"
"Aleek" for "alike," a common Devonianism. {304} Thus Peter Pindar
describes a turbulent crowd of people as being
"_Leek_ bullocks sting'd by apple-drones."
Is this bit of weather-wisdom current in other parts of the kingdom? I
am induced to ask the question, because Chaucer seems to have embodied
the proverb in some well-known lines, viz.:--
"Right as the Friday, sothly for to tell,
Now shineth it, and now it raineth fast,
Right so can gery Venus overcast
The hertes of hire folk, right as hire day
Is gerfull, right so changeth she aray.
_Selde is the Friday all the weke ylike_."
_The Knighte's Tale_, line 1536.
_Tyndale._--Can any of your readers inform me whether the translation of
the "_Enchiridion Militis Christiani Erasmi_," which Tyndale completed
in 1522, was ever printed?
J.M.B.
Totnes, Feb. 21. 1850.
* * * * *
LETTER ATTRIBUTED TO SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.
In Banks's _Dormant Peerage_, vol. iii. p. 61., under the account of
_Pulteney, Earl of Bath_, is the following extraordinary letter, said to
be from Sir Robert Walpole to King George II., which is introduced as
serving to show the discernment of Walpole, as well as the disposition
of the persons by whom he was opposed, but evidently to expose the
vanity and weakness of Mr. Pulteney, by exhibiting the scheme which was
to entrap him into the acceptance of a peerage, and so destroy his
popularity.
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