As the question is an interesting one, I conclude by asking, through the medium of the “NOTES AND QUERIES,” if a belief in this power of prophesy before death be known to exist at the present day?

AUGUSTUS GUEST.

London, July 8.

[Footnote 1:  For the assistance of the general reader, I have introduced hasty translations of the several passages quoted.]

[Footnote 2:  (And I moreover tell you, and do you meditate well upon it, that) you yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you,—­about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, the irreproachable son of Oacus.]

[Footnote 3:  Consider now whether I may not be to you the cause of divine anger, in that day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo shall slay you, albeit so mighty, at the Scaean gate.]

[Footnote 4:  Wherefore I have an earnest desire to prophesy to you who have condemned me; for I am already arrived at that stage of my existence in which, especially, men utter prophetic sayings, that is, when they are about to die.]

[Footnote 5:  That time, indeed, the soul of man appears to be in a manner divine, for to a certain extent it foresees things which are about to happen.]

[Footnote 6:  Pythagoras the Samian, and some others of the ancient philosophers, showed that the souls of men were immortal, and that, when they were on the point of separating from the body, they possessed a knowledge of futurity.]

[Footnote 7:  The soul, says Aristotle, when on the point of taking its departure from the body, foretells and prophesies things about to happen.]

* * * * *

Divination at Marriages.—­The following practices are very prevalent at marriages in these districts; and as I do not find them noticed by Brand in the last edition of his Popular Antiquities, they may perhaps be thought worthy a place in the “NOTES AND QUERIES.”

1.  Put a wedding ring into the posset, and after serving it out, the unmarried person whose cup contains the ring will be the first of the company to be married.

2.  Make a common flat cake of flour, water, currants, &c., and put therein a wedding ring and a sixpence.  When the company is about to retire on the wedding-day, the cake must be broken and distributed amongst the unmarried females.  She who gets the ring in her portion of the cake will shortly be married, and the one who gets the sixpence will die an old maid.

T.T.W.

Burnley, July 9. 1850.

* * * * *

FRANCIS LENTON THE POET.

In a MS. obituary of the seventeenth century, preserved at Staunton Hall, Leicestershire, I found the following:—­

    “May 12. 1642.  This day died Francis Lenton, of Lincoln’s Inn,
    Gent.”