The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical: A Cabinet for the CuriousStauffer, Frank H.
History
The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical: A Cabinet for the Curious
Stauffer, Frank H.
Literary curiosa
Mollis abuti, Moll is a beauty.
Has an acuti, Has an acute eye.
No lasso finis, No lass so fine is.
Molli divinis. Molly divine is.
Omi de armis tres, O my dear mistress.
Imi na dis tres, I'm in distress.
Cantu disco ver Can't you discover.
Meas alo ver? Me as a lover?
_Rhyming Charter._
The following grant of William the Conqueror may be found in Stowe's
_Chronicle_ and in Blount's _Ancient Tenures:_
HOPTON, IN THE COUNTY OF SALOP.
TO THE HEYRS MALE OF THE HOPTON, LAWFULLY BEGOTTEN.
From me and from myne, to thee and to thyne,
While the water runs, and the sun doth shine,
For lack of heyrs to the king againe,
I, William, King, the third year of my reign,
Give to the Norman hunter,
To me that art both line [A] and deare,
The Hop and the Hoptoune,
And all the bounds up and downe,
Under the earth to hell,
Above the earth to heaven,
From me and from myne,
To thee and to thyne;
As good and as faire
As ever they myne were.
To witness that this is sooth,[B]
I bite the white wax with my tooth,
Before Judd, Marode and Margery,
And my third son Henery,
For one bow, and one broad arrow,
When I come to hunt upon the Yarrow.
[A] Related, or by lineage.
[B] True.
_Accidental Rhymes._
In President Lincoln's last inaugural address occurs the following
instance of involuntary rhyme:—
"Fondly do we hope,
Fervently do we pray,
That this mighty scourge of war
May speedily pass away;
Yet, if it be God's will
That it continue until—"
And here the rhyme ceases. Cicero's prose shows, in places, similar
instances of involuntary rhyme.
_Cæsar's Wife must be above Suspicion._
No doubt this proverb originated from a passage in Suetonius, which says
that "the name of Pompeia, the wife of Julius Cæsar, having been mixed
up with an accusation against P. Clodius, her husband divorced her; not,
as he said, because he believed the charge against her, but because he
would have those belonging to him as free from suspicion as from crime."
_Oddly Addressed Letters._.
On one occasion a letter arrived by post in London, directed to
"Sromfridevi, Angleterre." No such person had ever been heard of; but,
on a little consideration, and judging from the sound, it was obvious
that the foreign writer of the letter meant Sir Humphrey Davy, and such
proved to be the case. Some years since there was returned to the French
Dead Letter Office a letter which had gone the round of every seaport in
the Levant, and the ambiguity of whose superscription had baffled a
legion of postmasters. It was addressed, "J. Dubois, Sultan Crete," and
was intended for J. Dubois _Surle_ Tancrede, a quartermaster on board of
the ship _Tancrede_. The name and address had been written just as they
had sounded to the ear. A letter addressed as follows arrived safely at
its destination:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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