Volume 5 / Part 1 — ON A PASSAGE IN KING HENRY IV., PART I. ACT V. SC. 2.
Reading edition
Pursuant to my conviction that most of the obscure passages in our great poet's dramas arise from typographical errors in the early editions, I submit the following suggested correction of an error in a noble passage, which has hitherto passed unnoticed, to the candid consideration of those who can enter into the spirit of the poet, and are not pertinaciously wedded to the lapses of a very careless printer; to whom, in my opinion, the editors of the first folio confided its correction. Otherwise, we must presume they were unaccustomed to such labour, and in the hurry of active life did their best, however imperfectly.
I must be indulged with rather a long extract, that the reader may be enabled at once to judge whether the words I impugn are in harmony with the tone and spirit of Hotspur's speech.
"Enter a Messenger. Mess. My lord, here are letters for you. Hot. I cannot read them now.—— O gentlemen, the time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely, were too long, If life did ride upon a dial's point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour. An if we live, we live to tread on kings; If die, brave death, when princes die with us! Now for our consciences,—the arms are fair, When the intent of bearing them is just. Enter another Messenger. Mess. My lord, prepare; the king comes on apace. Hot. I thank him, that he cuts me from my tale, For I profess not talking: only this— Let each man do his best: and here draw I A sword, whose temper I intend to stain With the best blood that I can draw withal In the adventure of this perilous day. Now,—Esperance!—Percy!—and set on.— Sound all the lofty instruments of war, And by that musick let us all embrace: For, heaven to earth, some of us never shall A second time do such a courtesy."
What are we to understand by the words "For heaven to earth," in the last line but one? Can they be tortured, by any ingenuity, to signify, as Warburton paraphrases them, "One might wager heaven to earth"? To say nothing, of such extraordinary and unwonted ellipsis, would it not be a strange wager, and stranger thought, to enter Hotspur's mind at such a moment? I feel assured that Shakspeare wrote, and that we should read:
"Sound all the lofty instruments of war, And by that musick let us all embrace: For here on earth, some of us never shall A second time do such a courtesy."
If it should be thought that here on could not well be mistaken, even in MS., for heaven to, I reply that stranger misreadings of the compositor could be easily adduced; and that even in the preceding page we have one at any rate more wide of the mark, where supposition is printed in both the folios for suspicion.
How this extraordinary reading should have hitherto escaped suspicion, I am at a loss to imagine, and feel assured that no one who is competent to enter into the spirit of this exquisitely conceived passage, which breathes the true expression of heroic pathos, will attempt a vindication of the old reading.
S. W. SINGER.
Minor Notes.
"Thirty days hath September."
—The unknown author of Thirty days hath September may be fairly described as the most popular versifier in the history of English literature. I believe he was rather a translator than an author, and that both the Latin text and the English version are of very early date. Be it as it may, no one can dispute its merit as a specimen of mnemonic verse.
On the list of claimants to the honour in question it is my wish to place, but without advocating the cause of either, 1. Richard Grafton, citizen of London; and 2. Arthur Hopton, A.B. Oxon., the "miracle of his age for learning."
(1.) "A rule to knowe how many dayes euery moneth in the yere hath.
Thirty dayes hath Nouember, Aprill, June and September. February hath .XXVIII. alone. And all the rest haue XXXI." Graftons Abridgement of the chronicles of Englande, 1570. 8vo.
(2.) "The which ordination of the moneths, and position of dayes [by Julius Cæsar], is vsed to this present time, according to these verses:
'Sep. No. Iun. Ap. dato triginta: reliquis magis vno: Ni sit bissextus, Februus minor esto duobus.'
Which is,
Thirtie dayes hath September, Aprill, Iune, and November: The rest haue thirtie and one, Saue February alone. Which moneth hath but eight and twenty meere, Saue when it is bissextile, or leap-yeare." Arthur Hopton, A concordancy of yeares, 1615. 8vo. p. 60.
Wood states that Hopton left "divers copies of verses scattered in books," so that we may venture to ascribe to him the above version—but it is not the popular version.
BOLTON CORNEY.
"When found, make a Note of."
—The following poem may be considered in the light of an enlarged paraphrase on the motto of your valuable periodical. It is one of a collection of poems by John Byrom, first published in 1773. An edition was published at Leeds in the year 1814.
