_Quistourne_ (Vol. iv., p. 116.).--Here is a word so very like the Devonshire one which has puzzled a correspondent, that it may be the same one in sense as well in sound. In one of the Low-Norman insular dialects, it denotes a slap with the _back_ of the _hand_; in French-British[3], KIS DOÛRN, _revers de main_. [Footnote 3: I was asked by a great and true scholar, now no more, What do you mean by _British_? My answer was, "The nation that you have nicknamed _Welsh_ or _Strangers_, which they are not. With me the English are still English, the Scotch Scots, the Britons in France the British there."] G. M. _Seneca's Medea_ (Vol. i., p. 107.; Vol. iii., p. 464.).--I cannot feel much doubt that the prophecy ascribed to Medea was a mere allusion to events actually past. It was a compliment to Claudius upon the recent reduction of Britannia under the Roman arms, with nothing future, unless it were an encouragement to bring Caledonia, Ireland, and the small islands, into similar subjection. The Oceanus was supposed to extend indefinitely westward, beyond the world, into the regions of Night and Chaos, and was not only dreaded for its stormy navigation, but from feelings of religious awe. The expedition to Britain was peculiar from being ultra-mundane, and an invasion of the ocean, so that "Oceanus Vincula rerum laxet et ingens Pateat tellus." For that reason only they called the Britons "penitus toto divisos orbe." "Britain (said the pseudo-Hegesippus) lying out of the world, was by the power of the Roman empire reduced into the world," cit. Camden. And the same is implied in another place of Seneca himself-- "Ille Britannos _Ultra noti_ _Littora ponti_, etc. Dare Romuleis Colla catenis Jussit." But the "Poemata Pithæana," reprinted in Camden, form the most lively commentary on the chorus of the Medea. They are likewise of the Claudian age, they relate to the conquest of Britain, and they are nothing but an expansion of that one idea, the trans-oceanic voyage and ultra-mundane conquest-- "Oceanus.... Qui finis mundo, non erit imperio. Oceanus mêdium venit imperium. At nunc Oceanus geminos interluit orbes, Pars est imperii, terminus ante fuit. Et jam Romano cingimur Oceano. Oceanus jam terga dedit, etc. Conjunctum est, quod _adhuc_ (i.e. _nunc_) orbis, et orbis erat," &c. The Chorus of Seneca has no more of prophecy, or sagacious conjecture, or other anticipation of the future, than Gray's "Bard," or the prophecy of Medea in Pindar's "Pythians," both of them fulfilled before the poet's time. Whatever may seem of a larger import, in Seneca's language, than events had fully justified, belongs to the obscure and lofty strain of remote vaticinations, or to the exaggerations of flattery. A. N.