Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/351

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XL MAY 2, 1903.]


NOTES AND QUERIES.


343


choked ! (This narrative may have been suggested by the joke which the wits of Queen Anne's day played on Partridge the almanac maker.) The widow takes the melan- choly event in a philosophical spirit, and, later, gives Ezekiel Jackson some of her hus- band's MSS.

"The bundle consisted of various scraps and vessels of paper, containing unprinted sketches of original voyages and travels, dissertations, poems, ban mots, and anecdotes for more magazines than I thought were in circulation, projects innumerable, and imperfect hints for different periodical publi- cations, to each of which were annexed references to the sources from whence they were to be com- piled, illustrated, or completed."

WILLIAM E. A. AXON. Manchester.

(To be continued.)


GABRIEL HARVEY AND MARSTON.

(See ante, pp.201, 281.)

Real, intrinsicate, Delphic. I will take the last word first. These three words have formed to earlier critics the chief text, or rather false trail, for their research. ' N.E.LV quotes the passage, and the next reference is ' Holyday,' 1661 ; the earliest for " Delphian " is 1625. Gabriel Harvey has the wora twice in his published writings : " I could nominate the man that could teach the Delphicall oracle and the Egyptian crocodile to play their parts " (ii. 310), 1593 ; and earlier,

  • ' hath not consideration some reason to fear

the Delphicall sworde ? " (ii. 193) 1589. Jonson uses the word " Delphic " (" Delphic fire ") in 'Underwoods,' xliv., 'To Desmond,' an ode written circa 1599 ; he has Harvey's "Delphick sword" in the much later 'Discoveries'; and "Delphick riddling" occurs as the translation of " Sortilegis Delphis " in the ' Ars Poetica.' A note in Cunningham's ' Gifford ' (iii. 368) tells us that 1604 is the date of Jonson's translation. Penniman errs apparently in trying to make it earlier. Shirley uses the word several times about the date of ' Dis- coveries.'

Intrinsicate Marston was wrong in saying this word (used later by Jonson and Shake- 'speare) was new - minted by Torquatus. ' N.E.LV has a reference to Whitehorne, ' Arte Warre,' 1560: "an intrinsicate [intricate] matter." I have not found it in Harvey, though he uses intrinsical (i. 47), as opposed to extrinsical.

Real. As we do not know the sense in which Marston objects to this word, it is not easy to identify the allusion. The critics have assumed that it has here the affected mean- ing of royal, in which signification it occurs


in Jonson's * Every Man out of his Humour ' II. i. 86b), 1599. I find "Reall Exchange" Royal Exchange) in S. Rowlands's ' Letting of Humour's Blood,' &c. (Satire i.), 1600. But the word real in any sense was rare outside the schools (opposed to " nominal " techni- cally) and the legal sense of " real action," &c. In the latter sense Oliphant (' New Eng- lish,' i. 274) gives a reference dating before 1450 ; and in the former Skeat refers to Tyndal. Our common word real was in fact a rarity. It does not occur in the Bible. Shakespeare has it only twice, and the adverb once, the earliest being ' All 's Well,' in the sense of " true," "not imaginary " (V. iii. 307), 1602. In a letter of Elizabeth to James, 1601 (Camden Soc., p. 136), " our frank and reall dealing" perhaps means "royal," and the sense is in Cotgrave, 1611. However this may be, Gabriel Harvey used the word real in very stilted fashion in the following pas- sages : " Lawyers love reall cautions " (i. 286), 1583; "rather verbal than reall, and more circumstantiall than substantial" (ii. 162), 1589 ; "I have tasted of their [Jews'] verball

miracles but their reall Vsurie is known

throughout the world" (ii. 180), 1589. In Jonson the word is used by Puntarvolo, a somewhat affected person who is " determined to stick to his own phrase and gesture," but it is by no means pilloried like the Marston words. I think it is much more likely Marston referred to Harvey's use of the word. Jonson used the word real (= royal 1 ?) twice in the first version of 'Every Man in his Humour ' (4to, printed 1601). The date of this is probably 1598, but we have no means of making certain. The question is discussed at length in Wheatley's edition of the play, and see Penniman, p. 9, for the passages. "Real" (genuine) is in Shakespeare's (?) ' Lover's Complaint ' of an earlier date. " Un- real " occurs twice in his later plays.

/ am far from being a Suffenus.A. poet ridiculed by Catullus. Harvey twice refers to this seldom-met-with personage : " Suffe- nus, a noble braggard, but a braggard " (ii. 7), 1593, and "such a ridiculous Suffenus or Shakerley"(ii- 222), 1593.

In the second passage referring to Tor- quatus (p. 375) there is even more plain sailing :

Torquatus that ne'er oped his lip But in prate of pommado re versa, Of the nimble, tumbling Angelica. Now on my soul his very intellect Is naught but a curvetting sommerset.

This takes a little reading between the lines for the want of a full Harvey. In 'Have with You to Saffron Walden' (1596) Nashe