Replies.
ROYAL LIBRARY.
(Vol. iii., P. 427.; Vol. iv., p. 69.)
I have delayed contradicting the stories told about the Royal Library in the Quarterly Review of last December, and repeated in the Illustrated Boswell, and, I am sorry to say, still more gravely and circumstantially reproduced by the Editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES." I have delayed, I say, until I was enabled to satisfy myself more completely as to one of the allegations of your Note. I can now venture to assure you that the whole story of the projected sale to Russia is absolutely unfounded; and that the Princess Lieven, whose supposed agency is the gist of the story, never heard a syllable about it, till my inquiry brought it to her notice, and that she has given it the most absolute contradiction. As there never was any such proposition, I need not say that the interference against it attributed to Mr. Heber and Lord Sidmouth is equally unfounded. The real history of the affair is this:—Mr. Nash, the architect, had rendered himself very agreeable to George IV. by his alterations and additions to the Pavilion at Brighton, and he managed to obtain (somewhat irregularly, I believe) the job of altering old Buckingham House, which was originally intended, or at least proposed, to be only an extensive repair and more commodious arrangement of the existing edifice. Under that notion, Mr. Nash had little difficulty in persuading the king that the space occupied by so large a library could not be spared for that purpose, if the house was to be arranged as a palace both for private residence and for purposes of state; and as there was a very great jealousy in Parliament of the expense of Buckingham House, he was afraid to propose the erection of an additional building to receive the books. It was then that the scheme was hit on, I know not exactly by whom (but I believe by Mr. Nash), of giving the books to the British Museum. The principal part of the library occupied three large rooms, two oblong and one an octagon. The former were to have been absorbed into the living apartments, and the octagon was to be preserved as a chapel, which it was proposed to adorn with the seven cartoons of Raphael from Hampton Court. All these, and several other schemes, vanished before Mr. Nash's larger views and increased favour, which led by degrees to the total destruction of the old house, and the erection of an entirely new palace, which however retains strong evidence of the occasional and piecemeal principle on which it was begun. But in the meanwhile the library was gone. I know that some members of the government were very averse to this disposal of the library: they thought, and strongly represented, that a royal residence should, not be without a library; and that this particular collection, made especially ad hoc, should not have been, on any pretence, and above all on one so occasional and trivial, diverted from its original destination. It is very possible that Mr. Heber may have expressed this opinion; and I think I may say that Lord Sidmouth certainly did so: but, on the other hand, some of the king's advisers were not sorry to see the collection added to the Museum pro bono publico; and so the affair concluded,—very unsatisfactorily, as I thought and think, as regards the crown, to whom this library ought to have been an heirloom; and indeed I doubt whether it was not so in point of law. It is likely enough that the gift of the library may have been partly prompted by a hope of putting the public in better humour as to the expenses of Buckingham House; but the idea of a sale to Russia never, I am sure, entered the head of any of the parties.
C.
THE "EISELL" CONTROVERSY.
(Vol. iv., pp. 64. 135.)
I can easily suppose, after the space you have given to J. S. W. (Vol. iv., p. 64.) to sum up on the long-protracted controversy of the Eisell interpretation, that you will scarcely permit it to be renewed. J. S. W.'s judgment, though given with much amenity and fulness, I cannot think satisfactory, as towards its close he evidently sinks into the advocate.
Theobald, a most admirable annotator, has narrowed the controversy very properly, to the consideration whether Hamlet was here proposing possibilities or impossibilities. J. S. W. dwells on the whole of the dialogue between Hamlet and Laertes as a rant; and sinks all the lines and passages that would bring it down to sanity. But this seems to line singularly unjust. Imprimis, Hamlet is not enraged like Laertes, "who hath a dear sister lost," and is a very choleric, impetuous, and arrogant young gentleman. It is this quality which irritates Hamlet, who is otherwise in the whole of this scene in a particularly moralising and philosophic mood, and is by no means "splenetic and rash." Hamlet, a prince, is openly cursed by Laertes: he is even seized by him, and he still only remonstrates. There is anything but rant in what he (Hamlet) says; he uses the most homely phrases; so homely that there is something very like scorn in them:
—— "What wilt thou do for her?"
is the quietude of contempt for Laertes' insulting rant; and so, if my memory deceive me not, the elder Kean gave it; "Do for her" being put in contrast with Laertes' braggadocio say. Then come the possibilities:
"Woul't weep, fight, fast, tear thyself,"
(All, be it noted, common lover's tricks),
"Would drink up eisell, eat a crocodile,
I'll do't."
