Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 | Page 2

for the task), under the title of
Monumenta Anglicana, and which is intended to be a medium for
preserving the inscriptions in every church in the kingdom. There can
be no doubt of the high value and utility of such a work, especially if
accompanied by a well-arranged index of names; and I have no doubt
MR. PEACOCK, and indeed many others of your valued
correspondents, will be induced to {218} assist in the good cause, by
sending memoranda of inscriptions to Mr. Dunkin.
L. J.
Plymouth.
The following letter from the REV. E. S. TAYLOR proposes a Society
for the purpose:--

I for one shall be happy to co-operate with MR. PEACOCK in this
useful work; and I trust that, through the valuable medium of "NOTES
AND QUERIES," many will be induced to offer their assistance. Could
not a Society be formed for the purpose, so that mutual correspondence
might take place?
E. S. TAYLOR.
Martham, Norfolk.
We doubt the necessity, and indeed the advisability, of the formation of
any such Society.
MR. PEACOCK (antè., p. 117.) has already wisely suggested, that "in
time a copy of every inscription in every church in England might be
ready for reference in our National Library," and we have as little doubt
that the MS. department of the British Museum is the proper place of
deposit for such records, as that the trustees would willingly accept the
charge of them on the recommendation of their present able and active
Keeper of the Manuscripts. What he, and what the trustees would
require, would be some security that the documents were what they
professed to be; and this might very properly be accomplished through
the agency of such a Society as MR. TAYLOR proposes, if there did
not already exist a Society upon whom such a duty might very safely
be devolved:--and have we not, in the greater energy which that Society
has lately displayed, evidence that it would undertake a duty for which
it seems pre-eminently fitted? We allude to the Society of Antiquaries.
The anxiety of Lord Mahon, its president, to promote the efficiency of
that Society, has recently been made evident in many ways; and we
cannot doubt that he would sanction the formation of a sub-committee
for the purpose of assisting in collecting and preserving a record of all
existing monuments, or that he would find a lack of able men to serve
on such a committee, when he numbers among the official or active
Fellows of the Society gentlemen so peculiarly fitted to carry out this
important national object, as Mr. Hunter, Sir Charles Young, Mr. J.
Payne Collier, and Mr. Bruce.
* * * * *

Notes.
ON THE WORD "RACK" IN SHAKSPEARE'S TEMPEST.
As another illustration of the careless or superficial manner in which
the meaning of Shakspeare has been sought, allow me to call attention
to the celebrated passage in the Tempest in which the word "rack"
occurs. The passage really presents no difficulty; and the meaning of
the word, as it appears to me, might as well be settled at once and for
ever. I make this assertion, not dogmatically, but with the view of
testing the correctness of my opinion, that this is not at all a question of
etymology, but entirely one of construction. The passage reads as
follows:--
"These, our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted
into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabrick of this vision, The
cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the
great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this
insubstantial pageant, faded, Leave not a rack behind."--Tempest, Act
IV. Sc. 1.
As I have expressed my opinion that this is not at all a question of
etymology, I shall not say more in reference to this view of the case
than that "rack," spelt as in Shakspeare, is a word in popular and
every-day use in the phrase "rack and ruin;" that we have it in the term
"rack off," as applied to wine, meaning to take from the rack, or, in
other words, "to leave a rack" or refuse "behind," racked wine being
wine drawn from the lees; and that it is, I believe, still in use in parts of
England, meaning remains or refuse, as, in the low German, "der
Wraek" means the same thing. Misled, however, by an unusual mode of
spelling, and unacquainted with the literature of Shakspeare's age,
certain of the commentators suggested the readings of track and trace;
whereupon Horne Tooke remarks:--
"The ignorance and presumption of his commentators have shamefully
disfigured Shakspeare's text. The first folio, notwithstanding some few
palpable misprints, requires none of their alterations. Had they
understood English as well as he did, they would not have