Chapter Amreet to Anacreon Moore of A by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Anacharsis [Clootz]. Baron Jean Baptiste Clootz assumed the prenome of Anacharsis, from the Scythian so called, who travelled about Greece and other countries to gather knowledge and improve his own countrymen. The baron wished by the name to intimate that his own object in life was like that of Anacharsis (1755–1794).

He assumed the name of “Anacharsis” in his travels, before Barthélemy had published his book.

Anachronisms. (See Errors.)

Chaucer, in his tale of Troylus, at the siege of Troy, makes Pandarus refer to Robin Hood.

And to himselfe ful soberly he saied,
From hasellwood there jolly Robin plaied.
   —Book v.

He also makes Chryseyde talk of reading the “lives of the saints,” and rejoicing that she is not a man.

In the House of Fame, Orion the giant is mistaken for Arion the musician.

Cicero (Holden’s edition, De Officiis, p. 15 note). Demosthenes is said to have given up oratory at the instigation of Socratês. Socrates lived B.C. 460-391; Demosthênes, 383-322.

Giles Fletcher, in Christ’s Victory, pt. ii., makes the Tempter seem to be “a good old hermit or palmer, travelling to see some saint, and telling his beads!!”

Lodge, in The True Tragedies of Marius and Sylla (1594), mentions “the razor of Palermo” and “St. Paul’s steeple,” and introduces Frenchmen who “for forty crowns” undertake to poison the Roman consul.

Morglay makes Dido tell Æneas that she should have been contented with a son, even “if he had been a cockney dandiprat” (1582).

Schiller, in his Piccolomini, speaks of lightning conductors. This was at least 150 years before they were invented.

Shakespeare, in his Coriolanus (act ii. sc. I), makes Menenius refer to Galen above 600 years before he was born.

Cominius alludes to Roman plays, but no such things were known for 250 years after the death of Cominius.—Coriolanus, act ii. sc. 2.

Brutus refers to the “Marcian waters brought to Rome by Censorinus.” This was not done till 300 years afterwards.

In Hamlet, the prince Hamlet was educated at Wittemberg School, which was not founded till 1502; whereas Saxo-Germanicus, from whom Shakespeare borrowed the tale, died in 1204. Hamlet was 30 years old when his mother talks of his going back to school (act i. sc. 2).

In I Henry IV. the carrier complains that “the turkeys in his pannier are quite starved” (act ii. sc. 5), whereas turkeys came from America, and the New World was not even discovered for a century later. Again in Henry V. Gower is made to say to Fluellen, “Here comes Pistol, swelling like a turkey-cock” (act v. sc. I).

In Julius Cæsar, Brutus says to Cassius, “Peace, count the clock.” To which Cassius replies, “The clock has stricken three.” Clocks were not known to the Romans, and striking-clocks were not invented till some 1400 years after the death of Cæsar.

Virgil places Æneas in the port Velinus, which was made by Curius Dentatus.