Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 | Page 8

these {404} editors, they would no more have hesitated in accepting Malone's correction than they would object to the same correction in the misprint I am about to point out; viz.
"Two planks were pointed out by the witnesses, viz. one with a knot in it, and another which was piered with strips of wood," &c.--Saunders's Newsletter, April 9th, 3rd page, 1st col.
The Passage in "King Henry VIII.," Act III. Sc. 2. (Vol. vii., pp. 5. 111. 183.).--Is an old Shakspearian to talk rashly in "N. & Q." without being called to account? "If 'we can,'" says MR. SINGER, "'by no means part with have,' we must interpolate been after it, to make it any way intelligible, to the marring of the verse." Now, besides the passage in the same scene--
----"my loyalty, Which ever has, and ever shall be growing,"
pointed out by your Leeds correspondent, there is another equally in point in All's Well that Ends Well, Act II. Sc. 5., which, being in prose, settles the question as to whether the omission of the past participle after the auxiliary was customary in Shakspeare's time. It is Lafeu's farewell to Parolles:
"Farewell, Monsieur: I have spoken better of you, than you have or will deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil."
Either this is "unintelligible," and "we must interpolate" deserved, or (the only possible alternative) all three passages are free from MR. SINGER'S objection.
C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.
Birmingham.
On a Passage in "Macbeth."--Macbeth (Act I. Sc. 7.) says:
"I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on the other."
Should not the third line be--
"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its sell!"
Sell is saddle (Latin, sella; French, selle), and is used by Spenser in this sense.
"O'erleaping itself" is manifest nonsense; whereas the whole passage has evident reference to horsemanship; and to "vault" is "to carry one's body cleverly over anything of a considerable height, resting one hand upon the thing itself,"--exactly the manner in which some persons mount a horse, resting one hand on the pommel of the saddle.
It would then be perfectly intelligible, thus--
"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its saddle (sell), And falls on the other (side of the horse)."
Does MR. COLLIER'S "New Text," or any other old copy, prove this?
S. SINGLETON.
Greenwich.
* * * * *
MINOR NOTES.
Robert Weston.--I copy the following from a letter of R. L. Kingston to Dr. Ducarel in Nichols's Literary History, vol. iii. p. 629.:
"Robert Weston was Lord of Manor of Kilmington in Devon, and divided his estate among four daughters, reserving to the eldest son the royalties of his courts. In his will or deed of settlement is this clause:--'That the Abbot of Newnhams, near Axminster, had nothing to do in the highway any further than to his land of Studhays, and that he should stand without the court gate of his land of Studhays, and take his right ear in his left hand, and put his right arm next to his body under his left across, and so cast his reap-hook from him; and so far he shall come.'"
BALLIOLENSIS.
Sonnet on the Rev. Joseph Blanco White.--Some years ago, I copied the following sonnet from a newspaper. Can you say where it first made its appearance? After the annexed testimony of Coleridge, it is needless to say anything in its praise.
"SONNET ON THE REV. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.
Mysterious Night! When our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came, And lo! Creation widen'd in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd Within thy beams, O Sun! Or who could find, Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect, stood reveal'd, That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we then shun death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive--wherefore not life?"
Coleridge is said to have pronounced this "The finest and most grandly conceived in our language; at least, it is only in Milton's and in Wordsworth's sonnets that I recollect any rival."
BALLIOLENSIS.
English and American Booksellers.--It is rather curious to note, that whilst English booksellers are emulously vying with one another to publish editions of Uncle Toms, Queechys, Wide Wide Worlds, &c., they neglect to issue English works which the superior shrewdness of {405} Uncle Sam deems worthy of reprinting. Southey's Chronicle of the Cid, which was published by Longman in 1808, and not since printed in England, was brought out in a very handsome octavo form at Lowell, U. S., in 1846. And this, the "first American edition," as it is called on the title-page, can be readily procured from the booksellers in London; whereas the