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

The Mad Lover, Act II. Sc. 1.
"The blackness of this season cannot miss me."
The second Maiden's Tragedy, Act V. Sc. 1.
"All three are to be had, we cannot miss any of them."--Bishop
Andrewes, "A Sermon prepared to be preached on Whit Sunday, A.D.
1622," Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology, vol. iii. p. 383.
"For these, for every 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