Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 | Page 4

day's dangers we cannot miss the hand."--"A Sermon preached before the King's Majesty at Burleigh, near Oldham, A.D. 1614," Id., vol. iv. p. 86.
"We cannot miss one of them; they be necessary all."--Id., vol. i. p. 73.
It is hardly necessary to occupy further room with more instances of so familiar a phrase, though perhaps it may not be out of the way to remark, that miss is used by Andrewes as a substantive in the same sense as the verb, namely, in vol. v. p. 176.: the more usual form being misture, or, earlier, mister. Mr. Halliwell, in his Dictionary, most unaccountably treats these two forms as distinct words; and yet, more unaccountably, collecting the import of misture for the context, gives it the signification of misfortune!! He quotes Nash's Pierce Pennilesse; the reader will find the passage at p. 47. of the Shakspeare Society's reprint. I subjoin another instance from vol. viii. p. 288. of Cattley's edition of Foxe's Acts and Monuments:
"Therefore all men evidently declared at that time, both how sore they took his death to heart; and also how hardly they could away with the misture of such a man."
In Latin, desidero and desiderium best convey the import of this word.
To buckle, bend or bow. Here again, to their great discredit be it spoken, the editors of Shakspeare (Second Part of Hen. IV., Act I. Sc. 1.) are at fault for an example. Mr. Halliwell gives one in his Dictionary of the passive participle, which see. In Shakspeare it occurs as a neuter verb:
"... And teach this body, To bend, and these my aged knees to buckle, In adoration and just worship to you." Ben Jonson, Staple of News, Act II. Sc. 1.
"For, certainly, like as great stature in a natural body is some advantage in youth, but is but burden in age: so it is with great territory, which, when a state beginneth to decline, doth make it stoop and buckle so much the faster."--Lord Bacon, "Of the True Greatness of Great Britain," vol. i. p. 504. (Bohn's edition of the Works).
And again, as a transitive verb:
"Sear trees, standing or felled, belong to the lessee, and you have a special replication in the book of 44 E. III., that the wind did but rend them and buckle them."--Case of Impeachment of Waste, vol. i. p. 620.
On the hip, at advantage. A term of wrestling. So said Dr. Johnson at first; but, on second {376} thoughts, referred it to venery, with which Mr. Dyce consents: both erroneously. Several instances are adduced by the latter, in his Critique of Knight and Collier's Shakspeare; any one of which, besides the passage in The Merchant of Venice, should have confuted that origin of the phrase. The hip of a chase is no term of woodman's craft: the haunch is. Moreover, what a marvellous expression, to say, A hound has a chase on the hip, instead of by. Still more prodigious to say, that a hound gets a chase on the hip. One would be loth to impute to the only judicious dramatic commentator of the day, a love of contradiction as the motive for quarrelling with Mr. Collier's note on this idiom. To the examples alleged by Mr. Dyce, the three following may be added; whereof the last, after the opinion of Sir John Harington, rightly refers the origin of the metaphor to wrestling:
"The Divell hath them on the hip, he may easily bring them to anything."--Michael and the Dragon, by D. Dike, p. 328. (Workes, London, 1635).
"If he have us at the advantage, on the hip as we say, it is no great matter then to get service at our hands."--Andrewes, "A Sermon preached before the King's Majesty at Whitehall, 1617," Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology, vol. iv. p. 365.
"Full oft the valiant knight his hold doth shift, And with much prettie sleight, the same doth slippe; In fine he doth applie one speciall drift, Which was to get the Pagan on the hippe: And hauing caught him right, he doth him lift, By nimble sleight, and in such wise doth trippe: That downe he threw him, and his fall was such, His head-piece was the first that ground did tuch." Sir John Harington's Translation of Orlando Furioso, Booke xlvi. Stanza 117.
In some editions, the fourth line is printed "namely to get," &c., with other variations in the spelling of the rest of the stanza.
W. R. ARROWSMITH.
(To be continued.)
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LORD COKE.
Turning over some old books recently, my attention was strongly drawn to the following:
"The Lord Coke, his Speech and Charge, with a Discouerie of the Abuses and Corruptions of Officers. 8vo. Lond. N. Butter, 1607."
This curious piece appears to have been published by one R. P.[1], who describes himself, in his dedication to the Earl of Exeter,