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THE CUP AND THE LIP.

Most persons are familiar with the proverb which suggests the uncertainty that intervenes between the cup and the lip, who are not acquainted with its high antiquity, and its supposed origin. According to the Greek mythologers, the person who first experienced a truth, which after him became proverbial, was a king named Ancæus. Lycophron who has expressed the proverb (v. 489.) with his usual perspicuity and simplicity:

ὥς πολλὰ χείλους καὶ δεπαστραίων ποτῶν μέσῳ κυλίνδει Μοῖρα παμμήστωρ βροτῶν refers it to an Arcadian hero, Ancæus of Tegea, who was killed by the Calydonian boar. His valour and untimely fate were subjects of lively interest in his native city; and the artist who adorned one of the pediments in the great temple of Minerva Alea at Tegea, with the principal figures belonging to the Calydonian chase, had represented Ancæus in the act of sinking under his wounds, after the hatchet with which he had ineffectually assailed the boar had fallen from his hand.* But Lycophron's Greek commentator censures the poet for confounding two perfectly distinct personages, the one of Tegea, and Ancæus a son of Neptune and Astypalea, and king of the Leleges. This people, according to Pherecydes, was in possession of the coast of Asia between Ephesus and Phocæa, and of the islands Chios and Samos, before the Ionian migration, and a legend reported by Tzetzes on the authority of an Aristotle who had written a book entitled Tλo, placed the scene of the event which gave rise to the proverb in Samos. There Ancæus had planted the vine: but a seer or an oracle had predicted that he should never drink wine from its fruit. When the grapes were ripe, the king pressed a bunch into a cup, and as he raised it to his lips, scoffed at the idle prophecy; the seer replied, πουλὺ μεταξὺ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος ἄκρον' at the same moment a shout was heard, and tidings came that a boar was ravaging the fields. Laying aside the untasted must, Ancæus rushed forth to encounter the invader, and perished in the conflict.

With regard to the proverb, it can scarcely be doubted, that it belongs to the Samian Ancæus, whose son Samos was said to have given his name to the island: for the prediction which is the basis of the story, had most probably some connexion with that peculiar defect in the quality of the Samian soil, which rendered it unfavourable to the growth of the vine, while the neighbouring islands, as well as the adjacent coast of the continent were celebrated for the excellence of their

wines.

Pausanias, viii. 45. 7.

C. T.

So he is described by Asius (in Pausan. vii. 4. 1. 7.) who does not mention the Carians, as incorrectly stated by Panofka, (Res Samiorum, p. 11.) Strabo himself speaks of the Carians as having inhabited Samos while it was called Parthenia, (xiv. p. 637,) but possibly he only uses the name of Carians, according to a commonly received notion, as equivalent to that of Leleges, without in any way meaning to contradict Pherecydes. Strabo, xiv. p. 632.

GRANT OF ARMS TO GOLDSMITHS' COMPANY. The following grant of arms, or rather of crest and supporters, to the Goldsmiths' Company of London, here copied from the original, has never been printed :—

To all and singular as well Nobles and Gentelmen as others to whome these presents shall come, ROBERT COOKE esquier, alias Clarencieulx principall Herehault and Kinge of Armes of the Sowth, Este, and Weste partes of this realme of Englande, from the river of Trent sowthwardes sendeth greetinge.

Whereas aunciently from the beginninge the valiant and vertuous actes of worthie persons have ben comended to the worlde withe sondry monuments and remembrances of theyr good desertes amongst the whiche the chefest and moste usuall hath ben the bearinge of Signes in Shildes called Armes which are evident demonstracions of prowis and valoyr diversly distributed accordinge to the qualities and deserts of the persons, whiche order as yt was prudently devised in the beginninge to stirre and kindell the hartes of men to the imitacion of vertue and noblenes; even so hathe the same ben and yet is continually observed to th' ende that suche as have don comendable servyce to their Prynce or Contry either in Warre or Peace may bothe receave dewe honor in their lyves and also deryve the same successively to their posteritie after them,