Now the eating a crocodile is the real difficulty, for that looks like an impossibility but then, no doubt, the crocodile, like all other monstrous things, was in the pharmacopœia of the time, and was considered the most revolting of eatables. Eat a crocodile, does not mean a whole raw one, but such as the alligator mentioned in the shop of Romeo's apothecary, probably preserved in spirits.
Here we have possibilities put against the rant of Laertes; the doing against the saying; the quietude of the philosophic prince, against the ranting of the robustious Laertes; things that could be done,—for Hamlet ends with "I'll do it." That is, he will weep, fight, fast, tear himself, drink bitterness, and eat monstrosities: and this is his challenge of Laertes to the true testimony of his love, in contrast to his wordy lamentation. But his quick imagination has caught an impetus from its own motion, and he goes on, "Nay, I will even outprate you;" and then follows his superior rant, not uttered with sincere vehemence, but with quiet and philosophic scorn; and he ends with the reproof of Laertes' mouthing; a thing particularly distasteful to him. And now, in accordance with this dignified contempt is his final remonstrance and his exit speech of—
"I lov'd you ever; but it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself," &c.
We thus see that there is no real rant in Hamlet; he is not outbragging Laertes; but institutes the possible, in contradiction to swagger and mouthing. The interpretation of eisell thus becomes a matter of character, and to a great degree would determine an actor's mode of rendering the whole scene. This result I do not see that any of your correspondents have taken notice of; and yet it really is the main thing worth discussing.
This interpretation too has the advantage of coinciding with Shakspeare's perpetual love of contrast; the hot, hasty, wordy Laertes being in strong contrast to the philosophic, meditating, and melancholy young prince; always true to his character, and ever the first in every scene by his own calm dignity. He never rants at all, but rides over his antagonist by his cool reasoning and his own magnificent imagination. The adoption of Theobald and Hickson's interpretation of the word eisell becomes therefore of great importance as indicating the character of Hamlet.
F. G. T.
Many of your readers no doubt feel much indebted to your correspondent for his able summary of the eisell controversy; an example which it is to be hoped will be followed in other cases. It has induced me to collect a few passages for the purpose of showing that Shakspeare was accustomed to make use of what may be termed localisms, which were frequently as occult as in the instance of the eisell; and that he was especially fond of establishing himself with the children of his brain in the particular country by means of allusion to the neighbouring seas and rivers. What appropriate signs are the Centaur and the Phœnix for the city of Ephesus, the scene of the Comedy of Errors! The Italian, Iachimo, speaks of—
"—— lips as common as the stairs
That mount the capitol."
And Petruchio alludes to the bursting of "a chestnut in a farmer's fire," an incident probably of common occurrence in the sunny south. In Hamlet, with which we are chiefly concerned, the king "gulps his draughts of Rhenish down;" and the grave-digger talks of a flagon of Rhenish having been poured by the jester upon his head, the wine with which Denmark would naturally be supplied. His majesty inquires:
"Where are the Switzers? let them guard the door."
And the student Horatio is judiciously placed at the university of Wittenburg. Constant mention is made in The Merchant of Venice of the Rialto; and Portia, not unmindful of the remarkable position of the city, thus directs Balthazar:
"Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin'd speed
Unto the tranect, to the common ferry
Which trades to Venice."
What a fine Hebraism (Hazlitt remarks) is that of Shylock, where he declares, that he would not have given his ring "for a whole wilderness of monkeys!" And so, if the subjoined passage in Othello relates to the ceremony of the Doge's union with the sea, may we not exclaim "What an admirable Venetianism!"
