Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/491

. I. JUNE 18, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

483

It is not necessary to claim for Mr. Glad- stone the highest poetic gifts, yet it would be easy to underrate their extent and quality. There can be no doubt that these metrical exercises, involving fastidious search for the most fitting and harmonious expression, had a beneficial influence on his prose, and helped to give to his speeches something of the match- less splendour and dignity of diction by which they were distinguished.

I WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Moss Side, Manchester. SHAKSPEARIANA.

' OTHELLO,' I. i. 21 (5 th S. xi. 383 ; 9 th S. i. 83, 283, 422). C. C. B. has not read my note intelligently. Want of intelligence may

^ qualifying " affairs." ^hich he rings on " wise

._ offspring.

refuse to acknowledge paternity. He supposes

that in the restored line

A fellow all must damn in affairs wise

I regard "wise" as [ence the changes which he rings _ jirs " and " affairs wise." To prevent, as I thought, the possibility of such a misunder- standing, to make it evident that I intended the line to be read as if written

A fellow all wise in affairs must damn,

I concluded my note thus : " I need scarcely add that by

A fellow all must damn in affairs wise

is meant that all conversant with military matters " (the equivalent of all in affairs wise) "must condemn the appointment of Cassio as that of one utterly unsuited for the position he had been chosen to occupy."

C. C. B. quotes with approval a note by Mr. James Platt in the Literary World in these terms : " The obvious interpretation is that a fair wife may be a not unmixed blessing." Granted the truism : how does it apply to Cassio, who had no fair wife to be a blessing or otherwise ? Good old Samuel Johnson did not see his way to any such " obvious inter- pretation." On the contrary, he says, "This is one of the passages which must for the pre- sent be resigned to corruption and obscurity." But, says the writer in the Literary World, " The fact that the commentators [Samuel Johnson included] have boggled over the line is simply due to the stupidity which is the badge of all their tribe " the writer, of course, excepted.

It is a pleasure to turn from C. C. B. and cross swords once more with my courteous

antagonist MR. DEY. I have not convinced him, and his rejoinder has not convinced me : yet we can agree to differ with courtesy. I now put it to MR. DEY, Was it likely that lago, who was a thorough devil as well in cunning as in malice, would spoil his game with Eoderigo by showing his hand too soon 1 Had he thus early given Koderigo reason to suspect that he had a dangerous rival in Cassio, Roderigo, who was a chicken-hearted fellow at the best, would never have left Venice, and the contents of his purse would never nave passed into lago's pouch.

R. M. SPENCE, M.A.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.


 * TEMPEST,' I. ii. 158-9.

Mir. How came we ashore ?

Pros. By Providence divine.

The period after "divine," as suggested by Pope, instead of the comma of the folios, seems justified, although objected to by Knight and others. " By Providence divine " does not refer to food, water, &c. ; the coming ashore, escaping wind and wave, after having been borne some leagues to sea and placed in a rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, nor sail nor mast, was by Providence divine. Miranda's question " How came we ashore 1 " would not have been answered by saying that, provi- dentially, they had some food, some fresh water, &c., in view of the unseaworthy nature of their boat and in the absence of all means of locomotion. A few creature com- forts would not have brought them ashore. The pause, in reverence, after the short line " By Providence divine," before the statement of their indebtedness to Gonzalo, indicates a break in the thought.

'TEMPEST,'!, ii. 351-62.

Pros. Abhorred slave, &c.

The folios assign this speech to Miranda, and, I believe, rightly. To bring out the black- ness of Caliban's ingratitude, he is shown as attempting to do this great wrong directly to the one who had pitied him and taken pains hourly to instruct him in one thing or other. This almost constant instruction suggests the companionship of a playmate with the simple- minded monster. The speech, until Caliban's punishment is reached, is in the first person Miranda was the actor; but when she justifies his imprisonment, she speaks of what was done to him that is, by her father. Although Miranda now loathed Caliban, he was a familiar creature to her, whom it was not at all unnatural for her to address in this strain of righteous indignation at his levity and ingratitude.