Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/565

 ii s. v. JOE is, MIS. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

465

Grolier Club, New York, 1885. Text of fourth edition. 150 copies issued at $3. These now realize at auction between 407. and 50t. each. The few vellum copies issued fetch over 2QOL each.

Cyclostyle edition. W. H. Holyoak, Leicester, 1885-99. Printed with the cyclostyle on rough paper of various tints. 102 quatrains. Text of an Indian edition. The owners of the copyright threatened the printer with an injunction unless he stopped the issue. Fifty -two copies were sent to Macmillans for destruction. To com- pensate the printer, who was an octogenarian bookseller, G. ,T. Holyoake no relation, but a customer wrote a short account of the affair for him to print with his cyclostyle, and sell at Is. per copy. Less than 150 copies of the ' Ru- baiyat' had been sold at this price by him between the years 1885 and 1899. Both of these pam- phlets are now very scarce.

T. J. Wise, London, 1887. Facsimile of 1859 edition. Privately printed. Twenty-nine copies, four of which were on vellum.

Ashendene Press, 1896. Fifty copies only. Printed by St. Jbhn Hornby and' his sisters. 107 quatrains. Text selected from each of Fitz- Gerald's four versions.

A striking contrast to the huge Vedder volume i* the miniature edition issued by C. H. Meigs, Cleveland, Ohio, 1900. Eight copies were printed from special bold-faced type, making a volume square octavo, 6iX 7J in. From this a photo- graphic reduction was made, and fifty-seven copies were issued to subscribers at 5j<15 each. Size, fV X ^in.

Pamphlet Editions.

Readers' Library, San Francisco, 1891. Robertson, San Francisco, 1898. Sweetheart, New York, 1898. Grosset, New York, 1899. Savoy, New York, 1900. Bankside Press, New York, 1900. All the above follow the text of the fourth edition.

Some Privately Printed Pamphlet Edition.?.

BIJOU EDITION, Ooty, India, 1891. 101 qua- trains. Fifty copies only. Printed for Col. Sewell. Size, 3x 4 in.

J. L. Stoddard, Boston, 8 Dec., 1893. 71 quatrains.

[Boston, 1894.] White label on fore cover, grey wrappers. Bound like a Japanese book. Without title-page, imprint, or date. Foolscap 4to.

Jordan, Marsh & Co., Boston, 1898. 101 quatrains.

Sunrise, Boston, 1899. 101 quatrains.

T. B. M. and E. B. G., Portland, Maine, 1899. 101 quatrains. Ten copies only, on pure vellum.

C. Sibleigh, Imperial Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1900. 101 quatrains.

Some Versions other than FiizGerald's.

Richard Le GaJlienne, London, 1897. 214 quat- rains. Thirty copies only, on Japanese vellurn.

C. B. Fallen, St Louis, Missouri, 1898. 85 quatrains. Also includes text of FitzGorald's 1859 edition.

E. K. Cutter, Washington, 1900. 22 quatrains.

Some Foreign Versions.

German : A. F. G. von Schack, Stuttgart, 1878, 336 quatrains.

Latin : H. W. Green, Oxford, 1893. 100 copies

Italian: V. Rugarli, Bologna, 1895. Two privately printed issues in celebration of a mar- riage. 10 and 12 quatrains respectively.

Romani : W. E. A. Axon, Manchester, 1899. 1 quatrain.

I shall be glad to supply additional in- formation to those who are interested.

A. G. POTTER.

126, Adelaide Road, Hampstead, N.VV.

"HIT": TENSE IN CHAUCER. In the celebrated lines which B. I. addressed to the Reader of the First Folio of Shakespeare, we find :

O, could he but haue drawne his wit As well in brasse, as he hath hit His face, &c.

On which statement the following remark- able comment has lately appeared :

" B. I. then proceeds to say : ' O, could he but have drawne his wit as well in brasse, as he hath hit his face.' Hit, at that period, was often used as the past participle of hide, with the meaning hid or hidden, exactly as we find in Chaucer, in the ' Squires Tale,' where we read, ii. 512, &c.,

Right as a serpent hit him under floures Til he may seen his tyme for to byte. This, put into modern English prose, means, Just as a serpent hid himself under the flowers until he might* see his time to bite." That is to say, hit " was often used as the past participle of hide, with the meaning hid or hidden," because Chaucer used hit him as a past tense !

The truth is, of course, that no example can be produced, either from Chaucer or any other author, to show that hit was ever used either as a past tense or a past participle of the verb to hide.

Any one who will take the trouble to consult the ' New English Dictionary.' or the glossary to any modern edition of Chaucer, will discover that hit cannot be either a past tense or a past participle of hide under any circumstances or at any period, for the plain reason that it is merely a contracted form of hideth, which is the third person singular of the present tense, not of the past. Any one who is familiar with Anglo-Saxon or with Middle English is aware that contraction of this nature is strictly confined to the third person singular of the present tense only ; so that


 * The original has may.