Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 | Page 2

all is made clear. {178}
After further argument from Bertram, Diana answers:
"I see that men make ropes in such a scarre That we'll forsake ourselves."
This Rowe altered to "make hopes in such affairs," and Malone to "make hopes in such a scene." Others, and among them Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier, retain the old reading, and vainly endeavour to give it a meaning, understanding the word scarre to signify a rock or cliff, with which it has nothing to do in this passage. There can be no doubt that "make ropes" is a misprint for "make hopes," which is evidently required by the context, "that we'll forsake ourselves." It then only remains to show what is meant by a scarre, which signifies here anything that causes surprise or alarm; what we should now write a scare. Shakspeare has used the same orthography, scarr'd, i.e. scared, in Coriolanus and in Winter's Tale. There is also abundant evidence that this was its old orthography, indicative of the broad sound the word then had, and which it still retains in the north. Palsgrave has both the noun and the verb in this form: "Scarre, to scar crowes, espouventail." And again, "I scarre away or feare away, as a man doth crowes or such like; je escarmouche." The French word might lead to the conclusion that a scarre might be used for a skirmish. (See Cotgrave in v. Escarmouche.) I once thought we should read "in such a warre," i.e. conflict.
In Minshen's Guide to the Tongues, we have:
"To SCARRE, videtur confictum ex sono oves vel aliud quid abigentium et terrorem illis incutientium. Gall. Ahurir ratione eadem:" vi. to feare, to fright.
Objections have been made to the expression "make hopes;" but the poet himself in King Henry VIII. has "more than I dare make faults," and repeats the phrase in one of his sonnets: surely there is nothing more singular in it than in the common French idiom, "faire des esp��rances."
S. W. SINGER.
* * * * *
GEORGE HERBERT AND THE CHURCH AT LEIGHTON BROMSWOLD.
(Vol. iii., p. 85.)
I have great pleasure in laying before your readers the following particulars, which I collected on a journey to Leighton Bromswold, undertaken for the purpose of satisfying the Query of E. H. If they will turn to A Priest to the Temple, ch. xiii., they will find the points to which, with others, my attention was more especially directed.
Leighton Church consists of a western tower, nave, north and south porches and transepts, and chancel. There are no aisles. As Prebendary of the Prebend of Leighton Ecclesia in Lincoln Cathedral, George Herbert was entitled to an estate in the parish, and it was no doubt a portion of the increase of this property that he devoted to the repairing and beautifying of the House of God, then "lying desolate," and unfit for the celebration of divine service. Good Izaak Walton, writing evidently upon hearsay information, and not of his own personal knowledge, was in error if he supposed, as from his language he appears to have done, that George Herbert almost rebuilt the church from the foundation, and he must be held to be incorrect in describing that part of it which stood as "so decayed, so little, and so useless." There are portions remaining earlier than George Herbert's time, whose work may be readily distinguished by at least four centuries; whilst at one end the porches, and at the other the piscina, of Early English date, the windows, which are of different styles, and the buttresses, afford sufficient proofs that the existing walls are the original, and that in size the church has remained unaltered for ages. As George Herbert new roofed the sacred edifice throughout, we may infer this was the chief structural repair necessary. He also erected the present tower, the font, put four windows in the chancel, and reseated the parts then used by the congregation.
Except a western organ gallery erected in 1840, two pews underneath it, and one elsewhere, these parts, the nave and transepts, remain, in all probability, exactly as George Herbert left them. The seats are all uniform, of oak, and of the good old open fashion made in the style of the seventeenth century. They are so arranged, both in the nave and in the transepts, that no person in service time turns his back either upon the altar or upon the minister. (See "NOTES AND QUERIES," Vol. ii., p. 397.) The pulpit against the north, and the reading-desk, with clerk's seat attached, against the south side of the chancel-arch, are both of the same height, and exactly similar in every respect; both have sounding-boards. The font is placed at the west end of the nave, and, together with its cover, is part of George Herbert's work; it stands on a single step,