And whereas Kinge Richarde the Seconde in [1393,] the sixtenth yere of his reigne did by his letters patentes, at Westmester, the sixte daye of february in the yere aforesaide, incorporate the men of the arte or mistery of Goldsmiths in the Citie of London, and that they sholde be one perpetuall comunitie and yerely chose fower wardens of the men of the saide comunitie, to oversee rule and dewly governe the saide arte or mistery and all and singular the men of the same forever.

thirtieth daye of Maye in [1462,] the seconde yere of his Synce which tyme Kinge Edwarde the fowerth, the reigne, did not only ratifie and confirme the same, but also gave them dyvers and sondry liberties, as to pleade and be impleaded by the names aforesaid, and that they showlde have a perpetuall succession, and one Comon Seale for the necessary business of the saide art or mistery to serve them for ever, and for that the saide arte or mistery hath of longe tyme borne Armes, yet notwithstandinge for the further honor of the saide arte or mistery they have required me the said Clarencieulx to assigne to these theyr auncient Armes, a Creast and Supporters lawfull to be borne.

In consideracion of theyr worthiness and at the request of Robert Browne gentelman, John Mabbe gentelman, Robert Friar gentelman, and William Denham gentelman, now wardens of the saide arte or mistery, I have, by power and aucthoritie to my office annexed and graunted by letters patents under the Greate Seale of Englande; devised ordeyned and assigned to the saide wardens and theyr successors in office and like place, and to all those infranchised of the saide arte or mistery, to these theyr auncient armes, that is to saye-Quarterly, gules and asur, in the first, a leopardes hed; in the seconde, a cuppe between two buckles, golde; the Creaste and supporters hereafter followinge, that is to saye

Uppon the heaulme on a wreathe golde and gules, issuant out of the clowdes, a demy virgin, her gowne purple, her kerteli golde, holdinge in her right hande, a payre of ballance golde in her left hande, a tuche stone mantelled gules,

doubled argent. The supporters, two Unicornes golde mayned, clayed and tayled purple as more playnely apperithe depicted in the margent.

To have and holde the saide Armes Creast and Supporters to the saide wardens and to their successors in like office, and to all the men enfranchised of the saide arte or mistery from tyme to tyme, and they the same to use beare and shewe forever in all places honest for the honor of the said fellowship in shilde, standard, banner, penon, or other waies at their lybertie and pleasure without impedyment let or interruption of any person or persons. In witness whereof I have set hereunto my hande and seale of office, the eight daye of November, in the yere of oure Lord God, a thowsand five hundreth seventy and one, and in the thirtenth yere of the reigne of our sovereigne lady Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queene of England, France and Ireland, defender of the faithe, etc.

ROBERT COOKE alias Clarencieux,

Roy Darmes.

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I foresee the misfortunes which threaten our country, and I wish it may please God to make me a false prophet. The Muscovite and the Cossack will join the people who talk the same language with themselves, and will possess themselves of the duchy of Lithuania. The confines of Great Poland will be open to Brandenbourg; and Prussia itself will, either by treaty, or the force of arms, make war upon our territory. In this dismemberment of our estates, the house of Austria will not let slip the opportunity to seize on Cracow. Each of our neighbours will rather chuse, by force of arms, to gain a part of Poland, than to wait to possess, perhaps, some day or other, a kingdom whose ancient privileges defend it from the enterprizes of foreign powers.

He abdicated in 1668, and the Poles of his day were far from believing that the discourse of a prince, who after being a Jesuit, then a cardinal, and ascended the throne, relinquished a crown, and again became a monk in France, where he died; was, in effect, a prophecy that has too truthfully occurred to the very letter.

RARE MARC ANTONIO PRINTS.

The recent sale of the collections of art, belonging to the late Mr. Rogers, presents in its results many points of consideration to collectors, I mean more particularly in reference to the variations in value, at various periods, and as Current Notes appears eminently calculated for embodying and transmitting such memoranda, I submit the following for insertion.

