Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 | Page 3

these--for that by
themselves they will not utter--to mingle and to card with the Apostles'
doctrine, &c., that at the least yet he may so vent them."--One of the
Sermons upon the Second Commandment, preached in the Parish
Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on the Ninth of January, A.D.
MDXCII.: Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 55. Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
* * * * *
Trash, to shred or lop.--So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with
it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of
{567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why
should a man of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to
the dogmatist Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must
have been marvellously small, or he could never have imagined them to
overtop one another in a horizontal course. Overrun, overshoot,
overslip, are terms in hunting, overtop never; except perchance in the
vocabulary of the wild huntsman of the Alps. Trash occurs as a verb in
the sense above given, Act I. Sc. 2. of the Tempest: "Who t'aduance,
and who to trash for over-topping." I have never met with the verb in
that sense elsewhere, but overtop is evermore the appropriate term in
arboriculture. To quote examples of that is needless. Of it
metaphorically applied, just as in Shakspeare, take the following
example:
"Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in a manner doth
overtop the rest, and like a foregrown member depriveth the other of
their proportion of growth."--Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., Lib.
Ang.-Cath. Theol.
Have we not the substantive trash in the sense of shreddings, at p. 542.
book iii. of a Discourse of Forest Trees, by John Evelyn? The extract
that contains the word is this:

"Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one
stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to
prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and
ends with trash and short sticks, which had been omitted in the former
statute."
Possibly some of the statutes referred to by Evelyn may contain
examples of the verb. In the meantime it will not be impertinent to
remark, that what appears to be nothing more than a dialectic variety of
the word, namely trouse, is of every-day use in this county of Hereford
for trimmings of hedges; that it is given by Grose as a verb in use in
Warwickshire for trimming off the superfluous branches; and lastly,
that it is employed as a substantive to signify shreddings by Philemon
Holland, who, if I rightly remember, was many years head master of
Coventry Grammar School:
"Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with stone; and for want
thereof, laid with green willow bastons, and for default of them, with
vine cuttings, or such trousse, so that they lie halfe a foot thicke."--The
Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's Naturall History, chap. xi. p. 513.:
London, 1634.
Trash no one denies to be a kennel term for hampering a dog, but it
does not presently follow that the word bore no other signification;
indeed, there is no more fruitful mother of confusion than homonomy.
* * * * *
Clamor, to curb, restrain (the tongue):
"Clamor your tongues, and not a word more." The Winter's Tale, Act
IV. Sc. 4.
Most judiciously does NARES reject Gifford's corruption of this word
into charm, nor will the suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one
jot contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe
discipline of many years' study, and the daily access of accumulating
knowledge, have schooled into a wholesome sense of their extreme

fallibility in such matters. Without adding any comment, I now quote,
for the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts:
"For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he chaumbreed
his tongue in season, ther should ere l[=o]g bee one oxe the fewer for
hym."--Apoptheymis of Erasmus, translated by Nicolas Vdall,
MCCCCCXLII, the First Booke, p. 10.
"From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he refrein or chaumbre the
tauntying of his tongue."--Id., p. 76.
After so many Notes, one Query. In the second folio edition of
Shakspeare (my first folio wants the whole play), I find in Cymbeline,
Act V. Sc. 3., the next beautiful passage:
"Post. Still going? This is a lord: Oh noble misery To be ith' field, and
aske what newes of me: To-day how many would have given their
honors To have sav'd their carkasses? Tooke heele to doo't, And yet
dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd, Could not find death, where I
did heare him groane, Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly
monster, 'Tis strange he hides