Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/134

 222 NOTES AND QUERIES. is* s. iv. seft. i6, w •n)v airb t<3v decui' opyrjv tous ■yivouii'ow opKovs vjrep ipiaros. I do not remember to have met with anything like this in the poetry of Hesiod. Possibly it was in his lost writings. E. Yardley. ' Macbeth,' I. ii. 14 (9th S. iii. 223).—In point- ing out the analogy between " cruel prey " (cruel act of preying) and " damned quarry " (damned act of quarrying), Mr. Thisel- ton makes, to my mind, the only possible argument in favour of " quarry " of the folios as against Johnson's emendation "quarrel," and supports Heath's explanation, "Quarry here means the slaughter and depredations made by the rebel." In other connexion this explanation might justify the retention of " quarry," but here, 1 believe, the context shows us the comparison will hardly fit. The rebel Macdonwald did not quarry upon an unequal or helpless foe—the meaning which is carried by "quarry"as a verb, to prey upon. We are told of the battle that " doubtful it stood "; the slaughter of oppos- ing forces was probably nearly equal, from which we see that " quarry " is not an appro- priate word in this connexion. The main questiou, I take it, is not whether " quarry " could be used, but whether it should be used. Macdonwald was the rebel; it was his quarrel which fortune seemed to smile upon, in that, even for the time being, he could hold his own against the king's forces, with a possible chance of victory. The report of the sergeant deals not with the question of the mortality upon the respective sides, but with the questiou of victory or defeat. These considerations, together with " quarrel" of the historical original, would seem to indicate the true reading. E. Merton Dey. St. Louis, U.S. 'Hamlet,'I. iv. 36. Thu dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt To his own scandal. I have just looked through various sug- festions on this well-known crux in the lighth Series of your journal. None of your correspondents, or of the scholars whose con- jectures are enumerated in the 'Cambridge Shakespeare,' appears to have anticipated that which I have the good fortune to pro- pose, although the merit of the suggestion is solely due to my friend Mr. Q. W. Barrows, solicitor, of Nottingham. I have little doubt that it affords a final solution of this long- vexed problem. Read simply the dram of base Doth all the noble subject to a doubt To his own scandal. The two parts of the correction support and confirm one another. It is obvious that the context imperatively requires the opposi- tion of " base " to " noble," and the critic who prefers " the dram of eale" would equally prefer "quod ore inumpsimus." The unmean- ing " eale" may owe its existence to some graphic or typographic accident rather than to any error of the understanding. But the corruption in the second place is more easily accounted for. The printer or transcriber, failing to see that " base " and " noble " were employed substantively, and having (perhaps on this account) already mistaken the former, has sought for a noun which " noble " might be used to qualify. He has found it by changing "subject" into "substance," thus reversing the operation which Hegel per- formed upon the philosophy of Spinoza. The minor change of " to " into " of " was a neces- sary consequence. The substitution thus accomplished (of "noble" followed by the noun " substance" for " noble " followed by the verb "subject") affords an excellent instance of the combined characteristics of a scribe's correction, as defined by Westcott and Hort, " the appearance of improve- ment with the absence of its reality," "the semblance of superiority and the latent inferiority." The words "noble substance" are so plausible in their place that I believe no one has hitherto suspected the real nature of the corruption. For the phrase now re- stored I may add a reference to the A.V. of Romans viii. 20 :— "For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope." Grey Hubert Skipwith. "Vole."—I suppose it is too late in the day to expect naturalists to give up the use of the ridiculous word vole; but it seems worth while to remind them of its extreme absurdity. No doubt it is a convenient word, in order to distinguish the Arvicola? from rats and mice : but the right form, viz., vole-mouse, would have sufficed for this purpose, just as mouse-deer is used to denote an animal not really of the deer tribe. The ' Century Dictionary' says it is short for vole-mouse, but gives no authority. However, this form is Scottish, and is duly given by Jamieson, who furnishes two valuable quotations: " Arvicola agrestis. Field campagnol. E. short-tailed mouse. S. vole-mouse (Edin. Mag., July, 1819, p. 305)." (I suppose that "E.'"' means