Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/175

. N 9., MAE. 1. '5G.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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its muzzle, and bore upon the bit as though it would pull the reins, however long, out of its rider's hand : and also the virtue of a good cup of ale to rouse his sinking energies. With equal knowledge of stable phraseology, Mr. Collier sup- ports the reading "weeds" instead of "steeds," in Measure for Measure, by an exposition of the former word that would paes current nowhere out of the sound of Bow bells.

To return to Middleton, Act IV. Sc. 5., vol. ii. p. 289. :

" What soonest grasps advancement, men's great suits, Trips down rich widows, gains repute and name, Makes way where'er it comes, bewitches all ? "

Mr. Dyce's note is " men's] Query mends, i. e. helps." Is not this a rather strained sense of mends? Does not wins better suit the purport of the sentence, and express a more familiar speech, without much greater deviation from the trace of the letters in the text ?

A Mad World, my Masters, Act IV. Sc. 1., p. 386. :

" Sue. Shall we let slip this mutual hour, Comes so seldom in her power? "

Mr. Dyce's note is " her] i. e. of the hour, which I notice because in the margin of an old copy, now before me, some reader has conjectured our." It is to be regretted that Mr. Dyce did not explain what he conceives to be the meaning of the hag, when she says the hour comes so seldom in its own power. I am not ashamed to confess it eludes my comprehension.

The Second Part of The Honest Whore, Act III. Sc. 1. vol. iii. p. 170. :

"Inf. These lines are even the arrows Love let flies, The very ink dropt out of Venus' eyes."

Mr. Dyce's note is,

" These lines, Sfc.~\ Probably, to amend the grammar, we ought to read,

These lines are ev'n the arrows Love lets fly, The very ink dropt out of Venus' eye.' Collier.

No ; I believe the author wrote the couplet as given in the text."

Concurring with Mr. Dyce in his rejection of Mr. Collier's amendment, I yet think that the latter fares with him much like " the old man and his ass;" for when Mr. Collier retains in the Merry Wives of Windsor the authorised reading, " a blind bitch's puppies," he is sharply censured by Mr. Dyce for not adopting Theobald's transpo- sition, " a bitch's blind puppies," Now I do not see why that of Shakspeare may not stand as well as this of Middleton. In either reading of Shak- speare's words no one disputes that "blind" is adjective to " puppies," any more than in Row- ley's " artificial Jew of Malta's nose," that " ar- tificial" is adjective to "nose." Neither must it be overlooked that Mr. Dyce has given a most

dogmatic suffrage to " busiless," that monstrous compound of Theobald's, barbarously foisted into a sentence, as perspicuous, as grammatical, and as agreeable to its author's style, and the style of his times, as was ever written. " Most busy, least, when I do it," i. e. most busy, least (so), are Shak- speare's words, substantially in the first folio, literally in the second, at the end of Ferdinand's speech, Act III. Sc. 1., of The Tempest. These words Mr. Collier, in his happier hour, retained ; while Mr. Dyce, adopting Theobald's prodigious solecism, " busiless," with the same facility, the same matter-of-course assurance, with which its inventor assumed it, pronounces them to be " an outrage upon language, taste, and common sense." Now let the reader clearly understand, this word "busiless" is Theobald's own manufacture; it occurs nowhere besides in any English writer, ancient or modern, nor any compound analogous to it. Vocables that will at once obtrude them- selves upon a reader's memory, such as resistless, relentless, opposeless, exceptless, ceaseless, exhaust- less, quenchless, dureless, utterless, &c., being com- pounds of less with substantives, or, at all events, with substantives or verbs, furnish no precedent, afford no warrant for its composition with an ad- jective like busy. Should Mr. Dyce still persist in forcing upon Shakspeare and the English tongue this portentous compound, " busiless," I hope he will not stop there, but proceed to enrich the vocabulary of succeeding generations with others of the same kind, such as strongless for strengthless, happiless for hapless, steadiless for unsteady, and so on.

It has been represented to me that I am alto- gether mistaken in supposing the very primitive phrase, " to go to ground," to be a Herefordshire relic, forasmuch as Yorkshire also remembers, in the same words, this homely practice of uncivilised life. It is given, I am aware, in MrHalli\v ell's Dictionary of Archaic Words, but that that useful compilation is not always to be relied on with an implicit trust, the subjoined specimen will con- tribute to evince. " Breeding-in-and-in, crossing the breed," says the dictionary, whereas the re- verse is the truth ; or, not crossing the breed, breeding between near kindred.

Through some oversight in my last contribution to "N. & Q.," the Hebrew word chetiv was wrongly written ketiv. W. 11. ARROWSMITII.

(To be continued.)

RECIPES FOR INK-MAKING, ETC.

I have great pleasure in fulfilling my intention of making public, in your pages, a few recipes for ink-making, written in the beginning of the fifteenth century, copied from a fly-leaf in the be-