Take one class of prints, the Marc Antonio's, which are all of very rare occurrence, and as those in the collections of Sir M. M. Sykes and Rogers are of equal importance as regards condition, a comparison with the relative prices they produced, the former in May, 1824, and the latter so recently, will not only be interesting, but, to a certain extent, mark the declension, or rise which some of them acquire by a variation in taste, for, urge what we may, there is a fashion in all things.

The numbers at the commencement of each line refer volume. The first column of prices are from the Sykes' to the print as so numbered by Bartsch in his fourteenth Sale Catalogue, the second indicates those from Mr. Christie's Catalogue of the Rogers' Collection.

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BOLINGBROKE'S MISTRESS, MISS GUMLEY.

Your correspondent C., who, in Current Notes, p. 48, asks for the authority on which it is stated, Miss Gumley was the mistress of Henry St. John, subsequently Lord Bolingbroke, may be referred to Mallet's memoir of him, in which it is noticed that at the age which should have been employed in the acquisition of knowledge, St. John seemed more ambitious of being thought the greatest rake about town, and was noted for keeping Miss Gumley, the most expensive prostitute in the kingdom. Cooke, upon a fuller inquiry and further evidence, descanting upon his irregularities, observes :—

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Formed to excel in whatever he might undertake, he soon became as notorious for his excesses as he was afterwards eminent for his genius and learning. By those who could yet remember the court of Charles II., he was compared to Rochester, and he was then proud of the comparison. He left nothing unaccomplished that could increase the similitude; he continued his drunken revels with the most unblushing publicity, and his mistress, Miss Gumley, was the most beautiful courtesan of her day, but St. John was rather captivated by her celebrity than won by her beauty; his attentions were not very assiduous, nor his constancy very remarkable.t

Mallet places the birth of Henry St. John, at Battersea, in 1672; but Cooke, upon Bolingbroke's own statement, dates it Oct. 1, 1678; and his riotous course of dissipation was the theme of his earliest biographer. He was much addicted to women, and was apt to indulge himself in late hours, with all those excesses that usually attend them.' It is not apparent whether his liaison with Miss Gumley was before his travels upon the continent, which occupied about two years, portions of 1698-1700, or after his marriage in the latter year-a mere marriage of convenience, for he complained that his wife's temper was insufferable, and she that his infidelities were shameless and intolerable: they soon formally separated.

St. John, upon entering public life, was, by his family interest, returned member for Wootton-Bassett in Wiltshire, and abandoning his Whig connections, joined Harley, a confirmed tory, for whom he then had the greatest esteem. His eloquence in the house gained for him such authority and influence that, to reward his merit, he was April 10,|| 1704, appointed Secretary-at

Bolingbroke's Works, 1777, 4to., vol. i. p. 4.

+ Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, 1835, 8vo., vol. i. p. 11. Memoirs, 1752, 8vo., p. 33. § Cooke, vol. i. p. 19. April 20. Memoirs, 1752.

War, and of the Marines; his friend Harley having been, a little before, made Secretary of State. Whether from the influence of a former connexion with Miss Gumley, or that it really was subsequent to his marriage, is immaterial, it was easy as Secretary-at-War to elevate her father to the office of a paymaster, and as such we find him. The beauty of Miss Gumley, who became Mrs. Pulteney, afterwards countess of Bath, is recorded in history; and the marriage of her sister with Francis Colman doubtless led to his appointment of Resident Minister in Tuscany. All this is but the history of the day; these extravagances are highly descriptive of the state of society at this period, and disgraceful as they are to the persons concerned, they reflect equal discredit upon the public forbearance which could tolerate and even applaud them. Pope's encomiums amount to nothing, he said civil things of others who were equally loose in principles of honour, and whose names, though emblazoned on the pages of that eminent writer, yet figure in history as dishonourable mistresses of royalty, and the abandoned polluters of the marriage-bed.

QUAINT EPITAPHS.

2.

