  The Rev. Mr. Dyce omits the play of Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen, from the excellent, and (in all other respects) complete edition of Marlowe's Works which he has lately published, considering it to have been "distinctly shown by Mr. Collier" that it could not have been the work of that poet. I must say, however, that the argument for its rejection does not appear to me by any means conclusive. It runs thus: in the first act is presented the death of a certain King Philip of Spain; and this King Philip must be Philip II., because in a tract printed in the Somers' Collection, giving an account of the "last words" of that monarch, are found passages which are plainly copied in the play. Now, Philip II. did not die till 1598, and the tract was not published till 1599, whereas Marlowe's death took place in 1593. Ergo, Marlowe could not have written Lust's Dominion. But we know that it was the constant custom of managers to cause acting plays to be altered and added to from time to time: the curious Diary of Manager Henslowe is full of entries of the payment of sums of twenty shillings or so, to the authors whom he kept, for "adycyons" to the works of others. And surely it is no forced hypothesis to suppose that some literary cobbler employed to touch up Marlowe's work, finding a King Philip in it, should have thought to improve and give it an air of historic truth, by introducing the circumstances furnished by the pamphlet into the death-scene. Apart from these particulars, the king is neither Philip I. nor Philip II., but a mere King Philip of Spain in general, quite superior to historical considerations. The positive evidence in support of Marlowe's authorship is tolerably strong, though not absolutely conclusive. The earliest extant edition of the play bears his name at full length on the title-page. It is true that the date of that edition is 1650, sixty-six years after his death: still the publisher must have had some reasonable ground for attributing the work to him; and in all cases comparatively little value ought to be attached to negative, when opposed by positive evidence. We He has changed his practice since he printed among Middleton's works (and rightly) the play of the Honest Whore, a play generally—I believe, universally—attributed to Dekker alone, on the authority of one single entry in Henslowe's Diary, where the names of the two poets are incidentally coupled together as joint authors of the piece! I should mention, that I take the dates and book-lore from Mr. Dyce himself. DOVER CASTLE: A NOTE TO HASTED.Lambard, Camden, and Kilburne all speak of an accumulation of stores in Dover Castle, on the origin of which various traditions and opinions existed in their days.
The following extract from an inventory furnished by William de Clynton, Earl of Huntyngdon, Lord Warden, on handing over the castle to Bartholomew de Burghersh, his successor, dated "die Sabati in vigilia sancti Thome Apostoli, anno regni regis Edwardi tercei a conquestu Anglie decimo septimo" (i. e. September 20, 1343), will supply a satisfactory elucidation of what these stores were:
Query, What were the "capellÆ de nervis de Pampilon depictÆ?" Ducange cites the word, but does not explain it. Toto atilo; quasi "attelage." Springaldus; "veterum profecto fuit balistÆ genus, et, recentis militiÆ, tormentum est pulverarium, non ita ponderosum ut majoribus bombardis Æquari possit, nec ea levitate ut gestari manibus valeat."—Ducange. Arbaliste ad turnum; arbalists that traversed. Haukets; "sagum militare."—Ducange. Gambeson; "vestimenti genus quod de coactili ad mensuram et tutelam pectoris humani conficitur, de mollibus lanis, ut, hoc inducta primum, lorica vel clibanus, aut his similia, fragilitatem corporis, ponderis asperitate non lÆderent."—Ducange. Cenovectorium; "a mudcart."—Ducange. "Conjicio garrotos esse spingardarum tela, quibus pennÆ ÆreÆ aptabantur utpote grandioribus; carrellis vero pennÆ plumatiles tantum." (See Ducange, sub voce Garrotus.) DEAN SWIFT: AUTOGRAPHS IN BOOKS.The biographer and the critic, down to the pamphleteer and the lecturer, have united in painting St. Patrick's immortal Dean in the blackest colours. To their (for the most part) unmerited scandal and reproach thus heaped upon his memory (as little in accordance with truth as with Christian charity), let me, Mr. Editor, oppose the following brief but emphatic testimony on the bright (and I firmly believe the right) side of the question, of the virtuous, the accomplished Addison:
The above inscription, in the autograph of Addison, is on the fly-leaf of his Remarks on several Parts of Italy, &c., 8vo. 1705, the possession of which I hold very dear. Permit me to add another beautiful example of friendship between two generous rivals in a glorious art.
This letter is written on the fly-leaf of Rhymes on Art, or the Remonstrance of a Painter, 2nd edit. 1805, also in my library. Need I offer an apology for introducing a third inscription?
