Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 | Page 2

a collection of which that learned and worthy
physician is eminent? Fy, fy! correct and write--
'Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone, And books for Mead, and
butterflies for Sloane.'
{542}
"Sir Hans Sloane is known to have the finest collection of butterflies in
England, and perhaps in the world; and if rare monkish manuscripts are
for Hearne only, how can rarities be for Sloane, unless thou specifyest
what sort of rarities? O thou numskull!"--No. 2., pp. 15--16.
The correction was evidently an improvement, and therefore Pope
wisely accepted the benefit, and was the channel through which it was
conveyed; and the passage accordingly now stands as altered by the
letter-writer.
JAMES CROSSLEY.
* * * * *

NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS.
(Continued from p. 522.)
Dare, to lurk, or cause to lurk; used both transitively and intransitively.
Apparently the root of dark and dearn.
"Here, quod he, it ought ynough suffice, Five houres for to slepe upon a
night: But it were for an olde appalled wight, As ben thise wedded men,
that lie and dare, As in a fourme sitteth a wery hare."
Tyrwhitt's utterly unwarranted adoption of Speght's interpretation is
"Dare, v. Sax. to stare." The reader should always be cautious how he
takes upon trust a glossarist's sly fetch to win a cheap repute for
learning, and over-ride inquiry by the mysterious letters Sax. or
Ang.-Sax. tacked on to his exposition of an obscure word. There is no
such Saxon vocable as dare, to stare. Again, what more frequent
blunder than to confound a secondary and derivative sense of a word
with its radical and primary--indeed, sometimes to allow the former to
usurp the precedence, and at length altogether oust the latter: hence it
comes to pass, that we find dare is one while said to imply peeping and
prying, another while trembling or crouching; moods and actions
merely consequent or attendant upon the elementary signification of the
word:
"I haue an hoby can make larkys to dare." Skelton's Magnifycence, vol.
i. p.269. l. 1358., Dyce's edition;
on which line that able, but therein mistaken editor's note is, "to dare, i.
e. to be terrified, to tremble" (he however also adds, it means to lurk, to
lie hid, and remits his reader to a note at p. 379., where some most
pertinent examples of its true and only sense are given), to which add
these next:
" . . let his grace go forward, And dare vs with his cap, like larkes."
First Fol., Henry VIII., Act III, Sc. 2.
"Thay questun, thay quellun, By frythun by fellun, The dere in the

dellun, Thay droupun and daren". The Anturs of Arthur at the
Tarnewathelan, St. IV. p. 3. Camden Society's Publications.
"She sprinkled vs with bitter juice of vncouth herbs, and strake The
awke end of hir charmed rod vpon our heades, and spake Words to the
former contrarie. The more she charm'd, the more Arose we vpward
from the ground on which we darde before." The XIIII. Booke of
Ouid's Metamorphosis, p. 179. Arthur Golding's translation: London,
1587.
"Sothely it dareth hem weillynge this thing; that heuenes weren
before," &c.
And again, a little further on:
"Forsothe yee moste dere, one thing dare you nougt (or be not
unknowen): for one day anentis God as a thousande yeeris, and a
thousande yeer as one day."--C^m 3^m Petre 2., Wycliffe's translation:
in the Latin Vulgate, latet and lateat respectively; in the original,
[Greek: lanthanei] and [Greek: lanthanetô]. Now the book is before me,
I beg to furnish MR. COLLIER with the references to his usage of terre,
mentioned in Todd's Dictionary, but not given (Collier's Shakspeare,
vol. iv. p. 65., note), namely, 6th cap. of Epistle to Ephesians, prop.
init.; and 3rd of that to Colossians, prop. fin.
* * * * *
Die and live.--This hysteron proteron is by no means uncommon: its
meaning is, of course, the same as live and die, i. e. subsist from the
cradle to the grave:
" . . . Will you sterner be. Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?"
First Fol., As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 5.
All manner of whimsical and farfetched constructions have been put by
the commentators upon this very homely sentence. As long as the
question was, whether their wits should have licence to go

a-woolgathering or no, one could feel no great concern to interfere: but
it appears high time to come to Shakspeare's rescue, when MR.
COLLIER'S "clever" old commentator, with some little variation in the
letters, and not much less in the sense, reads "kills" for dies; but then, in
the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 3., the same "clever" authority
changes "cride-game (cride I ame), said I well?" into "curds and cream,
said I well?"--an