MS Bodleian Library, Oxford: MS Eng. Lett d.418.ff 152-1531
My dear Mr Coxe,
Many, many thanks for those saints, who were just what I wanted.2 Only would you further add to the kindness by telling me, what ‘Surius’ means. I must quote the authority for that out of the way kind of thing, and I don’t sufficiently understand what this means to put it down.
Were the Maura and Timothy of the Thebaid crucified? I want to know because Kingsley has a poem called Sta Maura on that subject, the wife’s discourse all night as they hang, & people have supposed it an invention because she is not the same as the Roman Maura – so I ought to mention it.3
If you have Capgrave’s Irish Saints, please tell me who St Ronan Finn was.4 He is most likely to be there. Also who published your modern ed of the 4 Masters
Here’s a much worse question- G. Costard, in 1758 published an improved ed of the Halley’s ed of the latin translation of the Alexandrian philosopher Menelaus’s translation of the treatise of the Sphere.5 If you have it, could you find for me Menelaus’s definition of the nadir. I want to know if he describes it ‘as a right line subtending the double of an arc’- as at very second hand I hear he does, and whether he then applies it to the point below one’s feet. I should also be glad to know what the word is in arabic, and what it properly meant then, if it is in any Arab lexicon.
I have been drawn in to help in the M S of the philosophical dictionary6 which is the reason of this huge plunge below my depth – There is no hurry at all about the nadir, but ‘Surius’ I should be glad to have explained because I am using the extract –
I am sorry to be so troublesome. I wish I could get at that study once a week!
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge