144
NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. VIL FKB. 23, 1007.
except, humph, the hour in which you were
joyfully delivered of the burden of your
womb at my birth." If, as so frequently,
the definite article were written in the
syncopated form " ye," the words " humph
the " would easily pass into " Humphrey."
K. D.
' THE WINTER'S TALE,' I. ii. 171-85 : Leon. So stands this squire
'Otficed with me : we two will walk, my lord, And leave you to your graver steps. Hermione, How thou lovest us show in our brother's welcome Let what is dear in Sicily be cheap : Next to thyself and my young rover, he 's Apparent to my heart.
Her. If you would seek us,
We are yours i' the garden : shall 's attend you
there?
[Exeunt Polixenes, Hermione, and Attendants,
According to the Folio, Leontes states that he " will walk," but, on reading further, we find that he does not immediately do so. The reason for such a statement is usually seen in the necessity for clearing the stage, but the king should not leave the scene, as he is soon to engage in conversa- tion with Camillo. It is Polixenes and the queen who go, and from one of them the words,
We two will walk, my lord, And leave you to your graver steps,
would be apt to come. The two kings habitually address each other as " brother," but here we find in a supposed utterance of Leontes the queen's usual expression in addressing her husband, " my Lord," indi- cating that she is the speaker. If we are right in thinking that Hermione has just spoken to Leontes, his injunction to her, " How thou lovest us," &c., would hardly be prefaced with her name. The word " Hermione," appearing in the text after the queen's lines, may reasonably be under- stood as properly preceding them, thus correctly assigning the speech. The metrical requirements will also permit of the change :
I'l-on. How thou
Lovest us show in our brother's welcome.
It is the poet's art to make the queen, in her innocence, say and do things which fan the flame of the king's jealously. In the use of " graver," whatever her meaning, the idea he takes is that his steps are indeed grave with apprehension, while hers are culpably gay. " Graver " is singularly in- appropriate as applied to the steps of the queen and Polixenes, and, if followed, would detract from " our brother's welcome." It would seem a sneer if spoken by Leontes, but it is his cue to be apparently hearty and sincere. " Your graver steps " does
apply peculiarly to Leontes, and contains
a hint of the contrast between Hermione's
pleasant, careless occupation as entertainer,
and the king's more serious thoughts, as
indicated by his present mood (1. 147, " He
something seems unsettled ").
There is a bad mix-up in the Folio text of this same scene (11. 146-50), and I believe that a hitherto unsuspected disarrangement of speeches exists in the passage commented upon above. The queen's form of address, " my lord," when speaking to the king, is found in 11. 40, 61, 65, 87, also 150 and 172, in this scene, and elsewhere in the play.
E. MERTON DEY.
St. Louis.
' JULIUS C-12SAR,' V. v. 73-5 :
The elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, " This was a man ! " Cf. Drayton's ' Idea,' xxi. :
At whose deliberate and unusuall byrth, The heavens were said to counsell to retire, And in aspects of happinesse and mirth Breath'd him a spirit insatiatly t' aspire, That took no mixture of the ponderous earth, But all comprest of cleere ascending fire, So well made up, that such an one as he Jove in a man like Mortimer would be.
CHAS. A. HERPICH. New York.
' MERCHANT OF VENICE,' II. ii. 80 (10 S. v. 465 ; vi. 325). The earliest expression of the proverb is in ' Odyssey,' i. 215-16, where it is spoken, without malicious insinuation, in frank simplicity by the amiable Tele- machus. On this passage a scholiast quotes as from Euripides the two lines given by C. W. B. as Menander's. They may be found in Dindorf's ' Poet. Seen.' (1893), Eur., fragm. 883, or fragm. 1004 in Nauck's edition (Teubner ). Nauck says that Stobseus ( ' Flor. 76, 7) attributes them erroneously to Menander. H. K. ST. J. S.
- ALL 's WELL THAT ENDS WELL,' V. ii. :
PURR." (10 S. vi. 323, 505). MR. N. W. HILL rejects my explanation of the word " purr " as = pig. His own suggestion,
- hat it is shortened from " perfume," seems
' o me absolutely hopeless.
To begin with, a critic who interprets Shakspeare by dint of a wholly gratuitous and unsupported theory comes into court with a rope round his neck ; and in the present case he is met by the plentiful lack of evidence that in Queen Elizabeth's time men mangled their words and served them up in halves, as we are apt to do.
But to come to interpretation of the mssage :
