Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/333

 n s. i. APR. 23, 1910.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

325

solution offered for the line that is in dispute, the corruption arising, in all probability, from imperfect copying. The paraphrasing would then run : " Our temperaments no more obey the heavens than our courtiers now seem to (do homage), as is meet (they should) to the king (or the king's majesty ). n This would leave the text of the First Folio substantially correct, and then what occurs later on

But not a courtier,

Although they wear their faces to the bent Of the kings looks, hath a heart that is not Glad at the thing they scowl at,

which has always been held to be a restate- ment or explanation of the opening lines, will thus be brought into closer agreement with them.

Moreover, the word " do, u as Vietor in his ' Shakespeare Phonology l explains, was at that period pronounced " cfti " :

" Unstressed long vowels and diphthongs are apt to become short vowels ; unstressed short vowels further tend to obscurity, and even loss. Thus Gill gives [bi], [no], [du],* as weak forms for be, no, do" P. 108,

From this it would appear likely that the corruption arose when the copyist was taking his shorthand notes during a represen- tation of the play, the confusion between two words pronounced so much alike as " dues " and " do's " being readily excusable.

N. W. HILL. New York.

" THE LATE MB. BBANDEB MATTHEWS ?i : COLUMBIA COLLEGE. SIB HABBY POLAND, while writing (ante, p. 115) about an inquiry that was made at 6 S. ii. 368 concerning the authorship of ' Billy Taylor,' used the expression quoted in the first phrase of the caption.

Happily, the adjective "late" does not apply in any sense to PBOF. BBANDEB MATTHEWS, who is quite " up to time" in every way, and is still ably fulfilling his duties at the head of the Department of English in Columbia University in the City of New York. I give the location of the college, though I think only a few ' N. & Q. 1 readers can share the amusingly restricted outlook of a well-known London journalist and critic, who, in a recent article, wrote of " Columbia College, wherever that may be " as if it might perhaps be some small institution in Nebraska or Manitoba. It can hardly require mental vision of the

adopted by Prof. Vietor from the Association rhonetique Internationale.
 * The brackets contain the phonetic notation

highest telescopic power to discern, even across the sea, a college whose charter was granted by George II. (the change of title from "King's College " to " Columbia n came with the recognition of independence), and that now has a material equipment representing thirty million dollars, with five thousand students in residence, under five hundred instructors, even if no note is taken of important work done under its auspices. M. C. L.

New York City.

[Another American contributor to ' N. & Q/ MR. ALBERT MATTHEWS of Boston, had anticipated M. C. L. in pointing out (ante, p. 276) that PROF. BRANDER MATTHEWS is happily still at work at Columbia University ; but we print our New York correspondent's note on account of its interesting references to that seat of learning.]

" MOTHEB OF TOM-CATS " = THE SEINE.

It is remarkable, in connexion with Carlyle's use of the phrase ' ' mother of dead dogs " in his ' French Revolution l (see 10 S. v. 509 ; vi. 32, 95; vii. 457), that "the mother of tom-cats " appears to have been a French slang term for the Seine. According to the ' Memoirs ? of the notorious French detective officer Francois Jules Vidocq (chap, xxx.) dead cats were frequently in the menu of the hideous den or cabaret known as the cave of Father Guillotin, as the following passage shows :

" There was throughout the assembly [of robbers] a general mewing, but it was only a joke ; the lovers of fricassee mewed like the rest, and after having taken their caps off, they said, 'Come on, here is the good stuff! Covered by cat-skin and fed on cats, we shall not soon be in want ; the mother of tom-cats is not yet dead.' "

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. ROBEBT BUBTON AND JOANNES PlTSEUS.

In a very interesting paper read by Prof. Osier before the Bibliographical Society on 15 Nov., 1909, an account was given of the library of Robert Burton, 580 of whose books, it was stated, are in the Bodleian, and 429 in the library of Christ Church. Probably there are some elsewhere which could be identified by his name or initials, which he seems regularly to have written on the title- page. There is one such in Cat. 127 of Ellis (J. J. Holdsworth and G. Smith) :

"Pitseus (loannes), Relatiqnum Historicarum de Rebus Anglicis Tomus Primus. [All issued.] Parisiis, 1619. 4to."

There is a reference to this book in Part. III. sect. iv. mem. i. subs. iii. of the ' Anatomy ' : " Pitsius catal. scriptorum Anglic, reckons up 180 English Commentators alone, on the matter of the sentences " (first added in