Notes and Queries, Number 04, November 24, 1849 | Page 5

was _sudden gust
of wind_, and figuratively sudden gusts of passion, or fitful and
impetuous action, is evident from the following passages:--
"Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd Wreck to the seamen, tempest
to the field, Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, Gust and foul
flaws to herdsmen and to herds." _Venus and Adonis._
"Like a great sea-mark standing every flaw." _Coriolanus_, act v. sc.
iii.
"--patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw." _Hamlet_, act v. sc. i.
"Like to the glorious sun's transparent beams Do calm the fury of this
mad-bred flaw." _3d Pt. Henry VI._, act iii. sc. i.
"--these flaws and starts (impostors to true fear)." _Macbeth_, act iv. sc.
iv.
"Falling in the flaws of her own youth, hath blistered her report."
_Meas. for Meas._, act ii. sc. iii.
So far for the poet's acceptation of its meaning.
Thus also Lord Surrey:--
"And toss'd with storms, with _flaws_, with wind, with weather."
And Beaumont and Fletcher, in _The Pilgrim_:--
"What _flaws_, and whirles of weather, Or rather storms, have been
aloft these three days."
Shakspeare followed the popular meteorology of his time, as will
appear from the following passage from a little ephemeris then very
frequently reprinted:--
"De Repentinis Ventis.
"8. Typhon, Plinio, Vortex, aliis Turbo, et vibratus Ecnephias, de nube
gelida (ut dictum est) abruptum aliquid sæpe numero secum voluit,
ruinamque suam illo pondere aggravat: quem repentinum flatum à nube
prope terram et mare depulsum, definuerunt quidam, ubi in gyros
rotatur, et proxima (ut monuimus) verrit, suáque vi sursum
raptat."--MIZALDUS, _Ephemeridis Æris Perpetuus: seu Rustica
tempestatum Astrologia_, 12º Lutet. 1584.

I have sometimes thought that Shakspeare may have written:--
"As flaws cong_est_ed in the spring of day."
It is an easy thing to have printed cong_eal_ed for that word, and
congest occurs in _A Lover's Complaint_. Still I think change
unnecessary.
Has the assertion made in _An Answer to Mr. Pope's Preface to
Shakspeare_, by a Strolling Player, 1729, respecting the destruction of
the poet's MSS. papers, been ever verified? If that account is authentic,
it will explain the singular dearth of all autograph remains of one who
must have written so much. As the pamphlet is not common, I
transcribe the essential passage:--
"How much it is to be lamented that Two large Chests full of this
GREAT MAN'S loose papers and Manuscripts in the hands of an
ignorant Baker of WARWICK (who married one of the descendants
from Shakspear), were carelessly scattered and thrown about as Garret
Lumber and Litter, to {54} the particular knowledge of the late _Sir
William Bishop_; till they were all consum'd in the general Fire and
Destruction of that Town."
S.W.S.
Mickleham, Nov. 14. 1849.
[We cannot insert the interesting Query which our correspondent has
forwarded on the subject of the disappearance of Shakespeare's MSS.
without referring to the ingenious suggestion upon that subject so
skilfully brought forward by the Rev. Joseph Hunter in his _New
Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakspeare_, vol. i. p.
105.:--"That the entire disappearance of all manuscripts of Shakspeare,
so entire that no writing of his remains except his name, and only one
letter ever addressed to him, is in some way connected with the
religious turn which his posterity took, in whose eyes there would be
much to be lamented in what they must, I fear, have considered a
prostitution of the noble talents which had been given him."]
* * * * *
FOOD OF THE PEOPLE.--BILLS OF FARE IN 1683--HUMBLE
PIE.
The food of the people must always be regarded as an important
element in estimating the degree of civilization of a nation, and its
position in the social scale. Mr. Macaulay, in his masterly picture of the

state of England at the period of the accession of James II., has not
failed to notice this subject as illustrative of the condition of the
working classes of that day. He tells us that meat, viewed relatively
with wages, was "so dear that hundreds of thousands of families
scarcely knew the taste of it.... The great majority of the nation lived
almost entirely on rye, barley, and oats." (_Hist. Eng._ vol. i. p. 418.,
4th ed.)
It is not uninteresting to inquire (and having found, it is worth making a
note of) what sort of fare appeared on the tables of the upper and
middle classes,--who, unlike their poorer neighbours, were in a
condition to gratify their gastronomic preferences in the choice and
variety of their viands,--with the view of determining whether the
extraordinary improvement which has taken place in the food of the
labouring population has been equally marked in that of the wealthier
orders.
Pepys, who was unquestionably a lover of good living, and never tired
of recording his feastings off "brave venison pasty,"