Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/204

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NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. x. AUG. 29, im.

Duke to be seized and tried, found guilty,
 * and sentenced to be shot. The sentence

-was immediately executed. " And," said he,

"the same fate would have followed had it been Louis the Eighteenth, for I again declare that I found it necessary to roll the thunder back on the metro- polis of England, as from thence, with the Count d'Artois at their head, did the assassins assail me."

Mr. Warden replied that he did not believe that any person would be found in England who would attempt to justify the precipitate manner in which the young prince was seized, tried, sentenced, and shot. The Emperor replied that he was justified in his -own mind ; at the same time he solemnly .affirmed that no message or letter from the Duke reached him after the sentence of death had been passed.

Talleyrand, however, was said to be in possession of a letter from the royal prisoner .addressed to Napoleon. Mr. Warden saw .a copy of this letter in the hands of Las Cases. The object of the letter was to beg the writer's life. In it he stated that in his opinion the Bourbon dynasty was terminated, that the crown was no longer in his view, and he requested to be allowed to live and devote his life and services to France, merely as a native of it. Talleyrand took care not to deliver it till the hand that wrote it was unnerved by death.

The remainder of the volume is made up of various interesting conversations with Napoleon, mainly on the subject of health .and disease, until the departure of our surgeon from the island.

The Newcastle and Orontes were seen from the heights of St. Helena on the morn- ing of June 19th, and Warden's delight could not easily be expressed. He bent his steps to Long wood, where he arrived about ten in the morning, and Napoleon requested him to breakfast with him.

"On my appearing he said, 'You are come to take leave of us ? ' 'I am come up, General, with that intention.' ' You will breakfast, then,' point- ing to a chair. ' Have you had letters from your friends?' ' No, sir, the ships cannot reach the bay before evening.' 'Is the Admiral known?' 'Yes, he is Admiral Malcom.' ' Are you glad to return to England ? ' ' Very glad indeed.' " A long conversation followed on various subjects, mostly with reference to what the English press had said about Napoleon. 'This was the last visit Warden paid to the Emperor, and when he took leave of him, Napoleon rose from his chair and said : " I wish you health and happiness, and a safe voyage to your country, where I hope you will find your friends in health and ready to receive you." EDWARD MARSTON.

SHAKESPEARIAN A.

' 2 HENRY IV.,' I. ii. 45." Falstaff. And if a man is through with them in honest taking-up, then they must stand upon security." A. Schmidt in his ' Shake- speare Lexicon' explains this passage, s.v. " through," as follows : " if a man does his utmost in borrowing, or rather if a man condescends to borrow, in an honourable manner." But these are two different explanations in one breath, and the rather shows the commentator's embarrassment. Deighton, in his edition of the play, has : " through, i.e. thorough .(which Pope sub- stituted), downright, not standing upon petty economies"; but I fail to see how a borrower can be economical, pettily or other- wise. G. KRUEGER. Berlin.

GENTLE." In illustration of Juliet's ex- clamation,
 * ROMEO AND JULIET,' II. ii. : " TASSEL-

O, for a falconer's voice .To lure this tassel-gentle back again !

there may be quoted the entry in the records of the dissolved Corporation of Orford (Suffolk) under date 27 Jan., 1606, noting that a " tassell jentle " of Sir Anthony Felton, Kt., had been lost on 14 January, and been cried by the Crier (Historical MSS. Commission, ' Report on MSS. in Various Collections,' vol. iv. p. 267).

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

' MACBETH,' II. iii. 5. I see, in the foot- note on this passage in the ' Cambridge Shakespeare,' that an anonymous critic has suggested that we should read " Come in, farmer," instead of " Come in time," and, as this is the style in which Shakespeare makes the Porter address the next two comers to hell-gate, saying to the equivo- cator, " Come in, equivocator," and to the tailor, " Come in, tailor," we should certainly have expected him to say to the farmer also, "Come in, farmer" ; but to suppose that a transcriber, who had no difficulty whatever in setting down the very common word farmer" on its first occurrence in the text, should, on its reappearance imme- diately afterwards, have made such a blunder as to set down " time" in lieu of it, would be to draw too largely on the reader's redulity. I conclude, then, that the ori- ginal reading was not " farmer," but some other word less common, which the tran- scriber failed to recognize, and for which he substituted " time," the nearest word known to him that agreed with the ductus