Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853

CORRECTIONS ADOPTED BY POPE FROM THE DUNCES

In Pope's "Letter to the Honourable James Craggs," dated June 15, 1711, after making some observations on Dennis's remarks on the Essay on Criticism, he says—

"Yet, to give this man his due, he has objected to one or two lines with reason; and I will alter them in case of another edition: I will make my enemy do me a kindness where he meant an injury, and so serve instead of a friend."

An interesting paper might be drawn up from the instances, for they are rather numerous, in which Pope followed out this very sensible rule. I do not remember seeing the following one noted. One of the heroes of the Dunciad, Thomas Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, was the editor of a periodical published in monthly numbers, in 8vo., of which nine only appeared, under the title of The Comedian, or Philosophical Inquirer, the first number being for April, and the last for December, 1732. It contains some curious matter, and amongst other papers is, in No. 2., "A Letter in Prose to Mr. Alexander Pope, occasioned by his Epistle in Verse to the Earl of Burlington." It is very abusive, and was most probably written either by Cooke or Theobald. After quoting the following lines as they then stood:

the letter-writer thus unceremoniously addresses himself to the author:

"Rarities! how could'st thou be so silly as not to be particular in the rarities of Sloane, as in those of the other five persons? What knowledge, what meaning is conveyed in the word rarities? Are not some drawings, some statues, some coins, all monkish manuscripts, and some books, rarities? Could'st thou not find a trisyllable to express some parts of nature for a collection of which that learned and worthy physician is eminent? Fy, fy! correct and write—

"Sir Hans Sloane is known to have the finest collection of butterflies in England, and perhaps in the world; and if rare monkish manuscripts are for Hearne only, how can rarities be for Sloane, unless thou specifyest what sort of rarities? O thou numskull!"—No. 2., pp. 15—16.

The correction was evidently an improvement, and therefore Pope wisely accepted the benefit, and was the channel through which it was conveyed; and the passage accordingly now stands as altered by the letter-writer.

NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS

Dare, to lurk, or cause to lurk; used both transitively and intransitively. Apparently the root of dark and dearn.

Tyrwhitt's utterly unwarranted adoption of Speght's interpretation is "Dare, v. Sax. to stare." The reader should always be cautious how he takes upon trust a glossarist's sly fetch to win a cheap repute for learning, and over-ride inquiry by the mysterious letters Sax. or Ang.-Sax. tacked on to his exposition of an obscure word. There is no such Saxon vocable as dare, to stare. Again, what more frequent blunder than to confound a secondary and derivative sense of a word with its radical and primary—indeed, sometimes to allow the former to usurp the precedence, and at length altogether oust the latter: hence it comes to pass, that we find dare is one while said to imply peeping and prying, another while trembling or crouching; moods and actions merely consequent or attendant upon the elementary signification of the word:

on which line that able, but therein mistaken editor's note is, "to dare, i. e. to be terrified, to tremble" (he however also adds, it means to lurk, to lie hid, and remits his reader to a note at p. 379., where some most pertinent examples of its true and only sense are given), to which add these next:

"Sothely it dareth hem weillynge this thing; that heuenes weren before," &c.

And again, a little further on:

"Forsothe yee moste dere, one thing dare you nougt (or be not unknowen): for one day anentis God as a thousande yeeris, and a thousande yeer as one day."—Cm 3m Petre 2., Wycliffe's translation:

in the Latin Vulgate, latet and lateat respectively; in the original, λανθάνει and λανθανέτω. Now the book is before me, I beg to furnish Mr. Collier with the references to his usage of terre, mentioned in Todd's Dictionary, but not given (Collier's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 65., note), namely, 6th cap. of Epistle to Ephesians, prop. init.; and 3rd of that to Colossians, prop. fin.

Die and live.—This hysteron proteron is by no means uncommon: its meaning is, of course, the same as live and die, i. e. subsist from the cradle to the grave:

All manner of whimsical and farfetched constructions have been put by the commentators upon this very homely sentence. As long as the question was, whether their wits should have licence to go a-woolgathering or no, one could feel no great concern to interfere: but it appears high time to come to Shakspeare's rescue, when Mr. Collier's "clever" old commentator, with some little variation in the letters, and not much less in the sense, reads "kills" for dies; but then, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 3., the same "clever" authority changes "cride-game (cride I ame), said I well?" into "curds and cream, said I well?"—an alteration certainly not at odds with the host's ensuing question, "said I well?" saving that that, to liquorish palate, might seem a rather superfluous inquiry.