"A Hint to a Young Person, for his better Improvement by Reading or Conversation. "In reading authors, when you find Bright passages that strike the mind, And which perhaps you may have reason To think on at another season, Be not contented with the sight, But take them down in black and white. Such a respect is wisely shown, As makes another's sense one's own. When you're asleep upon your bed, A thought may come into your head, Which may be useful, if 'tis taken Due notice of when you are waken. Of midnight thoughts to take no heed Betrays a sleepy soul indeed; It is but dreaming in the day, To throw our nightly hours away. In conversation, when you meet With persons cheerful and discreet, That speak or quote, in prose or rhyme, Facetious things or things sublime, Observe what passes, and anon, When you get home think thereupon; Write what occurs; forget it not; A good thing sav'd is so much got. Let no remarkable event Pass with a gaping wonderment, A fool's device—'Lord, who would think!' Rather record with pen and ink Whate'er deserves attention now; For when 'tis gone you know not how, Too late you'll find that, to your cost, So much of human life is lost. Were it not for the written letter, Pray what were living men the better For all the labours of the dead? For all that Socrates e'er said? The morals brought from Heav'n to men He would have carry'd back again; 'Tis owing to his short-hand youth That Socrates does now speak truth." Vol. i. p. 59. Edit. 1814.
M.
Dublin.
The Dodo, existing Specimen of.
—A friend of mine has just informed me, on the authority of one of the principal members of the family, that at Nettlecombe Park, in Somersetshire, the seat of Sir John Trevelyan, Bt., there is now existing a stuffed specimen, entire, of the supposed extinct bird, the Dodo.
How is it that such an important fact should have escaped the notice of the principal naturalists of the country? At the Great Exhibition there was a manufactured specimen of this bird, which called forth, I believe, the encomium of Mr. Strickland and other well-known naturalists; but not a word was said about this alleged real specimen at Nettlecombe Park. There was in the same case which contained this fictitious Dodo, a cast of the head and leg from the remains now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,—the only portions, I believe, that were rescued when the entire specimen of the bird, once in that collection, was destroyed. It is said, I think, there are other remains somewhere abroad; but that there is no entire specimen of the Dodo now in existence anywhere, is, I imagine, the universal belief. I hope that you, or some of your correspondents, may be able to solve this mystery, or set my friends right should they be labouring under some mistake.
ROWLAND WINN.
A Proof that a Man can be his own Grandfather!
—I lately came across the following curious piece of genealogical reasoning which I think originally appeared in Hood's Magazine, and which I have endeavoured to illustrate by the annexed table:
George =
1 2 | ||
William = Anne = Henry ||
| | ||
| David ||
| 1 2 ||
Thomas = Jane =
There was a widow (Anne) and her daughter-in-law (Jane), and a man (George) and his son (Henry). The widow married the son, and the daughter married the father. The widow was therefore mother (in-law) to her husband's father, and consequently grandmother to her own husband (Henry). By this husband she had a son (David), to whom she was great-grandmother. Now, as the son of a great-grandmother must be either a grandfather or great uncle, this boy (David) was one or the other. He was his own grandfather! This was the case with a boy at school at Norwich.
E. N.
Memoria Technica
For the Plays of Shakspeare, omitting the Historical English Dramas, "quos versu dicere non est." Cymbeline, Tempest, Much Ado, Verona, Merry Wives, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Errors, Shrew Taming, Night's Dream, Measure, Andronicus, Timon of Athens. Wintry Tale, Merchant, Troilus, Lear, Hamlet Love's Labour, All's Well, Pericles, Othello, Romeo, Macbeth, Cleopatra, Cæsar, Coriolanus. From a Common-place Book at Audley End.
BRAYBROOKE.
Portrait of George Fox.
—A writer in the Westminster Review for the present quarter, on "The Early Quakers and Quakerism," says (p. 610.), respecting George Fox,—
"Portrait painters having been in his eyes panderers to the fleshly desires of the creature, we have no likeness of him."
Whether or not there is in existence an authentic portrait of George Fox, I do not know; but I saw some time since, at the shop of Smith, the Quaker bookseller in Whitechapel, an engraved portrait of Fox, and another of his early coadjutor, James Nayler.
LLEWELLYN.
Lines on Crawfurd of Kilbirnie.
—George Crawfurd, who wrote a Peerage of Scotland, which was published in folio at Edinburgh in the year 1716, says, under the head of "Crawfurd, Viscount of Garnock," p. 159., that Malcolm Crawfurd, Esq., succeeded to the barony of Kilbirny in right of Marjory his wife, daughter and sole heir of John Barclay of Kilbirny; whereupon he assumed the coat of Barclay, and impaled it with his own:
"Here it may be remarked," he continues, "that all the estate the family ever had, or yet possesses, was acquired to them by marriage: or lands so obtained were exchanged for others lying more contiguous to the rest of their fortune; which gave occasion to a friend to apply to them the following distich:
'Aulam alii jactent, at tu Kilbirnie, nube: Nam quæ fors aliis, dat Venus alma tibi.'"
Which may be thus translated:
"Let others choose the dice to throw, Do you, Kilbirny, wed: On them what Fortune may bestow, On you will Venus shed."
C— S. T. P.
W—— Rectory.