Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 | Page 6

of giving it such a
designation as checks; which word, nevertheless, is most happily
characteristic of it.
3. Because, as before stated, Aristotle's checks, being the restrictive and
regulating portion of Aristotle's Ethics, is necessarily a more
diametrical antithesis to Ovid (and his laxities).
4. Because I look upon the use of this phrase as one of those nice and
scarcely perceptible touches by which Shakspeare was content rather to
hint at, than to disclose his knowledge,--one of those effects whereby
he makes a single word supply the place of a treatise.
With these opinions, I cannot but look upon this threatened change of
checks into ethics, as wholly unwarrantable, and I now protest against it
as earnestly as, upon a former occasion, I did against the alteration of
sickles into shekels, or, still worse, into cycles or into circles. It is with
great satisfaction I compare four different views taken of this word by

MR. COLLIER, viz.--in the note to the text of his octavo edition of
Shakspeare;--in an additional note in vol. i., page cclxxxiv. of that
edition;--in the first announcement of his annotated folio in the
Athenæum newspaper, Jan. 31st, 1852,--and finally (after my remarks
upon the word in "N. & Q."), his virtual reinstatement of the original
sickle (till then supposed a palpable and undeniable misprint) at page
46. of Notes and Emendations, together with the production, suo motu,
of an independent reference in support of my position.
To return to this present substitution of ethics for checks, a very
singular circumstance connected with it is the ignoring, by both MR.
COLLIER and by the critic in the Gentleman's Magazine, of Sir
William Blackstone's original claim to the suggestion, by prior
publication of upwards of half a century. At that time, notwithstanding
the great learning and acuteness of the proposer, the alteration was
rejected! And shall we now be less wise than our fathers? Shall
we--misled by the prestige of a few drops of rusty ink fashioned into
letters of formal cut--place implicit credence in emendations whose
only claim to faith, like that of the Mormon scriptures, is that nobody
knows whence they came? {498}
In the passage I have quoted from Philemon Holland, there may be
observed two peculiarities which are generally supposed to be
exclusively Shakspearian: one is the beautiful application of the word
"touch"--the other the phrase "discourse of reason." Where this last
expression occurs in Hamlet, it narrowly escaped emendation at the
hands of Gifford! (See Mr. Knight's note, in his illustrated edition of
Shakspeare.) It is the true Aristotelian [Greek: dianoia].
There is also a third peculiarity of expression in the same quotation, in
the use of the word delay in the sense of diluere, to dilute, temper, allay.
There are at least two passages in Shakspeare's plays where the word is
used in this sense, but which appear to have been overlooked by his
glossarists. The first is in All's Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Sc. 3.,
where the French locals are moralising upon Bertram's profligate
pursuit of Diana:
"Now God delay our rebellion--as we are ourselves, what are we?"

The second is in Cymbeline, Act V. Sc. 4., where Jupiter tempers his
love with crosses, in order to make his gifts--
"The more delayed, delighted."
A. E. B.
* * * * *
Minor Notes.
Portrait of Luther.--A portrait of Luther, perhaps original, certainly
nearly cotemporary with the Reformer, possessing many excellent
qualities, was some time since shown me. It is in the possession of Mr.
Horne, of Morton in Marsh, Gloucestershire: it was received by him
from an elderly gentleman still living in London, who purchased it
many years since at a sale of pictures. The picture is very dark, on
canvass, with a black frame having a narrow gilt moulding. As the
existence of this portrait is perhaps not known, mention of the fact
might interest some of your readers. The picture, including frame, is
perhaps in size thirty inches by twenty-four; and the age of the sitter,
whose features are delineated with remarkable effects is probably under
fifty years.
B. H. C.
Randle Wilbraham.--Randle Wilbraham, Esq., the grandfather of Lord
Skelmersdale, who died upon the 3rd of April last, was a lawyer of
great eminence, and held the office of treasurer of Lincoln's Inn. The
university of Oxford conferred, by diploma, the degree of D.C.L. upon
him in these notable terms:
"Placuit nobis in Convocatione die 14 mensis Aprilis 1761, solenniter
convocatis spectatissimum Ranulphum Wilbraham, Arm. Coll. Ænæi
Nasi quondam commensalem, in agendis causis pro diversis
Tribunalibus per multos retro annos hodieque versatissimum,
Subsenescallum nostrum et Consiliarium fidissimum, Gradu Doctoris
in Jure Civili insignire. Cujus quidem hæc præcipua ac prope singularis

et est, et semper fuit, quod propriis ingenii et industriæ suæ viribus
innixus Aulici favoris nec appetens,