"I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea's worth."
The Moor has not travelled far to find the following simile:
"Like to the Pontick sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontick and the Hellespont."
Petruchio asserts in respect to Catherine:
"—— Were she as rough
As are the swelling Adriatic waves,
I come to wive it wealthily in Padua."
In the Roman plays the Tiber is repeatedly noticed. The Thames occurs in Merry Wives of Windsor, and others. And in the Egyptian scenes of Antony and Cleopatra, the Nile is several times introduced.
"Master Brook [says Falstaff], I will be thrown into Etna, as I have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus."
Antony exclaims:
"Let Rome in Tiber melt!"
while Cleopatra gives utterance to the same sentiment:
"Melt Egypt into Nile! And kindly creatures
Turn all to serpents!"
In the last two passages it may be observed, that the hyperbolical treatment of the two rivers bears some analogy to that of the eisell; and it may also be pointed out, that although one of your correspondents has rashly maintained that the word cannot mean a river because the definite article is omitted before it, Thames, Tiber, and Nile here occur without. Upon the whole it must appear that there is some reason for adopting the motto:
"Flow on, thou shining river."
T.
Eisell will, I think, if examples from our old writers decide, be at least acknowledged to mean in Shakspeare what we now (improperly?) call vinegar, and not any river. In The Goolden Letanye of the Lyf and Passion of our Lorde Jesu Criste, edited from a MS. (No. 546.) in the library at Lambeth, by Mr. Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia, ii. 252., comes this entreaty:—
"For thi thirste and tastyng of gall and eysyl, graunte us to tast the swetnes of thi spirite; and have mercy on us."
All through the sixteenth century, and ages before, eisell was not only a housewife's word, but in every one's mouth—in the poet's as he sang, the preacher's as he preached, and the people's while they prayed. Surely, for this very reason, if Shakspeare meant Hamlet to rant about a river, the bard would never have made the king choose, before all others, that very one which bore the same name with the then commonest word in our tongue: a tiny stream, moreover, which, if hardly ever spoken of in these days of geographical knowledge, must have been much less known then to Englishmen.
DA. ROCK.
Buckland, Faringdon.
Your correspondent J. S. W. well deserves the thanks of all those of your readers who have taken an interest in the discussion on the meaning of eisell in Hamlet, for the able manner in which he has summed up the evidence put forward by the counsel on both sides. Perhaps he is correct in his conclusion, that, of twelve good men and true, nine would give their verdict for eisell being "a river;" while but three would favour the "bitter potion." Nevertheless, I must say, I think the balance yet hangs pretty even, and I rather incline myself to the latter opinion, for these reasons:
1. There is no objection whatever, even in the judgment of its enemies, against eisell meaning "a bitter potion," except that they prefer the river as more to their taste; for the objection of MR. CAUSTON I conceive to have no weight at all, that "to drink up" can only be applied "to a definite quantity;" surely it may also mean, and very naturally, to drink "without stint." And eisell need not be taken as meaning nothing more than "vinegar;" it may be a potion or medicament of extreme bitterness, as in the 111th sonnet, and in Lydgate's Troy Boke quoted by MR. SINGER, such, that while it would be possible to sip or drink it in small quantities, or diluted, yet to swallow a quantity at a draught would be almost beyond endurance; and hence, I submit, the appropriateness of "drink up."
2. There is this objection against eisell meaning a river,—Would the poet who took a world-wide illustration from Ossa, refer in the same passage to an obscure local river for another illustration? Moreover it does not appear to be sufficient to find any mere river, whose name resembles the word in question, without showing also that there is a propriety in Hamlet's alluding, to that particular river, either on account of its volume of water, its rapid flow, &c., or from its being in sight at the time he spoke, or near at hand.
Can any of your readers, who have Shakspeare more at their fingers' ends than myself, instance any exact parallel of this allusion of his to local scenery, which, being necessarily obscure, must more or less mar the universality, if I may so speak, of his dramas. Could such instances be pointed out (which I do not deny) or at least any one exactly parallel instance, it would go far towards reconciling myself at least to the notion that eisell is the river Essel.
