Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/181

 10 s. vii. FEB. 23, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

145

" Here is a purre of Fortunes, Sir, or of Fortunes cjit, that has falne into the Fishpond of her displeasure."

MR. HILL wishes us to understand that the Clown introduces Parolles as "an ' evil smell ' of Fortune's " ; and this interpreta- tion he holds to be simplicity itself. I fancy he will find few to agree with him. With all his bizarreries the Clown would scarcely talk thus. But MB. HILL does not seem to observe that what might be suitable if Fortune's cat alone were mentioned is entirely unsuitable for Fortune herself. This " purre of Fortunes " requires its own explanation. It must needs be somebody or something which belongs to Fortune : her property to play with, and now her butt, fallen into the fishpond of her displeasure. The " cat " is a mere afterthought : the pun was irresistible.

But after all this I have an objection which I hold to be conclusive and fatal. Prof. Victor in his recent work on the pronuncia- tion of Shakespeare has shown that for him the syllables er. ir, ur, had each its own value, wholly distinct from the others :* whence it must follow that " purr " cannot possibly be the first syllable of per-fume.

On the whole, I think that if MB. HILL must publish his unsupported theory, he would on all grounds have been better advised to omit his quotation of Horace. C. B. MOUNT.

It may be well, for the sake of accuracy, to put it on record that " a species of wild pig " is not found in the Isle of Man. The mistake may have arisen from the Manx dictionary by Dr. Kelly, edited by the Rev. W. Gill, in which the Manx word " purr " is translated by " a wild mountain boar," which may mean a boar that had got loose into the mountains, or a boar (of probably a poor breed) at a mountain farm ; but we know nothing here of " wild pigs."

ERNEST B. SAVAGE.

St. Thomas, Douglas.

'MERCHANT OF VENICE,' I. i. 29-36 (10 S. vi. 504). A. E. A. quotes in one of his notes at the above reference Prof. Skeat's phrase ' Neglected Eng. Diet.' " Neglected " will apply also to ' N. & Q.' The late REV. DR. SPENCE offered at 9 S. v. 163 the same suggestion as that now brought forward by A. K. A. I did not reply to DR. SPENCE, who commented upon my previous note (9 S. v. 63), for the reason that the Furness quotation in that note seemed sufficient answer : " ' The meaning here,' says Claren-


 * See MR. MAYHEW'S note, 10 S. vi. 2S1.

don, * is obscure, and the construction abrupt, if " this " refers to the spices and silks just mentioned.' " It would, of course, be impossible for " this " to refer to the merchandise without our understanding " worth " as referring to the speaker ; other- wise the import is that the merchandise is worth itself. Therefore neither DB. SPENCE nor A. E. A. has made a discovery. In addition to the " Clarendon " reason, it is hardly likely that a merchant would speak of himself as " worth nothing " in the event of one of his shipments having gone astray.

E. MEBTON DEY. St. Louis.

LIKE A TENCH " (10 S. vi. 504). Pliny the Elder tells us that fish are tormented by- fleas ; but in this dialogue Shakespeare is obviously burlesquing the vulgars' habit of irrelevant comparison, satirized by others as well. " Dank as a dog " shows this clearly enough. John Taylor the Water Poet tells of a person whose phrase of all work was " like a dog " that another " lied like a dog," &c. A venerable joke of my boyhood was of a woman who said she was " as weak as a horse, and had no more- appetite than a hog." FOBBEST MOBGAN.
 * HENBY IV.,' PABT I., II. i. : " STUNG

Hartford, Conn.

See the note on this line in Dr. William J Rolfe's edition of the play, p. 157.

N. W. HILL.

Philadelphia.

It is usually supposed that we ought to- read, instead of " like a tench," " like a trout," which is, as is well known, covered with crimson spots :

Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains. Pope's 'Windsor Forest,' 145.

The tench is covered with a 'slime supposed to be of a healing nature.

JOHN PICKFOBD, M.A.

' HENBY IV.,' PABT I., II. iv. 134 :

" PlTIFUL-HEABTED TlTAN, THAT MELTED '*

(10 S. vi. 504). Theobald's emendation, adopted by MB. DAVEY, leaves the passage as unintelligible as before, and more in- coherent. If " butter " had been meant instead of " Titan," Shakespeare would have used " melts " in place of " melted " surely that phenomenon was not a past and unrecurring one ; and who is Titan, and why should he be dragged in by the heels, with nothing to do and no connexion with the melting ? Warburton's, usually adopted, is worse parenthesizing "pitiful-hearted Titan," and still leaving the butter to melt