Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/326

 264 NOTES AND QUERIES, tiss.ix.ocr. 1,1021. cry in * Hamlet ' (II. ii. 320), it imports to hear: "And yet what to me is this quintessence of dust ? " The jerk of penult accenting there, the whole sentence set a-jerking by quintessence, is not in Hamlet's thinking aloud, on the nothing- ness of life, after kn owing the infinity within the mind of man. And* proof lies in this, that Shakespeare's only other use of the word is in verse, and tells : Will I Rosalinda write .Teaching all that read to know The quintessence of every sprite Heaven would in little show. (' A.Y.L.,' III. ii. 145.) So, in Shakespeare's contemporaries : Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains. Would twice have won me the philosopher's work. (' Alchemist,' I. i.) Virtue itself is reason but refined, And love the quintessence of that : this proves. . . (Forde's ' 'Tis Pity,' II. v.) Milton uses the word twice, and writes ' Paradise Lost,' iii. 716 : And this etherial quintessence of heaven. (The contrary, indeed, in vii. 244 unless (probably enough) with " hovering accent": Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure.) Dr. Johnson (1755) gives quintessence ; yet as with others of these truly polite arguers, the dictionary -makers all his ex- amples are on the other side, and give quintessence (unless we except that doubtful Milton) : From their gross matter she extracts the forms, And draws a kind of quintessence of things. (Davies.) For by his art he did express A quintessence even from nothingness. (Donne.) So, down o Francis (d. 1773), ' Horace,' Odes, i. 13 : Cruel who hurts a fragrant kiss Which Venus bathes with quintessence of bliss. This accenting might be cited below among other exceptions, of the older accents being further back in the word. For to-day the ' N.E.D.' gives quintessence only. This, notwithstanding that a poet of this same day, the late Irish Archbishop Alexander, wrote of An Oxford of a more majestic growth ; A Rome that sheds no blood and makes no slave ; The perfect flower and quintessence of both. A poet higher placed, as a poet, writes (1918) that he would put his hand to either quint- essence or quintessence. For the adjective extreme, too, there seems some uch poetic tradition, from Shake- speare's plays always and Marlowe's Jew : I ban their souls to everlasting pains, And extreme tortures of the fiery deep, and then Milton's ' Comtis ' : Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift How to regain my severed company. ! down to Swinburne's ' Atalanta ' : Or snows on the extreme hills, or iron land Where no spring is. And breathless gates and extreme hills of heaven. For extreme loathing and supreme desire. And his ' Bbthwell,' I. i. : In the extreme range and race of my win. le life. ! Sir Henry Taylor, in 1834, had quoted con- i temporary verse : And heartless weariness of extreme age. i And express in. ' N.E.D.' only express ; j though all its examples express. True, Shakespeare has express except in ' King As bid me tell my tale in express words. But take Sir Henry Taylor : Save at the express instance of the Earl. ' Philip van Artevelde,' II. vi. Not only poetry but prose now leans to exploit. Yet the ' N.E.D.' would have you always still say exploit. Educated or angli- I Shakespeare's day, of course, sawMacbeth's j " dread exploits," and Titus Andronicus's i " high exploits and honourable deeds." Are the contents of the book such still as always in Wordsworth or its contents ? (The content, always, in philosophy.) I heard, in 1911, two schoolmasters, al- jmost at the same instant, discuss, one, its details holding to Richardson's 1836 'Dic- tionary,' if to none later, for the old accenting exclusively the other (unfortunate younger man !) its details. Alas, " this younger rises, when that old doth fall " less, in Ireland and in Scotland. (The modern dic- tionaries allow you to say either. Though I Walker's ' Pronouncing Dictionary ' already, in 1846, would have nothing but detail.} The present writer, who said doctrinal, was pulled up by one who, in spite of that his modernism, is now an archbishop, preaching on matters doctrinal. (Both right, * N.E.D.')i If a gardener trains his clematis a purist writes (1918) : "I heard an educated woman who knows her Scott well, say clematis, only j the other day : of course Scott has clematis " and loves the scent of his laiender, the reason may well be that he is old. These flowers are, or will come to be (by the school-
 * John,' IV. ii. 234 :
 * cized Scotland prides itself on saying exploit.
 * bred) called so no more. True, /tX^a and.