Memorabilia; Or Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and AntiquarianSavage, James
History
Memorabilia; Or Recollections, Historical, Biographical, and Antiquarian
Savage, James
History -- Miscellanea; Savage, James, 1767-1845
The first printed Poetical Miscellany, in the English language, is the
Collection of Poems, edited and published by Tottel, entitled “Songes
and Sonnettes of Surrey, Wyat, and of uncertain Auctors, London,
1557.”—Another edition, 1565—others in 1574, 1585, 1587. The last
edition was edited by Dr. George Sewell, in 1717.—This Dr. Sewell was
a physician in London; he received his early education at Eton, which
he afterwards completed at Cambridge, where he took the degree of
Bachelor of Physic in 1709. From thence he went to Leyden, where he
studied under the celebrated Boerhaave. Not being successful in the
metropolis, he removed to Hampstead, where he died on the 8th of
February, 1726. As an author he possessed a considerable share of
genius, and wrote in concert with several of his contemporaries,
particularly in the Spectator and Tatler; he was principally concerned
in the ninth volume of the former, and in the fifth of the latter, as
he was also in a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and an edition
of Shakespeare’s Poems. He was the author of a Tragedy, entitled “Sir
Walter Raleigh,” published at London in 1719, and also of another,
which he left unfinished, entitled “King Richard the First,” the
fragments of which were printed in 1728.
THE HAND A SYMBOL OF POWER.
In Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon we have the following remarks on the Hand
as an emblem of strength and power. “The hand was used by the Jews, as a
trophy or monument of victory, and placed on the top of a pillar. Thus
Saul, after smiting the Amalekites, in the pride of his heart erected to
or for himself (not for Jehovah) a hand, 1 Samuel xv. 12. And David
smote Hadadezer, king of Zobah, when he was going to erect his hand or
trophy, by the river Euphrates, 2 Sam. viii. 3, and 1 Chronicles, xviii.
3.—And this appears to be the most ancient use of these memorial hands;
whence Absalom seems to have taken the hint of erecting one, merely to
keep his name in remembrance, 2 Sam. xviii. 18, where it may be observed
that this monument is expressly called not only a _hand_, but _a
pillar_, which shews that the hand was wont to be put on a pillar.
“Neibuhr (Voyage in Arabia, tom. 2. p. 211. French edition) speaking of
Ali’s mosque at Mesched Ali, says, that ‘at the top of the dome’ where
one generally sees on the Turkish mosques a crescent, or only a pole,
there is here _a hand stretched out_, to represent that of Ali.” And
another writer informs us, that at the Alhambra, or red palace of the
Moorish kings in Granada, “on the key-stone of the outward arch [of the
present principal entrance] is sculptured the figure of an _arm_, the
symbol of strength and dominion.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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