Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/203

 10 s. vm. AUG. 31, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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(a difficulty completely overcome by my suggestion) has led the Clarendon Press editors and MB. DEY to refer the adjective otherwise. Not that they thereby make the passage clear, for Furness has disposed of the " Clarendon " view as DR. SPENCE (9 S. v. 163) has disposed of MB. DEY'S (9 S. v. 63). The whole passage, 10-41, it seems to me, clearly makes for referring " worth " to the merchant, as does also the summarizing phrase " in a word " = in short.

I certainly do think else I had not written to ' N". & Q.' that I have " made a discovery." MR. DEY, so far as I appre- hend him, holds that my view of the con- struction was known to and deliberately rejected by the " Clarendon " ; but I fail to see how he comes by this conclusion. My suggested construction is far from being " abrupt," while the meaning becomes simplicity itself. Mr. Deighton's note (Mac- millan, 1890) fairly shows the view com- monly taken of the passage : " The expres- sion is highly elliptical ; and possibly, as Lettsom supposes, something has fallen out between 11. 39 and 40." I think MR. DEY is unable to do justice to my suggestion because he is prepossessed in favour of the view to which he has already committed himself. I am quite content to leave my suggestion to the readers of ' N. & Q.'

When I say that my construction of the passage is not " abrupt," I am far indeed from asserting that it has the regularity that characterizes the sentence-structure of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English ; but this is no more than to say that Shake- speare's syntax could only be Elizabethan and not Edwardian, or even " Augustan." The construction I suggest is certainly far less irregular than that which confronts us in many a passage occurring elsewhere in the plays. For only one instance take ' King Lear,' I. i. 226-33.

When MR. DEY urges, as an objection to referring "worth" to the supposed merchant, that "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," he shows that Shakespeare too has been " neglected " by him. For he seems to forget that it is Salarino who speaks ; and he undoubtedly forgets Antonio's comment on his friends' remarks (41-2). A. E. A.

' TROILUS AND CRESSIDA,' III. iii. 196- 200 (10 S. vii. 483). SIR PHILIP PERRING leans to the opinion that " cradles " is

corrupt, because of the short metre, and an expression too homely for the dignity of poetry. The former is common enough in dramatic verse, and the latter is character- istic of the poet. What is more important to observe is whether the subject is carried to a climax, and whether the sense is com- plete. SIR PHILIP seems to have fallen into the way of most commentators of trying to explain a part when the whole of the passage should be considered. He says :

"To 'unveil thoughts' we do not so much want ' to know about the cradle which contained them as to learn something about the thoughts themselves,, to discover their features, the flash-lights which proceed from them, the notes, signs, subtle cha- racters, by which alone the providential, watchful eye can hope to decipher and read them."

But it must be maintained that that is the one thing we cannot know, since the power belongs to a mysterious providence that

Keeps place with thought, and almost like the gods Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.

The concluding idea is introduced to carry conviction, and the illustration is rounded off with a completeness which we find in Shakespeare and in no other author. The adjective " dumb " is the proper attribute not to " cradles," but to " thoughts " ; and " unveil " is also figuratively used from the familiar and homely object of a mother at the cradleside unveiling her infant. To vary the expression providence not only keeps pace with thought, but unveils the new-born thoughts even in their cradles.

TOM JONES.

Is any alteration of the accepted text needed here ? Incomplete and broken lines are not rare in Shakespeare : there are several in the preceding speech of Ulysses. As for the thought, it would, I fancy, be much less clear than it is if your cor- respondent's suggestion were accepted. " 'Eraldry," indeed, seems to me quite impossible. If any alteration is needed, would not " oracles " be better ? It is in appearance much more like " cradles," it completes the verse, and it requires no great stretch of imagination. Those dim recesses of the mind in which thoughts originate, or, if you like, those secret sources of inspiration in which ideas are born, may fitly be spoken of under this figure, and the reference to the gods in the preceding line is then peculiarly appropriate. Cradles (or, at any rate, their occupants) are not often dumb for long together, but oracles are so until the gods provide them with a voice. C. C. B.