Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 | Page 4

Hanmer into Roman, therefore retained by Warburton, again rejected by Steevens and Johnson, once more replaced by Knight and Collier, with one of his usual happy notes by the former of the two, without comment by the latter, finally left unnoticed by Dyce. My Query then is this. What amount of obtuseness will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tinkering and cobbling the noblest passages of thought that ever issued from mortal brain, while at the same time he stumbles and bungles in sentences of that simplicity and grammatical clearness, as not to tax the powers of a third-form schoolboy to explain?[1] If editors, commentators, {568} critics, and all the countless throng who are ambitious to daub with their un-tempered mortar, or scribble their names upon the most majestic edifice of genius that the world ever saw, lack the little discernment necessary to interpret aright the above extract from Cymbeline, for the last hundred years racked and tortured in vain, let them at length learn henceforth to distrust their judgment altogether.
W. R. ARROWSMITH.
P.S.--In article of No. 180. p. 353., a rather important misprint occurs, viz. date of 4to. King Richard II. with unusual title-page, which should be 1608, not 1605. Other little errors the reader may silently amend for himself.
[Footnote 1: In a passage from L. L. L., lately winnowed in the pages of "N. & Q.," divers attempts at elucidation (whereof not one, in my judgment, was successful) having been made, it was gravely, almost magisterially proposed by one of the disputants, to corrupt the concluding lines (MR. COLLIER having already once before corrupted the preceding ones by substituting a plural for a singular verb, in which lay the true key to the right construction) by altering "their" the pronoun into "there" the adverb, because (shade of Murray!) the commentator could not discover of what noun "their" could possibly be the pronoun in these lines following:
"When great things labouring perish in their birth, Their form confounded makes most form in mirth."
And it was left to MR. KEIGHTLEY to bless the world with the information that it was "things."]
* * * * *
VERNEY PAPERS--THE CAPUCHIN FRIARS, ETC.
In the appendix to Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, edited by Mr. Bruce for the Camden Society in 1845, are "Notes written in a Cipher," which Mr. Bruce gives in the hope that the ingenuity of some reader will discover their meaning. I venture thus to decypher the same:
"The Capuchin's house to be dissolued. No extracts of letters to be aloued in this house. The prince is now come to Greenhich three lette. Three greate ships staied in France. Gersea a letter from Lord S^t Albones. ￡11 per diem Hull. The king's answert to our petition about the militia. If a king offer to kil himselfe, wee must not only advise but wrest the weapon from. A similitude of a depilat. Consciences corrupted."
I ought to state that in one or two instances the wrong cypher has evidently been used by mistake, and this has of course increased the difficulty of decyphering the notes.
With reference to the note "The Capuchins' House to be dissolued," may I be allowed to refer to the following votes in the House of Commons, of the date 26th February, 1641-2:
"Ordered, That Mr. Peard, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Pideaux, Mr. Selden, Mr. Young, Mr. Hill, do presently withdraw, to peruse the statutes now in force against priests and Jesuits.
"Ordered, That Mr. Whittacre, Mr. Morley, do presently go to Denmarke House.
"Resolved, That the Capuchines shall be forthwith apprehended and taken into safe custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms attending on this house; and there kept till this house take farther order."
The Capuchins were under the protection of the Queen Henrietta Maria; Denmark House was the name by which Somerset House was at the period known.
Under date 2nd March, 1641-2, are the following entries in the Commons' Journal:
"Mr. Holles brings this answer from the French Ambassador, That the Capuchins being sent hither by Articles of Treaty between the Two Crowns, he durst not of himself send them without Order from the King his Master, or the King and Queen here: And said farther, That the Queen had left an express Command for their stay here; and that he would be ever ready to do any good Office for this House, and to keep a good Correspondency between the Two Crowns; and if this House pleased, he would undertake to keep them safe Prisoners at Somersett House; and that the chapel there shall have the doors locked, and no Mass be said there.
"Ordered, That Mr. Hollis do acquaint the French Ambassador, that this House doth accept of his Offer in securing the Persons of the Capuchins, till this House take farther Order: and that the Doors be locked,