"Behold how ready we are, how willingly the women of Sparta will die and live with their husbands."—The Pilgrimage of Kings and Princes, p. 29.

Except in Shakspeare's behalf, it would not have been worth while to exemplify so unambiguous a phrase. The like remark may also be extended to the next word that falls under consideration.

Kindly, in accordance with kind, viz. nature. Thus, the love of a parent for a child, or the converse, is kindly: one without natural affection (ἄστοργος) is unkind, kindless, as in—

Thence kindly expanded into its wider meaning of general benevolence. So under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions "genuinus," and by Mr. Boyer rightly translated "les fruits de la terre chaqu'un selon son espèce;" for which Pegge takes him to task, and interprets kindly "fair and good," through mistake or preference adopting the acquired and popular, in lieu of the radical and elementary meaning of the word. (Anonymiana, pp. 380—1. Century viii. No. lxxxi.) The conjunction of this adjective with gird in a passage of King Henry VI. has sorely gravelled Mr. Collier: twice over he essays, with equal success, to expound its purport. First, loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then that kindly is said ironically; because there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) Mr. Collier's note concludes with a supposition that gird may possibly be a misprint. This is the misery! Men will sooner suspect the text than their own understanding or researches. In Act I. Sc. 1. of Coriolanus, dissatisfied with his previous note, Mr. Collier tries again, and thinks a kindly gird may mean a gentle reproof. That the reader may be able to judge what it does mean, it will be necessary to quote the king's gird, who thus administers a kindly rebuke to the malicious preacher against the sin of malice, i.e. chastens him with his own rod:

A gird, akin to, in keeping with, fitting, proper to the cardinal's calling; an evangelical gird for an evangelical man: what more kindly? Kindly, connatural, homogeneous. But now for a bushel of examples, some of which will surely avail to insense the reader in the purport of this epithet, if my explanation does not:

"God in the congregation of the gods, what more proper and kindly"?—Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 212. Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.

"And that (pride) seems somewhat kindly too, and to agree with this disease (the plague). That pride which swells itself should end in a tumour or swelling, as, for the most part, this disease doth."—Id., p. 228.

"And so, you are found; and they, as the children of perdition should be, are lost. Here are you: and where are they? Gone to their own place, to Judas their brother. And, as is most kindly, the sons to the father of wickedness; there to be plagued with him for ever."—Id., vol. iv. p. 98.

"For whatsoever, as the Son of God, He may do, it is kindly for Him, as the Son of Man, to save the sons of men."—Id., p. 253.

"There cannot be a more kindly consequence than this, our not failing from their not failing: we do not, because they do not."—Id., p. 273.

"And here falls in kindly this day's design, and the visible 'per me,' that happened on it."—Id., p. 289.

"And having then made them, it is kindly that viscera misericordiæ should be over those opera that came de visceribus."—Id., p. 327.

"The children came to the birth, and the right and kindly copulative were; to the birth they came, and born they were: in a kind consequence who would look for other?"—Id., p. 348.

"For usque adeo proprium est operari Spiritui, ut nisi operetur, nec sit. So kindly (proprium) it is for the spirit to be working as if It work not, It is not."—Id., vol. iii. p. 194.

"And when he had overtaken, for those two are but presupposed, the more kindly to bring in επελάβετο, when, I say, He had overtaken them, cometh in fitly and properly επιλαμβάνεται."—Id., vol. i. p. 7.

"No time so kindly to preach de Filio hodie genito as hodie."—Id., p. 285.

"A day whereon, as it is most kindly preached, so it will be most kindly practised of all others."—Id., p. 301.

"Respice et plange: first, 'Look and lament' or mourn; which is indeed the most kindly and natural effect of such a spectacle."—Id., vol. ii. p. 130.

"Devotion is the most proper and most kindly work of holiness."—Id., vol. iv. p. 377.

