Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 | Page 3

1570.
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"Behold how ready we are, how willingly the women of Sparta will die and live with their husbands."--The Pilgrimage of Kings and Princes, p. 29.
Except in Shakspeare's behalf, it would not have been worth while to exemplify so unambiguous a phrase. The like remark may also be extended to the next word that falls under consideration.
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Kindly, in accordance with kind, viz. nature. Thus, the love of a parent for a child, or the converse, is kindly: one without natural affection ([Greek: astorgos]) is unkind, kindless, as in--
"Remorselesse, treacherous, letcherous, kindles villaine." Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.
Thence kindly expanded into its wider meaning of general benevolence. So under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions "genuinus," and by Mr. Boyer rightly translated "les fruits de la terre chaqu'un selon son espèce;" for which Pegge takes him to task, and interprets kindly "fair and good," through mistake or preference adopting the acquired and popular, in lieu of the radical and elementary meaning of the word. (Anonymiana, pp. 380--1. Century VIII. No. LXXXI.) The conjunction of this adjective with gird in a passage of King Henry VI. has sorely gravelled MR. COLLIER: twice over he essays, with equal success, to expound its purport. First, loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then that kindly is said ironically; because there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) MR. COLLIER'S note concludes with a supposition that gird may possibly be a misprint. This is the misery! Men will sooner suspect the text than their own understanding or researches. In Act I. Sc. 1. of Coriolanus, dissatisfied with his previous note, MR. COLLIER tries again, and thinks a kindly gird may mean a gentle reproof. That the reader may be able to judge what it does mean, it will be necessary to quote the king's gird, who thus administers a kindly rebuke to the malicious preacher against the sin of malice, i.e. chastens him with his own rod:
"King. Fie, uncle Beauford, I have heard you preach, That mallice was a great and grievous sinne: And will not you maintaine the thing you teache, But prove a chief offender in the same?
Warn. Sweet king: the bishop hath a kindly gyrd." First Part of King Henry VI., Act III. Sc. 1. 1st Fol.
A gird, akin to, in keeping with, fitting, proper to the cardinal's calling; an evangelical gird for an evangelical man: what more kindly? Kindly, connatural, homogeneous. But now for a bushel of examples, some of which will surely avail to insense the reader in the purport of this epithet, if my explanation does not:
"God in the congregation of the gods, what more proper and kindly"?--Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 212. Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
"And that (pride) seems somewhat kindly too, and to agree with this disease (the plague). That pride which swells itself should end in a tumour or swelling, as, for the most part, this disease doth."--Id., p. 228.
"And so, you are found; and they, as the children of perdition should be, are lost. Here are you: and where are they? Gone to their own place, to Judas their brother. And, as is most kindly, the sons to the father of wickedness; there to be plagued with him for ever."--Id., vol. iv. p. 98.
"For whatsoever, as the Son of God, He may do, it is kindly for Him, as the Son of Man, to save the sons of men."--Id., p. 253.
"There cannot be a more kindly consequence than this, our not failing from their not failing: we do not, because they do not."--Id., p. 273.
"And here falls in kindly this day's design, and the visible 'per me,' that happened on it."--Id., p. 289.
"And having then made them, it is kindly that viscera misericordi? should be over those opera that came de visceribus."--Id., p. 327.
"The children came to the birth, and the right and kindly copulative were; to the birth they came, and born they were: in a kind consequence who would look for other?"--Id., p. 348.
"For usque adeo proprium est operari Spiritui, ut nisi operetur, nec sit. So kindly (proprium) it is for the spirit to be working as if It work not, It is not."--Id., vol. iii. p. 194.
"And when he had overtaken, for those two are but presupposed, the more kindly to bring in [Greek: epelabeto], when, I say,