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from making , unintentionally , either in public or in private , mistakes calculated to mislead . Dr . Gumming , in a lecture which he delivered recently at Brighton , read the following lines , copied by a friend of his from an old book of the fifteenth century , in the possession of a gentleman at Chard , in Somersetshire : —
In twice 200 years the Bear The Crescent will assail , But if the Code and Bull unite The Bear shall not prevail . But mark , in twice ten years , again , Let Islam know and fear , TJie Cross sJiall stand , the Crescent wane , Dissolve and disappear .
We do not doubt that very many of our readers have seen these verses before , as they went , about a year ago , the round of the newspapers . They are somewhat in the style of the famous ballad of Chevy Chase , and may be written , for aught we know , in half illegible ink ; or , at all events , they must be printed in a very rude way , as printing was only introduced into England in the fifteenth century . The
first book ever printed m England being the " Game of Chess , issued from Caxton ' s press , in Westminster Abbey , in 1474 . Unfortunately , however , the term John Bull , as applied to the English nation , is said to be no older than the time of Queen Anne , and if it had been an old word , we should surely meet with it in Shakespeare ,
whose vocabulary of words was so very extensive . The following lines , which refer to the term John Bull , appear in the second volume of Mrs . Markham's " History of England " ( p . 243)—" I am told that this name cannot be traced beyond Queen Anne ' s time , when an ingenious satire , entitled the History of John Bull , ' was written by the celebrated Dr . Arbuthnot , the friend of Swift . The object of this satire was to throw ridicule on the politics of the Spanish succession . "
In . the " Gentleman ' s Magazine , " for March 1811 ( p . 219 ) , we find a fragment of a letter which bears on this point , and wherein the writer thinks it " matter of surprise , that James Hall should have to inquire the origin of the appellative John Hull , and how it came to be affixed to the English character . That the ingenious author of the Tale of a Tub' was led to use it from some appropriate quality I cannot doubt , but I do not believe it was ever in common use till that time . "
If these authorities are trustworthy , and we believe them to be so , these lines are a " cock-and-bull story , " in other words , the composition of some Chattertonian genius , a skilful literary forgery . But the lines are interesting , inasmuch as they suggest the
queries" What was the old nickname for England ? " And " When did Erance receive the name of Cock ? " It would not be hard to prove that the Lion was our old emblem , and this device was placed , with a Cock , on Blenheim House , by Sir John V anbrugh , the architect . The emblem Cock , as applied to Erance , is doubtless as ancient as the
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Untitled Article
from making , unintentionally , either in public or in private , mistakes calculated to mislead . Dr . Gumming , in a lecture which he delivered recently at Brighton , read the following lines , copied by a friend of his from an old book of the fifteenth century , in the possession of a gentleman at Chard , in Somersetshire : —
In twice 200 years the Bear The Crescent will assail , But if the Code and Bull unite The Bear shall not prevail . But mark , in twice ten years , again , Let Islam know and fear , TJie Cross sJiall stand , the Crescent wane , Dissolve and disappear .
We do not doubt that very many of our readers have seen these verses before , as they went , about a year ago , the round of the newspapers . They are somewhat in the style of the famous ballad of Chevy Chase , and may be written , for aught we know , in half illegible ink ; or , at all events , they must be printed in a very rude way , as printing was only introduced into England in the fifteenth century . The
first book ever printed m England being the " Game of Chess , issued from Caxton ' s press , in Westminster Abbey , in 1474 . Unfortunately , however , the term John Bull , as applied to the English nation , is said to be no older than the time of Queen Anne , and if it had been an old word , we should surely meet with it in Shakespeare ,
whose vocabulary of words was so very extensive . The following lines , which refer to the term John Bull , appear in the second volume of Mrs . Markham's " History of England " ( p . 243)—" I am told that this name cannot be traced beyond Queen Anne ' s time , when an ingenious satire , entitled the History of John Bull , ' was written by the celebrated Dr . Arbuthnot , the friend of Swift . The object of this satire was to throw ridicule on the politics of the Spanish succession . "
In . the " Gentleman ' s Magazine , " for March 1811 ( p . 219 ) , we find a fragment of a letter which bears on this point , and wherein the writer thinks it " matter of surprise , that James Hall should have to inquire the origin of the appellative John Hull , and how it came to be affixed to the English character . That the ingenious author of the Tale of a Tub' was led to use it from some appropriate quality I cannot doubt , but I do not believe it was ever in common use till that time . "
If these authorities are trustworthy , and we believe them to be so , these lines are a " cock-and-bull story , " in other words , the composition of some Chattertonian genius , a skilful literary forgery . But the lines are interesting , inasmuch as they suggest the
queries" What was the old nickname for England ? " And " When did Erance receive the name of Cock ? " It would not be hard to prove that the Lion was our old emblem , and this device was placed , with a Cock , on Blenheim House , by Sir John V anbrugh , the architect . The emblem Cock , as applied to Erance , is doubtless as ancient as the