PECKFORTON AND HORSLEY BATH.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.'i SIR,—The questions contained in the letter on "Classical Quotations" in the Spectator of August 8th tempt me to ask a similar question about an inscription in the home of my boyhood. Inhabitant; of Cheshire are familiar with the sight of the two castles pn hill-tops, the. old and the new castle which confront one another as if in anger, and which some- how recall to me the Cloughiau hexameter, "Utter, 0 some one, the word that shall reconcile ancient and modern ! " The modern castle, as perfect in its way as such an anachron- ism can be, was built by my father on one of the Peckforton hills. It stands about a mile and a half from two points which together are said to command, on a clear day, a view of twelve or thirteen counties. On a neighbouring bill is seen the grand historic ruin of Beeston, rivalling the new castle in beauty, and far surpassing it in interest. At the foot of the Peckforton hill rises—literally sub tegmine fagi—a picturesque spring which goes by the name of Horsley Bath. The so-called " bath " supplies the house with excellent water. Indeed, a Cheshire doctor once told my father that he and some medical friends, after careful analysis, found the water of that spring to be the purest in England, not excepting the water of Malvern. Of course this judgment is not to be taken for gospel. Nor, indeed, should I rely implicitly on the inscription with which I am now concerned, and which bears date, I think, some time in the seventeenth century :—
" Obstructum reserat, durum tent, humida siccat, Debile fortific.at, si tamen arts bibis."
As a boy, I was puzzled to make out how water could "dry up what is moist." But that once famous scholar, the Rev. W. E. Jell, explained to me that humida must here mean "humours"; and, indeed, it is plain that the hexameter altogether refers to bodily ailments. It thus appears that the advertising couplet might have been written in praise of any spring of pure water. Can any reader tell me if he has come across it elsewhere? Writing thus about the home of my youth, I cannot help adding that, as the venerable Bishop Durnford assured me, Bishop Heber, when first he caught a distant view of the Himalayas, was reminded of the Peckforton hills. A strange comparison certainly! But it will be remembered that an odd likeness between a small thing and a very big thing is the more striking by reason of the incongruity. To which it should be added that Heber, when he thought of the com- parison, saw the great Indian range, as Tennyson might have said, foreshortened in the tract of space; and also that, being himself a Cheshire man, he may have been biassed on the side of his native county (remembering, as it were, or imagining, par-ram Trojam, simulatague magnis Pergama).—I am, Sir,
LioNEL A. TOLLEMACHE.
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