Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 | Page 4

aventure, D'une âme plus
commune ai pris quelque teinture." Héraclius, Act III. Sc. 1.
"The house ought to dye all the surrounding country with a strength of
colouring, and to an extent proportioned to its own importance."--Life
of Wordsworth, i. 355.
Another place on which I had offered a conjecture, and which MR. A.
takes under his patronage, is "Clamor your tongues" (Winter's Tale, Act
IV. Sc. 4.) and in proof of clamor being the right word, he quotes
passages from a book printed in 1542, in which are chaumbreed and
chaumbre, in the sense of restraining. I see little resemblance here to
clamor, and he does not say that he would substitute chaumbre. He
says, "Most judiciously does Nares reject Gifford's corruption of this
word into charm [it was Grey not Gifford]; nor will the suffrage of the
'clever' old commentator," &c. It is very curious, only that we
criticasters are so apt to overrun our game, that the only place where
"charm your tongue" really occurs, seems to have escaped MR.
COLLIER. In Othello, Act V. Sc. 2., Iago says to his wife, "Go to,
charm your tongue;" and she replies, "I will not charm my tongue." My
conjecture was that clamor was clam, or, as it was usually spelt, clem,
to press or restrain; and to this I still adhere.
"When my entrails Were clemmed with keeping a perpetual fast."
Massinger, Rom. Actor., Act II. Sc. 1.
"I cannot eat stones and turfs: say, what will he clem me and my
followers?"--Jonson, Poetaster, Act I. Sc. 2.
"Hard is the choice when the valiant must eat their arms or clem." Id.,
Every Man Out of his Humour Act III. Sc. 6.
In these places of Jonson, clem is usually rendered starve; but it appears

to me, from the kindred of the term, that it is used elliptically. Perhaps,
instead of "Till famine cling thee" (Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.), Shakspeare
wrote "Till {616} famine clem thee." While in the region of conjecture,
I will add that coasting, in Troilus and Cressida (Act IV. Sc. 5.), is, in
my opinion, simply accosting, lopped in the usual way by aphæresis;
and that "the still-peering air" in All's Well that Ends Well (Act III. Sc.
2.), is, by the same figure, "the still-appearing air," i. e. the air that
appears still and silent, but that yet "sings with piercing."
One conjecture more, and I have done. I do not like altering the text
without absolute necessity; but there was always a puzzle to me in this
passage:
"Where I find him, were it At home, upon my brother's guard, even
there, Against the hospitable canon, would I Wash my fierce hand in 's
blood." Coriol., Act I. Sc. 10.
Why should Aufidius speak thus of a brother who is not mentioned
anywhere else in the play or in Plutarch? It struck me one day that
Shakspeare might have written, "Upon my household hearth;" and on
looking into North's Plutarch, I found that when Coriolanus went to the
house of Aufidius, "he got him up straight to the chimney-hearth, and
sate him downe." The poet who adhered so faithfully to his Plutarch
may have wished to preserve this image, and, chimney not being a very
poetic word, may have substituted household, or some equivalent term.
Again I say this is all but conjecture.
THOMAS KEIGHTLEY.
P.S.--It is really very annoying to have to reply to unhandsome and
unjust accusations. The REV. MR. ARROWSMITH first transposes
two lines of Shakspeare, and then, by notes of admiration, holds me up
as a mere simpleton; and then A. E. B. charges me with having pirated
from him my explanation of a passage in Love's Labour's Lost, Act V.
Sc. 2. Let any one compare his (in "N. & Q.," Vol. vi., p. 297.) with
mine (Vol. vii., p. 136.), and he will see the utter falseness of the
assertion. He makes contents the nom. to dies, taken in its ordinary
sense (rather an unusual concord). I take dyes in the sense of tinges,

imbues with, and make it governed of zeal. But perhaps it is to the
full-stop at presents that the "that's my thunder!" applies. I answer, that
that was a necessary consequence of the sense in which I had taken dies,
and that their must then refer to things maugre MR. ARROWSMITH.
And when he says that I "do him the honour of requoting the line with
which he had supported it," I merely observe that it is the line
immediately following, and that I have eyes and senses as well as A. E.
B.
A. E. B. deceives himself, if he thinks that literary fame is to be
acquired in this way. I do not much approve either of the manner in
which,