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

him in fresh cups, soft beds, Sweet words;
or hath moe ministers then we That draw his knives ith' war. Well I will
finde him: For being now a favourer to the Britaine, No more a Britaine,
I have resum'd againe The part I came in."
In the antepenultimate line, Britaine was more than a century ago
changed by 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