Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/173

 ^ S. NO 9., MAR. 1. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

165

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH I, 1856.

flatt*.

SONNET BT KING JAMES THE FIRST.

It does not appear to be generally known that King James's autograph MS. of his celebrated BA2IAIKON AHPON ; or, His Majestic s Instructions to his dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince, is preserved in the British Museum, under the press mark MS. Reg., 18. B. xv. It is bound in purple velvet, and ornamented upon one side with the arms and supporters of Scotland npon a plate of gold, crowned, surrounded by the collar and jewel of St. Andrew, with this uiotto below : " In my defence God me defend." The borders appear to have been formerly adorned with thistles in gold, two or three only of which are remaining.

This work was printed in Edinburgh by Ro- bert Waldegrave, the king's printer, in 1603, 12mo., and reprinted immediately upon the king's arrival in London in the same year. Prefixed to both these editions is a sonnet addressed by the king to his son Henry, which Bishop Percy, who reprints it, tells us " would not dishonour any writer of that time." Now, it is not a little sin- gular that in the MS. this sonnet does not appear, but in its place we have the following

" Sonett.

" Loe heir my Sone a mirror viue and fair, Quhilk schawis the scliadow of a vorthie King; Loe heir a booke, a paterne dois zow bring, Quhilk ze soukl preas to follow mair and mair. This trustie freind the trenthe will never spair, Bot give a guid advyse unto zow heir, How it sould be zour chief and princelie cair To follow verteu, vyce for to forbeare : And in this booke zour lesson vill ze leire For gyding of zour people great and small ; Than, as ze audit, gif ane attentive eare And paus how ze thir preceptis practise sail : Zour father biddis zow studie heir and reid How to become a perfyte King indeid."

When we compare this sonnet with that in the printed edition of the book in question, a sort of suspicion is raised that the latter is the production of some courtly poet well skilled in the " art of poesie," and not that of his Sacred Majesty. The genuineness of the MS. sonnet is beyond all sus- picion.

Park, in his edition of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, does not notice the autograph MS. of -the BA2IAIKON AHPON ; but it is right to mention that I owe my knowledge of it to Sir Henry Ellis's valuable collection of Original Letters (First Series, vol. iii. p. 79.).

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

A FEW SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES ON SOME PASSAGES IN MIDDLETON'S " PLATS."

(Continued from p. 86.)

Your Five Gallants, Act II. Sc. 1., vol. ii. p. 239. :

gentleman that bestowed it on me, swore to me that it cost him twenty nobles."
 * Sec. G. Come, I cannot miss it i'faith ; beside, the

" Miss it] i. e. let it go," says the note. Mr. Dyce evidently collects this sense of miss from the context, as no doubt he also did that of " over- ture " above ; a loose sort of interpretation, wherein the most unlearned reader may safely dis- pense with the aid of a glossarist. An exposition of a word that is adapted but to one example, or one class of examples, cannot be considered either satisfactory or scholarlike, for the best of all reasons, that it rarely hits the elementary signifi- cation. Substitute "let it go," or "let go," in the subjoined instance, and see what impertinency is the result :

" Glotony. We shall have a warfare it ys told me.

Man. Ye ; where is thy harnes ? Glotony. Mary, here may ye se,

Here ys harnes enow.

Wrath. Why hast thou none other harnes but thys ? Glotony. What the devyll harnes should 1 mys, Without it be a bottell ? "

Interlude of Nature, BI. L., no date.

The truth is, miss exactly corresponds to " want," is synonymous with it, both as it means " to be without," and " to need." In the example from Middleton miss signifies "to be without ; " in that from the Interlude of Nature, " to need." So likewise with regard to want; "the more they wanted, the lesse they desired," is Phil. Holland's translation of " quanto rerum minus, tanto minus cupiditatis erat," in Livy's preface, where of course want means " to be without : " or that I may quote a still more apposite instance, wherein both senses of want are exemplified :

"Nor doth he ask of God to be directed whether li- turgies be lawful, but presumes, and in a manner would persuade him, that they be so ; praying that the church and he may never want them."

" What could be prayed worse extempore? Unless he mean by wanting that they may never need them." Mil- ton's Ansn-er to Eikon Bas'dlke, cap. xvi.

This use of miss it is, to which, in a note in the Tempest of his best of all modern editions of Shakspeare's text, Mr. Collier, to whom Mr. Dyce dedicates his edition of Middleton, remarks the commentators had not paralleled a fellow. It is repeated again by Middleton in The Witch, Act L Sc. L, vol. iii. p. 254. :

" Flo. I find thee still so comfortable,

Beshrew my heart, if I know how to miss thee."

The cognate noun mister, or mislre, appears to have fared no less unhappily among scholars, for