form of a mule, and a monk, who was his rider. B. H. C., at p. 521. of the same volume, sends a passage from the Dictionnaire Littéraire, giving the complete distich:

and attributing it to the devil, but without supplying any more authentic parentage for the lines. The following Note will contribute a fact or two to the investigation of the subject; but I shall be obliged to conclude by reiterating the original Query of Bœoticus, Who was the real author of the lines?

In a little work entitled A Summer in Brittany, published by me in 1840, may be found (at p. 99. of vol. i.) a legend, which relates how one Jean Patye, canon of Cambremer, in the chapter of Bayeux, rode the devil to Rome, for the purpose of there chanting the epistle at the midnight mass at Christmas, according to the tenor of an ancient bond, which obliged the chapter to send one of their number yearly to Rome for that purpose. This story I met with in a little volume, entitled Contes populaires, Préjugés, Patois, Proverbes de l'Arrondissement de Bayeux, recueillis et publiés, par F. Pluquet, the frontispiece of which consists of a sufficiently graphic representation of the worthy canon's feat. Pluquet concludes his narrative by stating that—

"Etienne Tabourot dans ses Bigarrures, publiées sous le nom du Seigneur des Accords, rapporte que c'est à Saint Antide que le diable, qui le portait à Rome sur son dos, adresse le distique latin dont il est question ci-dessus."

It should seem that this trick of carrying people to Rome was attributed to the devil, by those conversant with his habits, in other centuries besides the nineteenth.

I have not here the means of looking at the work to which Pluquet refers; but if any of your correspondents, who live in more bookish lands than this, will do so, they may perchance obtain some clue to the original authorship of the lines; for in Sidonius Apollinaris I cannot find them. The only edition of his works to which I have the means of referring is the quarto of Adrien Perrier, Paris, 1609. Among the verses contained in that volume, I think I can assert that the lines in question are not. We all know that the worthy author of the Curiosities of Literature cannot be much depended upon for accuracy.

Once again, then, Who was the author of this specimen, perhaps the most perfect extant, of palindromic absurdity?

T. A. T.

Florence.

CHILDREN CRYING AT THEIR BIRTH.

"When I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do."—Wisd. vii. 3.

For the benefit of the lady-readers of "N. & Q." I subjoin a translation of these beautiful lines of Lucretius:

"The infant, as soon as Nature with great pangs of travail hath sent it forth from the womb of its mother into the regions of light, lies, like a sailor cast out from the waves, naked upon the earth in utter want and helplessness; and fills every place around with mournful wailings and piteous lamentation, as is natural for one who has so many ills of life in store for him, so many evils which he must pass through and suffer."

"Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? 'For in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth.' (Job xxv. 4.) Who remindeth me? Doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself I remember not? What then was my sin? Was it that I hung upon the breast and cried?"—St. Austin, Confess., lib. i. 7.

"For man's sake it should seeme that Nature made and produced all other creatures besides; though this great favour of hers, so bountifull and beneficiall in that respect, hath cost them full deere. Insomuch as it is hard to judge, whether in so doing she hath done the part of a kind mother, or a hard and cruell stepdame. For first and foremost, of all other living creatures, man she hath brought forth all naked, and cloathed him with the good and riches of others. To all the rest she hath given sufficient to clad them everie

one according to their kind; as namely shells, cods, hard hides, prickes, shagge, bristles, haire, downe, feathers, quils, skailes, and fleeces of wool. The verie trunkes and stemmes of trees and plants, shee hath defended with bark and rind, yea, and the same sometime double against the injuries both of heat and cold: man alone, poore wretch, she hath laid all naked upon the bare earth, even on his birth-day, to cry and wraule presently from the very first houre that he is borne into this world: in suche sort as, among so many living creatures, there is none subject to shed teares and weepe like him. And verily to no babe or infant is it given once to laugh before he be fortie daies old, and that is counted verie early and with the soonest.... The child of man thus untowardly borne, and who another day is to rule and command all other, loe how he lyeth bound hand and foot, weeping and crying, and beginning his life with miserie, as if he were to make amends and satisfaction by his punishment unto Nature, for this onely fault and trespass, that he is borne alive."—Plinie's Naturall Historie, by Phil. Holland, Lond. 1601, fol., intr. to b. vii.

The following queries are extracted from Sir Thomas Browne's "Common-place Books," Aristotle, Lib. Animal.:

"Whether till after forty days children, though they cry, weep not; or, as Scaliger expresseth it, 'Vagiunt sed oculis siccis.'

"Whether they laugh not upon tickling?

"Why, though some children have been heard to cry in the womb, yet so few cry at their birth, though their heads be out of the womb?"—Bohn's ed. iii. 358.

Thompson follows Pliny, and says that man is "taught alone to weep" ("Spring," 350.); but—not to speak of the

as Spenser sings—the camel weeps when over-loaded, and the deer when chased sobs piteously. Thompson himself in a passage he has stolen from Shakspeare, makes the stag weep:

"Steller relates this of the Phoca Ursina, Pallas of the camel, and Humboldt of a small American monkey."—Laurence On Man, Lond. 1844, p. 161.

Risibility, and a