Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/21

 9*s. vni. JULY 6, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

excellency (Quarto). Desdemona, in the essential vesture of creation ideal excellence attires the interior, her soul (Folio).

In conclusion I may be allowed to repeat from my former note that my proposed emenda- tion, "interiour" (First Folio's way of spelling the word) for ingeniuer. necessitates a change only of three letters. R. M. SPENCE, D.D.

'TEMPEST,' II. i. 269-70.

Ant. And how does your content

Tender your own good fortune ?

Antonio has just said, "O that you bore the inind that I do ! " that is, an ambitious mind. He now asks, paraphrasing 11. 269 and 270, In what respect does contentment with your position offer advancement of your fortunes or show regard for your own interests ?

E. MEKTON DEY. ' TEMPEST,' IV. i. 2-4. Pros. For I

Have given you here a third of mine own life, Or that for which I live.

In the line " Or that for which I live " Pros- pero has given us a key to the meaning of "a third of mine own life." Since he lives for Miranda, the years of her life are virtually those of his own, and the span of her life covers a number of years about a third of his own age. E. MERTON DEY.

4 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING,' V. iii. 19-21. Graves yawne and yeelde your dead, Till death be uttered, Heavenly, heavenly.

So runs the Folio; the Quarto, which is generally followed, had previously given the last line as " Heavily, heavily." If it can be shown that the Folio variation is an improve- ment, there will be a strong presumption that it is due to the poet's revision.

Now the words "Heavily, heavily," have just been used in connexion with the groans of the living (11. 17-18), and 1 think it will be generally conceded that their repetition falls somewhat flatly, if we can bring ourselves to read the passage as though for the first time.

What has led to the adoption of the Quarto reading, notwithstanding this flatness, has probably been the failure to grasp the mean- ing of the expression " Till death be uttered," which, I submit, furnishes an instance of that idiom whereby a verb used as a neuter verb is conjugated with "to be" instead of "to have" (see Schmidt's 'Lexicon,' sub voce Be,' ii. 2 f., and Abbott's 'Shakespearian Grammar,' 295). It also seems quite legiti- mate to regard " death " as an instance of the use of the abstract for the concrete, summing up the whole class of the dead by their

common property. We may then take " Till death be uttered " as equivalent to " Till all the dead have given utterance," the dead being called upon to deliver themselves of their share in the universal lamentation. If we adopt this line of interpretation, what could be more felicitous than the application of the description "Heavenly, heavenly," to the ghostly threnody of the departed spirits as contrasted with the grosser effusions of the earthly mourners? And we are thus happily rid of the flatness of the Quarto reading, which no explanation of the passage I have hitherto seen has availed to dispel. ALFRED E. THISELTON.

ROBERT SHERBORNE, BISHOP OF CHICHESTER, 1508 - 36. In Mr. Kirby's ' Winchester Scholars,' p. 77, "Robert Shyrborn," of Sherborne, appears as a scholar elected in 1465, and the note to his name correctly identifies him with this bishop. It is strange, therefore, that the * Diet. Nat. Biog.,' vol. Hi. p. 69, refers to Mr. Kirby in support of the untenable suggestion that the bishop was not educated at Winchester. It would have been better to refer to him as overthrowing the view, which the ' Dictionary ' tentatively adopts, that the bishop was born in 1440. This view is based upon the statement in Le Neve's 'Fasti' (ed. Hardy, vol. i. p. 248) that the bishop died (in 1536) at the age of ninety-six. As the bishop went to Win- chester in 1465, and to New College, Oxford, in 1472, Wood ('Ath. Oxon.,' third edition, vol. ii. p. 746) was evidently nearer the mark in putting the bishop's age at death at eighty- six. In this matter the * Dictionary ' seems to have been misled in part by another error in Le Neve's ' Fasti ' (vol. ii. p. 411), which the ' Dictionary ' adopts in stating that Robert Sherborne became prebendary of Mora on 17 March, 1468/9. Mr. Hennessy gives the date of his appointment to this prebend as 17 March, 1496/7 ('Nov. Rep. Eccles. Paroch. Londin.,' p. 38). H. C.

" A FEEDING STORM." Writing from Edin- burgh to Morritt of Rokeby, on 21 January, L815, Sir Walter Scott says the weather in Midlothian " seems setting in for a feeding storm," and adds the explanation that the name is given " when the snow lies so long Walter Scott's knowledge of country life was so wide and exact that it would be bold to differ from him without hesitation. It may, perhaps, be permissible to mention an individual impression even against a state- ment with authoritative credentials of the
 * hat the sheep must be fed with hay." Sir