ther than a giant himself.' I may likely add, alter, and see
farther than my predecessors; and it is no greater prejudice for me to
indite after others, than for AElianus Montaltus, that famous physician,
to write _De Morbis Capitis_, after Jason Pratensis," &c.

The pagination (that of Tegg's edition, 1849) will not guide those who with
Elia sicken at the profanity of "unearthing the bones of that fantastic old
great man," and know not a "sight more heartless" than the reprint of his
_Opus_.

SIGMA.

Sunderland.

[Footnote 2: In _Luc._ 10. tom. ii.: "Pigmi gigantum humeris impositi
plusquam ipsi gigantes vident."--_Preface_, p. 8.]

_Dr. South_ v. _Goldsmith, Talleyrand, &c._ (Vol. vi., p. 575. Vol. vii.,
p. 311.).--One authority has been overlooked by MR. BREEN, which seems as
likely as any to have given currency to the saying, viz. Dean Swift. In
_Gulliver's Travels_ (1727), Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, the hero gives the
king some information respecting British ministers of state, which I
apprehend in Swift's day was no exaggeration. The minister, Gulliver says,
"applies his words to all uses except to the indication of his mind." It
must be confessed, however, that this authority is some seven years after
Dr. South.

C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.

Birmingham.

_Foucault's Experiment_ (Vol. vii., p. 330.).--The reality of the rotation,
and the cause assigned to it by Foucault in his experiment, is now admitted
without question by scientific men. But in measuring the amount of the
motion of the pendulum, so many disturbing causes were found to be at work,
that the numerical results have not been obtained as yet with exactness.
The best account is, perhaps, the original one in the _Comptes Rendus_. Mr.
Foucault has lately invented an instrument founded on a similar principle,
to find the latitude of a place.

ELSNO.

_Passage in "Locksley Hall"_ (Vol. vi., p. 272.; Vol. vii., pp. 25.
146.).--Of these three commentators neither appears to me to have hit
Tennyson's meaning, though CORYLUS has made the nearest shot. I ought to
set out by confessing that it was not originally clear to myself, but that
I could not for a monument doubt, when the following explanation was
suggested to me by a friend. The "curlews" themselves are the "dreary
gleams:" the words are what the Latin Grammar calls "duo substantiva
ejusdem rei." I take the meaning, in plain prose to be this: "The curlews
are uttering their peculiar cr