Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/539

 9* s. v. JUKI so, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

527

(where " throng "=busy is very common) there is a variant, " As busy as Beck's wife."

C. C. B.

" COARSIE " (9 th S. v. 457). Examples of the use of this word will be found in ' N. & Q. ' 3 rd S, xii. 390, 516; 4 th S. i. 62, 160; vi. 370, 485. EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (9 th S. v. 397).

Like our shadows,

Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines. Young, ' Night Thoughts,' Night V. 11. 661-2.

E. YABDLEY.

Stanza xl. of Shelley's 'Adonais' contains the passage inquired about by MB. PAGE. ABGINE.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

William Shakespeare: Prosody and Text. By B. A. P. Van Dam. With the Assistance of C. Stoffel. (Williams & Norgate.) THIS is a work of conspicuous erudition and pro- found conviction. In a close study of English rhythms the writers have found a means of obtain- ing a better editing and a more adequate apprecia- tion of the works of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan poets. There is a great deal of truth in what they nave to say. As Whately was fond, however, of pointing out, the world wants truths, full truths, and not an amalgam in which truth has a con- siderable share. The mention of the subject sends us back to Edwin Guest's 'History of English Rhythms,' a work formerly in more regard than now it is, and one with which our authors are not always in accord. Curiously enough, the very first passage in this on which we lit consisted of a strange mistake. Guest gives in his fashion a line and a half from ' Com us' with his system of nota- tion :

Jael wh | : with hos | pita | ble guile |

Smote Sisera sleeping.

Every student of Milton should know that the first line runs

Jael who with inhospitable guile. The "wh" for who is corrected in the "Errata," but the serious omission of in is not noted. There are, especially at the outset, many things in Mr. Van Dam's work with which the student is compelled to agree. Mr. Van Dam holds that all Shakespearian editors have been ignorant of nearly every rule of prosody. He finds that of modern editions the well-known Globe is among the worst, being " illogical, eclectic, bungling." Unlike most of his predecessors, he is of opinion that if the mistakes and discrepancies in the "old texts can be satisfactorily accounted for on grounds perfectly compatible with the assump- tion that these texts were printed from the author's own writings," no reasonable person "will persist in denying that the plays were actually printed from the genuine manuscripts," and we have consequently "no right to infer, as has frequently been done, that Shakespeare did not concern himself about his fame as an author." We cannot follow the writer or writers through their

explanations of the manner in which these MSS have been used by printers and editors. Still less can we deal with the manner in which vowels are to be symzesized, syncopated, apocopated, and so torth. Each suggestion furnishes matter for dis- cussion under ' Shakespeariana,' and the attempt to show the manner in which our authors arrive at what they hold to be the right text would be unjust to them and wearisome to our readers. While admiring the energy and ingenuity displayed, we are dissatisfied with the results. We are not con- tent with the arrangement of the lines in ' Othello ' which gives us

Malignant and a turban'd Turk beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state ; I took By th' throat the circ'cised dog, and smote him, thus ! and other far more fantastic readings.

The system of line-shifting which is recommended and illustrated is carefully to be avoided. While Mr. Van Dam fails in many cases to convince us, there is much in his book which must warmly be commended to the reader. Those interested in the critical study of texts cannot afford to neglect a book that is full of observation and suggestion.

Pausanias and other Greek Sketches. By J. G

Frazer, D.C.L. (Macmillan & Co.) THE masterly translation of Pausanias by Dr. Frazer, dear to scholars, redeems England from the charge of neglect of a writer whose description of Greece is a treasure-house practically inexhaustible. The one English translation previously existing, by Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, is uncritical and untrustworthy, and the portions of the itinerary used by Sir Uvedale Price and others are insignifi- cant. What Dr. Frazer did for scholars he now does for the general reader by reprinting as a separate and handy work the introduction to his version of Pausanias, with descriptions from his commentary on the Itinerary of Greece, and an account of Pericles contributed to the ninth edition of the ' Encyclopedia Britannica.' To the average reader who comes across it, this work will pro- bably constitute an introduction to the author whose description of Greece was first printed in July, 1516, in a scarce and beautiful, but lamentably inaccurate folio of the Alduses. The authority of Pausanias has been assailed, and he has been charged with slavish dependence upon Polemo, and with describing a state of affairs which in his time no longer existed. From these and similar accusa- tions he is defended by his latest and best bio- grapher and editor, who proves that his statements are in the main borne out by the evidence of coins, and, indeed, vindicates his accuracy, it may almost be said, throughout. Dr. Frazer has, moreover, followed piously in the wake of the traveller whose work may be regarded as the first surviving guide-book, and shows the present condition of spots at the mere mention of which the pulses

spots. One may trace the influence of the study of Pausanias upon the labours of Dr. Frazer in comparative mythology. We hear how, in the course of his Italian wander- ings, Pausanias, beside the sylvan lake of Aricia, met probably the grim priest pacing sword in hand, the warder of the Golden Bough :

The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain.