Note 532 — Chapter VI · ‘Nicknames.’
Reading edition
There used to be an old proverb—
‘Whylst grasse doth growe oft sterves the seely steede.’
Vide Dyce’s notes to ‘All’s Well that Ends Well.’ (Shakespeare’s Works, vol. iii. p. 288.) One of the best illustrations of this word, however, is to be met with in Foxe’s Martyrology, where, describing the martyrdom of a young child not seven years old, he says: ‘The captain, perceiving the child invincible and himself vanquished, committed the silly soul, the blessed babe, the child uncherished, to the stinking prison.’ (Vol. i. p. 126, Edit. 1844.)