On the gravestone of a NATHANIEL CLARKE, in Bisbrooke Churchyard, near Uppingham, below the figure of a waggoner driving "his blessed horses," which, if I remember rightly, had been coloured, are the following lines

Here lies the body of NATHANIEL CLARKE,

Who never did no harm in the light, or in the dark; But by his blessed horses taken great delight, And often travelled with them, by day and by night. The epitaph commencing-Man's life is like a winter's day, quoted in the last volume of Current Notes, p. 64, is with a few verbal alterations, also found in Crowland Abbey churchyard.

Very recently, the following has been placed in Whittlesea churchyard :

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We ring the quick to church, the dead to grave. Good is our use, such usage let us have. Who swears, or curse, or in a cholerick mood Quarrels or strike altho' he draw no blood; Who wears his hat, or spur, or turns a bell, Or by unskillful handling mars a peal, Lett him pay Sixpence for each single crime, "Twill make him cautious against another time. So when the bells are ceased then let us sing, God bless our Holy Church, God save the King. These bells were cast, and the tower new leaded, in the year 1773.

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On the left bank of the river Wharf, and on the north-east corner of Harewood bridge, on the line of road from Leeds to Harrogate, stood recently an interesting Elizabethan roadside inn, about which the landscape was very picturesque. The cleanliness and neatness of this inn, with its small low rooms, and the excellent creature comforts at all times to be found there, caused it to be much visited by small parties on fishing excursions to its neighbourhood, and a place of resort for many of the respectable inhabitants of Leeds. In 1798, when first visited by the writer, on an old pane of glass in one of its stone-mullioned windows, were inscribed the following lines

Gaily I lived as Ease and Nature taught, And past my little Life without a thought; I wonder then why Death, that tyrant grim, Should think of me, who never thought of him. These were followed by an admonitory quatrainAh! why forget that Death should think of thee, If thou art Mortal, such must surely be; Then rouse up reason, view thy hast'ning end, And lose no time to make thy God thy Friend. Alas! the comfortable little old inn has since been demolished, and a large fashionable one erected on its site, but to me it does not supply that satisfactory, nor seeming comfort and ease which I constantly experienced in its predecessor. J. H.

EARLY MERCHANT'S MARK.

All the examples of marks mercantile which occur on sepulchral brasses in the churches of Ipswich have been noticed in Current Notes. The annexed is the only one that is incised on a flat stone in St. Peter's church. The being merchant and master of a ship, appears to have been, in 1620, deemed worthy of especial note:

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J. J. H.

PILLEMENT. I am anxious to learn something of JEAN PILLEMENT, an artist who flourished about a century ago, and as I know of no means so likely for the attainment of that object as through the agency of your useful and excellent Current Notes, I venture to ask if any of your readers can afford me any information respecting him and his works, and whether his crayon drawings, for which, I believe, he was famous in his day, are now of any value? I have sought on the walls of the Louvre for specimens of this artist, and finding but one, I concluded his works are somewhat scarce, is this so?

E. K. B.

Jean Pillement was a Frenchman, who resided some years in London, chiefly patronised and employed by Mons. C. Leviez, a dancing-master of some notoriety in Beaufortbuildings, in the Strand; but who, in addition to the reputation acquired by his Terpsichorean profession, added the, no doubt to him, highly profitable dealing in prints and drawings. Pillement's chief employment was the drawing of landscapes and fancy subjects, generally in black chalk upon white paper, sometimes strengthened in Indian ink. These were theatrically disposed, the parts not drawn from nature, but selected from prints, those by Le Bas after the forms in all his pasticcio productions. They had the Wouvermans, were the main source from which he drew merit of being finished with considerable patience and care, and from that cause obtained much notice from persons with whom neatness of execution was held to be the perfection of art. Leviez had, on his own account, many plates engraved after Pillement's designs, some of them by Ravenet; Boydell's name appears to others as the publisher. There are also some fantastically designed ornaments, in what was then ridiculously termed the Chinese Taste; these were engraved by Canot, and are dated 1759.

The repute in which he was then held, induced some of his drawings to be exhibited in the first and second exhibitions of the Royal Academy, but they are not particularised in the Catalogues; and he soon after quitted Eng

land.

