Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/138

 110 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io» B. iv. AUG. «. 1005. divergence made by the younger poet from his original. Wyatt opens thus :— 1.11! what it is to love ! Leam ye that list to prove At me, I say ; No ways that may The grounded grief remove, My life alway That doth decay; Lo ! what it is to love. Scott presents this as follows:— Lo, quhat it is to lufe, Lerne ye that list to prufe, Be me, I say, that no ways may, The grund of greif remufe, Bot sti 11 decay, both nycht and day ; Lo, quhat it is to lufe. Wyatt continues the admonition in this •wise:— Flee away from the snare t Learn by me to beware Of such a train Which doubles pain. And endless woe, and care That doth retain; Which to refrain Flee away from the snare. In his second and third stanzas Scott slightly refashions what his leader says in his fifth and third of the character of love and the woful condition of the wight who has become its victim, and then, by way of concluding the whole matter, presents as follows what has just been quoted :— Fie alwayis frome the snair, Lerne at me to be ware ; It is ane pane, and dowbill trane, Of endles wo and cair ; For to refrane that denger plane. Fie alwayis frome the snair. In such a matter it is, of course, evident that an unqualified judgment must not be given, as it would be inevitable and imperative that it should be given in the case of authors who deliberately publish their own writings. The dates of the two poets concerned show decisively thatWyatt'a lyric is an independent study, and that nothing can be laid to his charge for the extraordinary coincidence that has thus been revealed. On the other hand, there is enough in Scott's presumably original work to sho_w that he had a strong and serviceable literary faculty, and had no need to depend upon plagiarism, or even imitation, in order to secure artistic and effective results. His address to the queen, to which reference has been made, is a dignified and graceful exercise in the ballet-stave oi eight; his 'Justing and Debait,' after a con- ventional fashion, is one of the best of its class; and his "To luve unluvit it is ane Pane," in its vigorous movement, its procla- mation of strenuous independence of spirit, and the freshness and adequacy of its lyrical expression, fairly anticipates Wither's "Shall [, wasting in despair?" One of the best masters of expressive alliteration in the whole range of Scottish poets, Scott was nanifestly given to metrical experiments, and it seems possible, perhaps it is exceed- ugly probable, that lie worked on Wyatt's lyric to see what could be made of it, and left among his papers, without explanation, the chastened result which Bannatyne faithfully transcribed, fully believing that he had to do with an, original composition. THOMAS BAYNK. [Ma. J. GEIGOK also thanked for reply.] " To PLY" (10th S. iv. 44).—There is, I think, little doubt that the verb" ply is the aphetic form of apply, in M.E. aplie, just as pose is of appose. and prentice of apprentice. The article ' Ply' has not yet been finished for the 'New English Dictionary,' but it was fully examined when ' Apply ' was done, and the general parallelism of spnse development noted. If apply be examined in the ' Dic- tionary,' all the senses of ply will be there found : thus, sense 16, to apply or ply one's business, the plough, the world, husbandry, one's books, devotions, the spade, an oar, <fcc. So sense 17, to apply or ply a person with questions, speeches, bills, various things. So, alsp. sense 24 shows a ship applying or plying to Dover or to the Cornish coast. Ply is thus certainly of _ Romanic derivation, and represents L. plicare ; only not plicare as a separate word, but as it exists in composition in Latin ap-plicare, O.F. a-plier, Eng. ap-ply. How these senses were developed from the original one of folding one thing into contact with another can be studied in the ' Dic- tionary' in the verb 'Apply,' with which the aphetic form ' Ply ' will, when published, be found to correspond. Ply occurs in the West Midland alliterative poem ' Cleanness,' 1. 1385, and is frequent in Gower in various senses ; it has apparently been missed by Stratmann. It has, of course, to be kept historically distinct from its relative ply, to bend, which represents the non-compounded French plier, Latin plicare. 3. A. H. MUEEAY. Oxford. If ME. MAYHEW will refer to Skeat'g 'Etymological Dictionary,' he will find an account of this word in the sense required, as derived from the French plier (Lat. plicare), to fold or bend. C. S. JEERAM. Elisha Coles in his ' Latin-English Dic- tionary,' 1755, and Nathaniel Bailey in his