we have reason to be proud of it. It is a dispute between two maidens on the qualities of their lovers, the one being a soldier, the other a priest. It breathes of the spring, of nature, and of love:

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Such is probably the meaning of his pious conceit, and I offer it as a solution of what has long served for a riddle to the visitors of our cathedral. Beyond this, your readers and myself may be equally indifferent to such cabalistical quaintness. But let us treat it with charity, as the devout consummation of an aged alchymist.

College Green, Worcester, March, 1851.

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