Perhaps the following will be thought so apposite, that I may be spared the labour, and the reader the tedium of perusing a thousand other examples that might be cited:

And there is nothing more kindly than for them that will be touching, to be touched themselves, and to be touched home, in the same kind themselves thought to have touched others."—Id., vol. iv. p. 71.1

DEVONIANISMS

Miserable.—Miserable is very commonly used in Devonshire in the signification of miserly, with strange effect until one becomes used to it. Hooker the Judicious, a Devonshire man, uses the word in this sense in the Eccl. Polity, book v. ch. lxv. p. 21.:

"By means whereof it cometh also to pass that the mean which is virtue seemeth in the eyes of each extreme an extremity; the liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal miserable, and by the judgment of the miserable lavish."

Few.—Speaking of broth, people in Devon say a few broth in place of a little, or some broth. I find a similar use of the word in a sermon preached in 1550, by Thomas Lever, Fellow of St. John's College, preserved by Strype (in his Eccles. Mem., ii. 422.). Speaking of the poor students of Cambridge, he says:

"At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef among four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else."

Figs, Figgy.—Most commonly raisins are called figs, and plum-pudding figgy pudding. So with plum-cake, as in the following rhymes:—

Against is used like the classical adversùm, in the sense of towards or meeting. I have heard, both in Devonshire and in Ireland, the expression to send against, that is, to send to meet, a person, &c.

The foregoing words and expressions are probably provincialisms rather than Devonianisms, good old English forms of expression; as are, indeed, many of the so-called Hibernicisms.

Pilm, Farroll.—What is the derivation of pilm=dust, so frequently heard in Devon, and its derivatives, pilmy, dusty: it pilmeth? The cover of a book is there called the farroll; what is the derivation of this word?

Tunbridge Wells.

THE POEMS OF ROWLEY

The tests propounded by Mr. Keightley (Vol. vii. p. 160.) with reference to the authenticity of the poems of Rowley, namely the use of "its," and the absence of the feminine rhyme in e, furnish additional proof, if any were wanting, that Chatterton was the author of those extraordinary productions. Another test often insisted upon is the occurrence, in those poems, of borrowed thoughts—borrowed from poets of a date posterior to that of their pretended origin. Of this there is one instance which seems to have escaped the notice of Chatterton's numerous annotators. It occurs at the commencement of The Tournament, in the line,—

It will be seen that this line, a very remarkable one, has been cleverly condensed from the following passage in Pope's Windsor Forest:—

This sentiment has been repeated by other modern writers. Pope himself has it in the Essay on Man, in this form,—

It occurs in one of Pascal's Pensées:

"J'écrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-être dans une confusion sans dessein: C'est le véritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le désordre même."

Butler has it in the line,—

Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his Etudes de la Nature:

"C'est des contraires que résulte l'harmonie du monde."

And Burke, in nearly the same words, in his Reflections on the French Revolution:

"You had that action and counteraction, which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe."

Nor does the sentiment belong exclusively to the moderns. I find it in Horace's twelfth Epistle:

Lucan, I think, has the same expression in his Pharsalia; and it forms the basis of Longinus's remark on the eloquence of Demosthenes:

"Οὐκοῦν τὴν μὲν φύσιν τῶν ἐπαναφορῶν καὶ ἀσυνδέτων πάντῃ φυλάττει τῇ συνεχεῖ μεταβολῇ· οὑτως αὐτῷ καὶ ἡ τάξις ἄτακτον, καὶ ἔμπαλιν ἡ ἀταξια ποιὰν περιλαμβάνει τάξιν."

It may be said that, as Pope adopted the thought from Horace or Lucan, so a poet of the fifteenth century (such as the supposed Rowley) might have taken it from the same sources. But a comparison of the line in The Tournament with those in Windsor Forest will show that the borrowing embraces not only the thought, but the very words in which it is expressed.

St. Lucia.

FOLK LORE

Legend of Llangefelach Tower.—A different version of the legend also exists in the neighbourhood, viz. that the day's work on the tower being pulled down each night by the old gentleman, who was apparently apprehensive that the sound of the bells might keep away all evil spirits, a saint, of now forgotten name, told the people that if they would stand at the church door, and throw a stone, they would succeed in building the tower on the "spot where it fell," which accordingly came to pass.

