Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/15

2nd S. No 1., ] taken for the abbreviation of and; and "now" was misread, new. That Mr. Utterson himself took particular pains with this little work is clear, because, in my copy, he has introduced more than one MS. emendation, to remedy the inaccuracy of his printer. There is a small, but remarkable error, within two leaves of the end; and I notice it the more willingly, because it is in a direct, but unavowed plagiarism from Shakspeare; which, although the book was in Malone's hands, seems to have escaped observation. The grammatical peculiarity of the following couplet from Shakspeare's Lucrece, 1594, has been remarked upon:

Barnefield, in the next year, has it thus, avoiding apparent tautology:

Mr. Utterson's compositor misprinted "cares," eares, materially perverting the passage; and in the first stanza of the same page, he put "cups" for corps:

"And Agamemnon's cups her meate must be."

I never saw Malone's copy of Cynthia, and my corrections are from my own transcript of Mr. Heber's exemplar.

Edward Guilpin's Skialetheia, or the Shadowe of Truth, published in 1598, is another of the reprints from the Beldornie press. If I am not mistaken, it was nearly the last work issued, before the death of the amiable and accomplished proprietor. He received the transcript from Oxford, and unfortunately had it put in type before he had any opportunity of collating it with the original; which we know to be by Guilpin only by quotations from it, with his name, in England's Parnassus, 1600. It consists of epigrams and satires. In Epig. ., we have "case" for sort, in the 7th line; and the next piece of the same kind is twice addressed to "Rimes" instead of Rivus. In Epig. ., this line is met with:

"Who piertly iests, can caper, daunce, and sing;"

which ought to be&mdash;

"Who piertly jets, can caper, daunce, and sing."

Supposing that, by some chance, we had no original to refer to, we might never have known what the author really wrote; and might have considered a proposition to substitute jets (i.e. struts) for "jests," as purely impertinent and needless. We could not, however, but have treated what follows, in the first satire, as a corruption:

What could we have made out of "bucher" but butcher? And yet that word would not at all answer the purpose. What, then, says the copy of 1598?

"Give it a new touch, livelier dialect"

It is not difficult to see how a person, transcribing carelessly, might make livelier look like "bucher." Again, in Satire 2., we meet with this passage as reprinted:

Instead of which, Guilpin wrote and printed:

We will take another instance from Satire 4., where these lines occur:

For "teaching," of the reprint, the old copy has Scorching: love's glorious world was scorched with glowing tongue. See, in the next place, how the mistake of a single letter directly contradicts what the poet intended:

Now, whatever Guilpin meant by "fore-ceited malice," it is very evident that he meant that millions of reasons will not extenuate it. His words, truly given, are,

"Millions of reasons nill extenuate."

"Nill" is the old abbreviation of ne will, or will not; and the printing of "will," instead of nill, makes the author say exactly the contrary of what he really did say. One more proof shall suffice for Skialetheia: it is taken from the last Satire, and close to the end of it. The line, as reprinted, is this:

"If that some weevil, mouth-worme, barley-cap."

As originally printed in 1598, it is this:

"If that some weevil, mault-worme, barly-cap."

Every body knows what a malt-worm is, especially in connexion with "barley-cap;" but Mr. Utterson's edition misrepresents the text.

Hoping that I shall not be deemed ungrateful to a real and great benefactor of letters, in pointing out these blemishes, I shall hereafter endeavour to continue the subject. I shall probably have occasion to speak of some of my own delinquencies of a similar description. Maidenhead.

I have been greatly pleased with the information to be found from time to time in "N. & Q." respecting Sir John Vanbrugh, of whom I have