This is in the beautiful autograph of rare Ben, on the fly-leaf of Sejanus his Fall, 4to. 1605, large paper and unique, and bound in the original vellum. It also contains the autograph of Francis Mundy, brother of the dramatist Anthony Mundy, to whom it once belonged. It is now mine. Canonbury. SHAKSPEARE ELUCIDATIONS.In All's Well that Ends Well (Act II. Sc. 1.) the king, when dismissing the young French noblemen who are going to the wars of Italy, says to them: "Let higher Italy— Those 'bated that inherit but the fall Of the last monarchy—see, that you come Not to woo honour, but to wed it." Mr. Collier calls this an "obscure passage," and offers no explanation of it, merely giving a note of Coleridge's, who, after Hanmer, proposes to read bastards for 'bated, saying of the passage itself: "As it stands, I can make little or nothing of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur?" Johnson, and the other preceding editors, seem to have taken a similar view of the passage. I trust it will not be regarded as presumption when I say, that to me the place offers no difficulty whatever. In the first place, 'bate is not, as Coleridge takes it, to except, but to overcome, put an end to (from abattre); as when we say, "abate a nuisance." In the next, we are to recollect that the citizens of the Italian republics were divided into two parties,—the Guelf, or Papal, and the Ghibelline, or Imperial; and that the French always sided with the former. Florence, therefore, was Guelf at that time, and Siena of course was Ghibelline. The meaning of the king therefore is: By defeating the Ghibelline Sienese, let Italy see, &c. As a Frenchman, he naturally affects a contempt for the German empire, and represents it as possessing (the meaning of inherit at the time) only the limited and tottering dominion which the empire of the west had at the time of its fall. By "higher Italy," by the way, I would understand not Upper Italy, but Tuscany, as more remote from France; for when the war is ended, the French envoy says:
The meaning is plainly: Will he go farther on? to Naples, for example. I must take this opportunity of retracting what I have said about— "O thou dissembling cub, what wilt thou be When time has sow'd a grizzle on thy case?" Twelfth Night, Act. V. Sc. 1. Mr. Singer (Vol. vi., p. 584.) by directing attention to the circumstance of cub being a young fox, has proved, at least to me, that case is the proper word,—a proof, among many, of the hazard of tampering with the text when not palpably wrong. Cub is the young fox, and fox, vixen, cub are like dog, bitch, whelp,—ram, ewe, lamb, &c. The word is peculiar to the English language, nothing at all resembling it being to be found in the Anglo-Saxon, or any of the kindred dialects. Holland, in his Plutarch (quoted by Richardson), when telling the story of the Spartan boy, says "a little cub, or young fox;" and then uses only cub. It was by analogy that the word was used of the young of bears, lions, and whales: and if Shakspeare in one place (Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 1.) says "cubs of the she-bear," he elsewhere (Titus Andronicus, Act IV. Sc. 1.) has "bear-whelps." I further very much doubt if cub was used of boys in our poet's time. The earliest employment of it that I have seen is in Congreve, who uses "unlicked cubs," evidently alluding to young bears: and that is the sense in which cub is still used,—a sense that would not in any case apply to Viola. IMPRECATORY EPITAPHS.There is a class of epitaphs, or, we should rather say, there are certain instances of monumental indecorum which have not as yet been noticed by the many contributors on these subjects to your pages. I refer to those inscriptions embodying threats, or expressing resentful feelings against the murderers, or supposed murderers, of the deceased individual. Of such epitaphs we have fortunately but few examples in Great Britain; but in Norway, among the Runic monuments of an early and rude age, they are by no means uncommon. Near the door of the church of Knaresdale, in Northumberland, is the following on a tombstone: "In Memory of Robert Baxter, of Farhouse, who died Oct. 4, 1796, aged 56. "All you that please these lines to read, It will cause a tender heart to bleed. I murdered was upon the fell, And by the man I knew full well; By bread and butter, which he'd laid, I, being harmless, was betray'd. I hope he will rewarded be That laid the poison there for me." Robert Baxter is still remembered by persons yet living, and the general belief in the country is, that he was poisoned by a neighbour with whom he had had a violent quarrel. Baxter was well known to be a man of voracious appetite; and it seems that, one morning on going out to the fell (or hill), he found a piece of bread and butter wrapped in white paper. This he incautiously devoured, and died a few hours after in great agony. The suspected individual was, it is said, alive in 1813. We know not how much of the old Norse blood ran in the veins of Robert Baxter's friend, who composed this epitaph; but this summer, among a people of avowedly Scandinavian descent, I copied the following from a large and handsome tomb in the burying-ground of the famous Cross Kirk, in Northmavine parish, in Shetland:
Among the Norwegian and Swedish Runic inscriptions figured by GÖsannson and SjÖborg, we meet with two or three breathing a still more revengeful spirit, but one eminently in accordance with the rude character of the age to which they belong (A.D. 900 ad 1300). An epitaph on a stone figured by SjÖborg runs as follows:
Another stone figured by GÖsannson has engraved on it the same revengeful aspiration. We all remember the Shakspearian inscription, "Cursed be he that moves my bones;" but if Finn Magnussen's interpretation be correct, there is an epitaph in Runic characters at Greniadarstad church, in Iceland, which concludes thus:
It would be curious to collect examples of these menaces on tombstones, and I hope that other contributors will help to rescue any that exist in this or in other countries from oblivion. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. DERIVATION OF "LAD" AND "LASS."The derivation of the word lad has not yet been given, so far as I am aware; and the word lass is in the same predicament. Lad is undoubtedly of old usage in England, and in its archaic sense it has reference, not to age, as now, but to service or dependence; being applied, not to signify a youth or a boy, but a servant or inferior. In Pinkerton's Poems from the Maitland MSS. is one, purporting to be the composition of Thomas of Ercildoune, which begins thus: "When a man is made a kyng of a capped man." After this line follow others of the same bearing, until we come to these: "When rycht aut wronge astente togedere, When laddes weddeth lovedies," &c. The prophet is not, in these words, inveighing against ill-assorted alliances between young men and old women; but is alluding to a general bouleversement of society, when mÉsalliances of noble women to ignoble men will take place. This sense of the word gives us, I think, some help towards tracing its derivation, and I have no doubt that its real parent is the Anglo-Saxon hlafÆta,—a word to be found in one instance only, in a corner of Æthelbyrt's Domas: "Gif man ceorles hlafÆtan of-slÆth vi scyllingum gebete." By the same softening of sound which made lord and lady out of hlaford and hlÆfdige, hlafÆta became lad, and hlafÆtstre became lass. As the lord supplied to his dependents the bread which they ate, so each thus derived from the loaf the appellation of their mutual relation, in the plain phraseology of our ancestors. Dr. Leo, in his interesting commentary on the Rectitudines singularum personarum (edit. Halle, 1842, p. 144.), says:
Perhaps some of your readers may favour myself and others by giving the derivation of boy and girl. |
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