Pillement painted a few pictures in a similar style of composition with his drawings, showy in their colouring, but deficient in tone. These, with his drawings, have failed to retain their former estimation.

WILLIS'S CURRENT NOTES.

No. LXVII.]

"Takes note of what is done-
By note, to give and to receive."-SHAKESPEARE.

KEIGWIN FAMILY MANSION AT MOUSEHOLE.

Penzance in the sixteenth century was but little known and of minor importance, Mousehole on the contrary was the principal town on the shores of the Mount's Bay; but all things change, Mousehole* has declined to a mere fishing village, and Penzance is now a large progressive and prosperous town.

The Keigwins of Mousehole were the principal family in the parish of St. Paul; and in 1595, the large house noticed by many of our local historians, but not till now engraved

was occupied by Jenkin Keigwin, then the head of that family. On the morning of July 23, in that year, the Spaniards made a descent upon the coast over against Mousehole, and Jenkin Keigwin was killed by a shot fired from one of their gallies in their attack upon the town. He was buried at St. Paul; but the cannon

Mousehole in the Cornish language named Porternis, and in Latin, Portus Insulæ, both importing one meaningthe Island Haven, and so called by reason of a small island situated before it.

+ The Spaniards in their Popish malevolence considered the English a nation of heretics, and their extirpation a service rendered to God. This induced the armament in 1588, but its discomfiture appears to have been soon forgotten by them, and the atrocity of this descent, is thus narrated by Carew.

Soon after the sun was risen, and had chased a fog that kept the sea out of sight, four gallies of the enemy presented themselves upon the coast over against Mousehole, and there in a fair bay, landed about two hundred men, pikes and shot, who forthwith sent their forlorn hope, consisting of their basest people, unto the straggled houses of the

VOL. VI.

[JULY, 1856.

ball has since been religiously preserved, and may be seen in the above house.

During the Civil war, a descendant made himself sufficiently conspicuous as a royalist, and is thus noticed in the following letter. June 30, 1646.

Sir, I believe the Castle of Pendennis will not be long out of our hands; a dogger boat with four guns I have taken, whereof one Kedgwin of Penzant, was Captain, a notable active knave against the Parliament, and had the king's commission, but now would fain be a merchant man, and was ballasted with salt, and had diverse letters in her for Pendennis Castle.

Aboard the Andrew,
before Pendennis Castle,
W. BATTEN.

Allusion is later made to a Mr. John Keigwin, as being the last person whose knowledge of the Cornish language was rudimentally correct. He rendered Lluyd material assistance while forming his Cornish grammar,

country, about half a mile compass or more, by whom were burned, not only the houses they went by, but also the parish church of St. Paul, the force of the fire being such, as it utterly ruined all the great stone pillars thereof. Others of them, in that time, burned the fisher-town Mousehole; the rest marched as a guard for defence of the firers. The inhabitants being feared with the Spaniards landing and burning fled from their dwellings, and very meanly weaponed, met on a green on the west side of Penzance, Sir Francis Godolphin who was that forenoon coming from his parts; and from the hills espying the fires in that town, house for the pacifying some controversies in those western church and houses, hastened thither. He forthwith sent to all the Captains of those parts for their speedy repair with their companies; and also, by post to Sir Francis Drake, and Sir John Hawkins, then at Plymouth, with a fleet bound for the Indies, sent advertisement of the arrival of these four gallies, and of their burnings; advising them to look to themselves, if there were any greater fleet of the enemy's at sea; and to send west with all haste what succours by sea or land, they could spare. Sir Francis Godolphin then advised that weak assembly to retire into Penzance, and to prepare it for defence until the coming of the country forces that he had sent for; but they finding themselves something above a hundred, wherein were about thirty or forty shot, though scarcely one third of them were serviceable, insisted upon marching against the enemy to repel them from further spoils of their houses.

Courtney's Guide to Penzance. The figure of the fisherwoman represented in the woodcut, is introduced as a memento of Dorothy or Dolly Pentreath, a remarkable Cornish character, who lived and died at Mousehouse, and is said to have been the last person who could speak in the Cornish dialect.

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