10 8. VII. JUNE 22, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
485
ling pur or purr I take to be merely phonetic ;
it was not pronounced piurr, as in " purify."
On the analogy of " consume," p. 160,
" perfume " would be pronounced per'fiume ;
while " peruse " was per'iuz, and " persuade,"
per'swced. It matters little whether the
first syllable was uttered like fir in " fer-
ment " or like cur in " incur " ; " stir "
rimed with " spur," " birds " with " herds,"
and " worshipper " even with " cheer " and
" fear " ; so that a nice distinction of
phonetics is not here to be insisted on.
Had not the Puritans closed the theatres in 1642, we might have had a continuity of presentation in Shakespeare's plays, and the old traditions of acting them would have been preserved. We might then have been aided by the suggestive grimaces of the actors in this particular scene in grasping the meaning of such a singular word, as I imagine the audience of that day was. Those who have witnessed the performance of Holier e's plays in a French theatre may have noticed much of this ancient " busi- ness " of the actor, which, though unwar- ranted by the play book, has nevertheless come down by tradition to the present generation, and serves to throw additional light on the author's intention.
Of course my explanation of " purr though simple and feminine, is utterly ridi- culous from the commentator'spoint of view; but one must bear in mind that the day oi Euphuism was barely past. It was with the idea of the trouble which this passage hac caused to critics in general that I thought the quotation from Horace apposite.
N. W. HILL.
Philadelphia.
'HENRY IV.,' PART I., III. i. (10 S. vi 324). It is somewhat surprising that thi engineering project, to which DR. KRUEGEI has drawn attention, has hitherto escapee the notice of the various critics and com mentators.
From its source in the north-west o Staffordshire the Trent flows in a south easterly direction, finally turning its cours northwards towards the Humber. There i a considerable zigzagging of the river in th vicinity of Burton, and it was doubtless t two of these bends that Mortimer and Hot spur alluded as encroaching awkwardly o: their territories. It seems that the pro position was to make a new river-bed fo the Trent after the fashion of Cyrus a Babylon, but on a much larger scale, b digging a channel as the crow flies from th two outermost points of these windings
amely, the extreme easterly and the
xtreme westerly. This would have the
ffect of straightening the river's course,
nd of allowing an even boundary to each
arty facing his fellow from the opposite
ank.
Though a resort to textual emendation, owever slight, is generally to be deprecated,
think the present crux can only be sur- mounted by such a method ; and I would herefore propose to read " a little change " n both cases where " a little charge " occurs, nasmuch as the very essence of the ontext prescribes it. Glendower's remark which follows, " I will not have it alter'd,"
ill, I trust, be deemed sufficient cause to- ustify this interpretation. As Hotspur, Jlendower, and Mortimer were debating he partition of the country by the aid of a nap displayed before them, the proposed alteration would naturally appear to their unscientific eyes only trifling upon the map ; while in no circumstances whatever could a work of such magnitude be regarded by /hem as involving only " a little charge."
The difficulty surrounding the word ' advantage " in the above passage can be yot rid of, I believe, by construing it as
- t continuation " (like Fr. davantage), as it
really signifies here disadvantage, which is evident from the manner in which Mortimer proceeds to put forward his claim.
N. W. HILL.
' HENRY IV.,' PART I., II. iv. 134 r^" PITI- FUL-HEARTED TITAN, THAT MELTED " (10 S. vi. 504 ; vii. 145, 302). Merely as a question of opinions, I should not ask ' N. & Q.' to give further space to this ; but muddled facts should not pass. One of the replies to me is based on an assumption which exactly contradicts its own thesis adopting Theobald's emendation, and explaining it by an argument pertinent only to the un- emended form ; the other involves at least a grave improbability. Here are the two forms side by side :
(Ordinary) "Didst thou never see Titan kissing a dish of butter ? Pitiful-hearted Titan, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun ! "
(Theobald) " Didst thou never see Titan kissing a dish of butter ? Pitiful-hearted butter, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun ! "
Warburton's agrees with the sense ol Theobald's, but puts "Pitiful-hearted Titan" in parentheses, which is literary pedantry obscuring common sense, leaving