Wedding Divination.—Being lately present on the occasion of a wedding at a town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, I was witness to the following custom, which seems to take rank as a genuine scrap of folk-lore. On the bride alighting from her carriage at her father's door, a plate covered with morsels of bride's cake was flung from a window of the second story upon the heads of the crowd congregated in the street below; and the divination, I was told, consists in observing the fate which attends its downfall. If it reach the ground in safety, without being broken, the omen is a most unfavourable one. If on the other hand, the plate be shattered to pieces (and the more the better), the auspices are looked upon as most happy.

SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE

Shakspearian Drawings.—I have very recently become possessed of some curious drawings by Hollar; those relating to Shakspeare very interesting, evidently done for one Captain John Eyre, who could himself handle the pencil well.

The inscription under one is as follows, in the writing of the said J. Eyre:

"Ye house in ye Clink Streete, Southwarke, now belonging to Master Ralph Hansome, and in ye which Master Shakspeare lodged in ye while he writed and played at ye Globe, and untill ye yeare 1600 it was at the time ye house of Grace Loveday. Will had ye two Rooms over against ye Doorway, as I will possibly show."

Size of the drawing, 12 × 7, "W. Hollar delin., 1643." It is an exterior view, beautifully executed, showing very prominently the house and a continuation of houses, forming one side of the street.

The second has the following inscription in the same hand:

"Ye portraiture of ye rooms in ye which Master Will Shakspeare lodged in Clink Streete, and which is told to us to be in ye same state as when left by himself, as stated over ye door in ye room, and on the walls were many printed verses, also a portraiture of Ben Jonson with a ruff on a pannel."

Size of the drawing 11⅝ × 6⅞, "W. Hollar delin., 1643:" shows the interior of three sides, and the floor and ceiling, with the tables, chairs, and reading-desk; an open door shows the interior of his sleeping-room, being over the entrance door porch.

The third—

"Ye Globe, as to be seen before ye Fire in ye year 1615, when this place was burnt down. This old building," &c.

Here follows a long interesting description. It is an exterior view; size of drawing 7¼ wide × 9⅞ high, "W. H. 1640."

The fourth shows the stage, on which are two actors: this drawing, 7⅞ × 6½, was done by J. Eyre, 1629, and on which he gives a curious description of his accompanying Prince Charles, &c.; at this time he belonged to the Court, as he also accompanied that prince to Spain.

The fifth, done by the same hand in a most masterly manner, pen and ink portrait of Shakspeare, copied, as he writes, from a portrait belonging to the Earl of Essex, with interesting manuscript notice.

The sixth, done also by J. Eyre:

"Ye portraiture of one Master Ben Jonson, as on ye walls of Master Will Shakspeare's rooms in Clinke Streete, Southwarke."—J. E. 1643.

The first three, in justice to Hollar, independent of the admirers of the immortal bard and lovers of antiquities, should be engraved as "Facsimiles of the Drawings." This shall be done on my receiving the names of sixty subscribers, the amount of subscription one guinea, for which each subscriber will receive three engravings, to be paid for when delivered.

P. S.—These curious drawings may be seen at No. 1. Osnaburgh Place, New Road.

Thomas Shakspeare.—From a close examination of the documents referred to (as bearing the signature of Thomas Shakspeare) in my last communication to "N. & Q.," Vol. vii., p. 405.), and from the nature of the transaction to which they relate, my impression is, that he was by profession a money scrivener in the town of Lutterworth; a circumstance which may possibly tend to the discovery of his family connexion (if any existed) with William Shakspeare.

Passage in Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.—

In Mr. Payne Collier's Notes and Emendations, p. 407., we are informed that the old corrector substitutes blankness for blanket. The change is to me so exceedingly bad, even if made on some sort of authority (as an extinct 4to.), that I should have let it be its own executioner, had not Mr. Collier apparently given in his adhesion to it. I now beg to offer a few obvious reasons why blanket is unquestionably Shakspeare's word.

In the Rape of Lucrece, Stanza cxv., we have a passage very nearly parallel with that in Macbeth:

In Lucrece, the cloak of night is invoked to screen a deed of adultery; in Macbeth the blanket of night is invoked to hide a murder: but the foul, reeking, smoky cloak of night, in the passage just quoted, is clearly parallel with the smoky blanket of night in Macbeth. The complete imagery of both passages has been happily caught by Carlyle (Sartor Resartus, 1841, p. 23.), who, in describing night, makes Teufelsdröckh say: