Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/170

 164

NOTES AND QUERIES, m s. vm. AUG. 30, 1913.

Verity) commented, as expressive of Cassius watching effect on Casca why not, I would urge, print as two good lines (such as again and again have to be made out of the First Folio's indifference to expressing the full workmanship of Shakespeare) : Unto some monstrous state. ftow could I, Casca, Name to thee a man, most like this dreadful night.

The watchfulness is well expressed there by the weighting and weighing of " name," and the necessarily slow 1 words coming after. Indeed, a few" lines above, I. iii. 57 sqq., editors do print

You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life That should be in a Roman you do want, Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder To see the strange impatience of the heavens ;

thus changing the First Folio, which had left the same words in this form :

You are dull, Caska,

.And those sparkes of Life, that should be in a

Roman,

You doe want, or else you vse not. You look pale, and gaze, and put on feare, And cast yourselfe in wonder

To, see

A recent critic protests against the change made in this " nervous and expressive " prose. But Shakespeare had not prose in his ear. Besides, listen. Contrast " You look pale and gaze " as prose and as verse. Which reveals, and expresses ? And which cramps up " those sparks of life " ? As I write, I see Coleridge's A painted ship Upon a painted ocean

quoted as prose, " a painted ship upon a painted ocean" a picture, and then a hoarding poster.

Often in Shakespeare a pause fills out a line or a long syllable ; or both, when well considered.

Pope did not seem to face the fact that Shakespeare's verse was, as contrasted with his own, accentual. He cut out, and he put in as when he so deplorably amended the magic verse,

He falls to such perusal of my face,

As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so.

(' Hamlet,' II. i. 91)

by Writing " Long time," and making it, if Pope's own, a poor thing. A writer in The Daily News lately scoffed at the notion that Shakespeare filled out lines by making, e.g., " long " equal to one and a half or two syllables ; or the " cold stone " in ' Mac- beth ' equal to three. But the critic was evidently judging, not from Shakespeare's verse, but from his own notions.

Compare in ' Julius Caesar ' the so-called monosyllable " our " :

Our best friends made, our means stretched.

(IV. ii. 44.)

not forgetting the sense and

I have an hour's talk in store for you.

(II. ii. 121.)

The apparent short lines at I. ii. 300, at I. iii. 139, &c. are explained by certain words being employed twice, making the end of one line and the beginning of another, there being two speakers :

(a) With better appetite. [And so it is.] And so it is. For this time I will leave you.

(b) Am I not stay'd for? tell me. [Yes, you are.] Yes, you are. O Cassius, if you could.

Abbott long ago called that verse with double - placed life "the amphibious sec- tion." W. F. P. STOCKLEY. University College, Cork.

THE FORGED 'SPEECHES AND PRAYERS ' OF THE REGICIDES.

(See U S. vii. 301, 341, 383, 442, 502; viii. 22, 81, 122.)

XI. ERRORS

IN THE 'D.N.B.

JESSEY,

HENRY

ONE of the authors of several of the stories in ' Mirabilis Annus ' was Henry Jessey the Anabaptist, one of Cromwell's " Triers."

The ' D.N.B.' asserts :

" The opinion that Jessey had a hand in ' Mira- bilis Annus,' &c., 1660, 4to, and subsequent years, has no better foundation than his admission in 1661 that he had long been in the habit of collecting notes of remarkable events."

The writer is referring to Jessey's exami- nation (in the State Papers) when arrested for writing part of ' Mirabilis Annus,' and on suspicion of publishing and circulating it. Jessey's own statements are worthless, since he contributed to the book.

On 1 Aug., 1660 (Thomason's date), Jessey published a tract exposed by two contemporary writers. The title indicates its character :

" The Lord's Loud Call to England. Being a true relation of some late, various and wonder- ful judgments, or handy works of God by Earth- quake, Lightening, whirlwind, great multitudes of toads and flyes, and also the striking of divers persons with sudden death in several places, for what cause let the man of wisdom judge upon his serious perusal of the book it self .... Published by H. J. a servant of Jesus the Christ,

and a lover of peace and holiness Printed

for L[ivewell] Chapman," &c.

The " lover of peace and holiness " and

Livewell Chapman both found themselves