Chapter & Verse

Dorothy Richardson reports that in William Dunlap's 1828 farce A Trip to Niagara, the character Job Jerryson (a black waiter who claims to manage a black acting company, the Shakespeare Club) says at one point, "As I told Miss Diana Dingy, 'The service of the fair sex is my delight.'" Richardson would like further information on "Diana Dingy" and asks whether Jerryson is quoting another source.

 

David Olson requests information on the origin and earliest uses of "Sleep the sleep of the just." Burton Stevenson's Home Book of Quotations (sixth edition) offers "She slept the sleep of the just" (Elle s'endormit du sommeil des justes) from Racine's Abrégé de l'his toire de Port Royal (vol. iv, l. 517); can readers supply other sources?

 

Graham Owen would like to learn the identity of the "ancient philosopher" alleged to have said, on seeing a human corpse, "See the shell of the flown bird." That anecdote appears in William Wordsworth's "Essay upon Epitaphs," which the poet included in notes to "The Pastor," the fifth book of his long didactic poem The Excursion.

 

"map...more real than...land" (September-October 2004). David Olson identified D.H. Lawrence's "Study of Thomas Hardy" as the source of "Like Clym [Yeo bright], the map appears to us more real than the land." The essay appears in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence, edited by Edward D. Mc Donald (1936); the quotation is on page 420.

 

"lost on a Ferris wheel" (November-December 2004). Martha Bennett Stiles recognized William Peden's "Night in Funland," first published in New Mexico Quarterly 29, no. 4 (Winter 1959-60), on pages 395 through 402.

 

Send inquiries and answers to "Chapter and Verse," Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138.

 

 

You might also like

President Garber’s Agenda

Focusing on Harvard’s academic opportunities and frontiers

“Building Bridges” Across Disagreements

Harvard establishes a fund for student projects that create community.

Football: Harvard 45-Princeton 13

The Crimson emphatically snaps a six-game losing streak to the Tigers

Most popular

The End of the Ivy League?

College sports are changing. Will Harvard athletics?

President Garber’s Agenda

Focusing on Harvard’s academic opportunities and frontiers

Home Unaffordable Home

America’s housing problem—and what to do about it

More to explore

America's Housing Problem—Explained

America’s housing problem—and what to do about it

How Does the Brain Interpret Language in Real-Time?

New research on how the brain uses sounds to form words and create meaning.

Ecological Edges: Darren Sears’s Watercolor Landscapes

The surreal, artistic cartography of Darren Sears