Queries.

PASSAGES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT ILLUSTRATED FROM DEMOSTHENES.

Acts xvii. 21.:

"For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing."

Can any of your biblical correspondents inform me in what commentary upon the New Testament the coincidence with the following passages in Demosthenes is noticed, or whether any other source of the historical fact has been recorded? In the translation of Petrus Lagnerius, Franc. 1610 (I have not at hand the entire works), we find these words:

"Nihil est omnium, Athenienses, in præsentiâ nocentius, quam quod vos alienati estis a rebus, et tantisper operam datis, dum audientes sedetis, si quid Novi nuntiatum fuerit" (4. contr. Phil.).

Again:

"Nos vero, dicetur verum, nihil facientes, hic perpetuo sedemus cunctabundi, tum decernentes, tum interrogantes, si quid Novi in foro dicatur."—4 Orat. ad Philipp. Epist.

Pricæus, in his very learned and valuable Commentarii in varios N.T. Libros, Lond. 1660, fol., at p. 628, in v. 21., says only—

"Videantur quæ ex Demosthene, Plutarcho, aliis, Eruditi annotarunt."

Matthew xiii. 14.:

"And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive."

This proverb seems to have been common to all ages and countries. It is of frequent occurrence in the New Testament (Mark iv. 12.; viii. 18.; John xii. 40.; Acts xxviii. 25.; Romans xi. 8.), and, as in Matthew, is referred to Isaiah. But, in the Old Testament, there is earlier authority for its use in Deuteronomy xxix. 4. It occurs also in Jeremiah v. 21.; in Ezekiel xii. 2., and, with a somewhat different application, in the Psalms, cxv. 5.; cxxxv. 16.

That it was employed as an established proverb by Demosthenes seems to have been generally overlooked. He says:

"Οἱ μὲν οὕτως ὁρῶντες τὰ τῶν ἠτυχηκότων ἔργα, ὥστε τὸτῆς παροιμίας, ὁρῶντες μὴ ὁρᾶν, καὶ ἀκούοντας μὴ ἀκούειν. (Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος, A Taylor, Cantab. vol. ii. pp. 494-5.)

It is quoted, however, by Pricæus (p. 97.), who also supplies exactly corresponding passages from Maximus Tyrius (A.D. 190), Plutarch (A.D. 107-20), and Philo (A.D. 41). Of these, the last only can have been prior to the publication of St. Matthew's Gospel, which Saxius places, at the earliest, in the reign of Claudius.

Hugo Grotius has no reference to Demosthenes in his Annotationes in Vet. Test., Vogel & Doderein, 1776; but cites Heraclitus the Ephesian, who, according to Saxius, flourished in the year 502 B.C., and Aristides, who, on the same authority, lived in the 126th year of the Christian era. Has any other commentator besides Pricæus alluded to the passage in Demosthenes?

C. H. P.

Brighton, April 21.

THE HOUSE OF MAILLÉ.

The house of Maillé (vide Lord Mahon's Life of Condé) contributed to the Crusades one of its bravest champions. Can any of your numerous contributors give me information as to the name and achievements of the Crusader?

Claire Clémence de Maillé, daughter of the Maréchal Duke de Brezé, and niece of Richelieu, was married in 1641 to the Duc d'Enghien, afterwards the Great Condé; and Lord Mahon, somewhere in his life of the hero, makes mention of the princess as the "last of her family."

Claire Clémence had an only brother, who held the exalted post of High Admiral of France, and in 1646 he commanded a French fleet which disembarked 8000 men in the marshes of Sienna, and himself shortly afterwards fell at the siege of Orbitello. The admiral having died unmarried, the Brezé estates became the property of the princess, who transmitted them to her descendants, the last of whom was the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien, who perished at Vincennes.

Thus much is patent; but I think it probable his lordship was not aware that a branch of the family was exiled, and with the La Touches, La Bertouches, &c., settled in the sister kingdom, most likely at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Their descendants subsequently passed over into this country, and have contributed to the lists of the legal and medical professions. Up to the present century a gentleman bearing the slightly altered name of Mallié held a commission in the British army. Even now, the family is not extinct, and the writer being lately on a visit to a lady, probably the sole representative in name of this once powerful house, noticed in her possession a series of four small engravings, representing the Great Condé; his mother, a princess of Montmorency, pronounced to be the "handsomest woman in Europe;" the old Maréchal de Maillé Brezé; and his daughter, Claire Clémence.

Our Pall Mall is, I believe, derived from Pailée Maillé, a game somewhat analogous to cricket, and imported from France in the reign of the second Charles: it was formerly played in St. James's Park, and in the exercise of the sport a small hammer or mallet was used to strike the ball. I think it worth noting that the Mallié crest is a mailed arm and hand, the latter grasping a mallet.

Be it understood that the writer has no pretensions to a knowledge of heraldic terms and devices; so, without pinning any argument on the coincidence, he thought it not without interest. He is aware that the mere fact of a similarity between surnames and crests is not without its parallel in English families.

A New Subscriber.

Birmingham, April 22. 1851.