Ditto, ditto, (note _f_). "The poet." Ovid, _Ar. Am._, i. 655.
Essay V. ditto. "Bona rerum secundarum," &c. Does Bacon allude to Seneca (Ep. lxvi. p. 238., _ut sup._), where, after stating that "In æquo est moderatè gaudere, et moderatè dolere;" he adds, "Illa bona optabilia sunt, hæc mirabilia"?
Ditto, ditto. "Vere magnum habere," &c. Whence is this?
Ditto, ditto. "The strange fiction of the ancient poets." In note (_a_) we find "Stesichorus, Apollodorus, _and others_" named. Whereabouts?
Ditto, p. 11. (note _c_). "This fine passage has been quoted by Macaulay." _Ut sup._, p. 407.
Essay VI. p. 15. "Tacitus saith." _Ann._, v. 1.
Ditto, ditto. "And again, when Mucianus," &c. Ditto, _Hist._, ii. 76.
Ditto, ditto. "Which indeed are arts, &c., as Tacitus well calleth them." Where?
Ditto, p. 17. "It is a good shrewd proverb of the Spaniard." What is the proverb?
Essay VII. p. 19. "The precept, 'Optimum elige,' &c." Whence? though I am ashamed to ask.
Essay VIII. p. 20. "The generals." See Æsch. _Persæ_, 404. (Dindf.), and Blomfield _in loc._ (v. 411. ed. suæ).
Ditto, ditto. "It was said of Ulysses," &c. By whom? Compare _Od._, v. 218.
_Irish Superstitious Customs._--The following strange practices of the Irish are described in a MS. of the sixteenth century, and seem to have a Pagan origin:
"Upon Maie Eve they will drive their cattell upon their neighbour's corne, to eate the same up; they were wont to begin from the rast, and this principally upon the English churl. Onlesse they do so upon Maie daie, the witch hath power upon their cattell all the yere following."
The next paragraph observes that "they spitt in the face; Sir R. Shee spat in Ladie ---- face."
Spenser alludes to spitting on a person for luck, and I have experienced the ceremony myself.
_Charm for Warts._--I remember in Leicestershire seeing the following charm employed for removal of a number of warts on my brother, then a child about five years old. In the month of April or May he was taken to an ash-tree by a lady, who carried also a paper of fresh pins; one of these was first struck through the bark, and then pressed through the wart until it produced pain: it was then taken out and stuck into the tree. Each wart was thus treated, a separate pin being used for each. The warts certainly disappeared in about six weeks. I saw the same tree a year or two again, when it was very thickly studded over with old pins, each the index of a cured wart.