H. C. K.
—— Rectory, Hereford, July 28.
LORD MAYOR NOT A PRIVY COUNCILLOR.
(Vol. iv., pp. 9. 137.)
I will not attempt to follow all the statements of L. M., because some of them are totally beside the question, and others contradict each other. I shall only observe that he totally mistakes my argument when he says, as if in reply to me, that it is not necessary to have the courtesy title of lord to be a privy councillor. No one ever said any such thing. What I said was this, that the Mayor of London, like those of Dublin and York, had the courtesy title of lord, and that this title of lord brought with it the other courtesy designation of right honorable, which latter being also (but not likewise) the designation of privy councillors, had, as I suppose, occasioned the error now predicated of the Mayor of London being a privy councillor, which, I repeat, he is no more than any Lord John or Lady Jane, who have also the title of Right Honorable.
L. M., however, states as a matter of fact, that "the Lord Mayor is always summoned to council on the accession of a new sovereign." Now I assert, and I think have proved in my former note, that the Lord Mayor never was so summoned to council. I now add that he never has on any occasion entered the council chamber, that he has never taken the oath nor performed any act of a privy councillor, and that in short there is not the smallest doubt with any one who knows anything about the Privy Council, that the Lord Mayor of London no more belongs to it than the Lord Mayors of York or Dublin, or the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, all of whom are equally styled Right Honorable, which title, I repeat, is the sole and silly pretence of this new-fangled hypothesis.
C.
"HOUSE OF YVERY."
(Vol. iv., pp. 101. 136.)
Observing the imperfect knowledge which Lowndes and your correspondents apparently have of the work called Anderson's House of Yvery, I send you a few Notes to clear up some points.
It may be said there were two editions of this work; one containing the censorious comments of (I presume) Lord Egmont on the degraded state of the peerage; the second, that in which those comments were cancelled. To the first, no printer's name appeared in the title-page; to the second is the name of "H. Woodfall, jun."
Lowndes has entirely mistaken the origin of the different paging in vol. i. The fact is, the original edition of the Introduction contained 41 pages of text, but the cancels reduced that number to 37; which p. 37., as Lowndes correctly remarks, is in the second edition misprinted 29. I possess both copies, with and without the cancels. By Lowndes we are led to believe that only p. xxxvii. was destroyed; but in truth they are p. xvi., and parts of pp. xv. and xvii., and nearly the whole of pp. xxxv.-vi., containing the anecdotes of the tailor's son and the apothecary's brother-in-law being sent, or intended to be sent, to foreign courts, as ambassadors from England. Another cancel occurs in vol. ii., of nearly the whole of pp. 444-5-6, which occasions Lowndes to say that pp. 446-7 are missing. The duplicate pages 453 to 460 are peculiar to the second edition only. One of my copies contains two additional plates, one of Wardour Castle, the other of Acton Burnell, evidently engraved for the work. The map of the baronies of Duhallow, &c., is only in one copy, viz. the original edition. Unfortunately, this original edition wants all the portraits of Faber, but it has the tomb of Richard Percival of 1190, beginning "Orate," as in Lowndes. It contains also a duplicate portrait of Sir Philip Percival, engraved by Toms in 1738 (who also engraved the Wardour and Acton Burnell Castles); and this duplicate is also in the other copy.
Were I to form any judgment when this work was commenced, I should say about 1738, and that all the engravings for it were done by Toms; and the first edition was printed in 1742, without any printer's name, and that some copies were so bound up. The other copies remained in sheets until the next year, when Faber was employed to engrave the portraits, and till 1744 or 1747; 1747 being the latest date of Faber's plates. There is some curious information in these volumes, and I would recommend your readers to observe how much the conduct of the Catholics of Ireland, recorded in vol. ii. p. 271., resembles that of the Catholics of the present day.
P.
ON "RACK" IN THE TEMPEST.
(Vol. iv., pp. 37. 121.)
I think A. E. B. has not understood MR. HICKSON'S argument in reference to this word. Perhaps the latter may not have expressed himself very clearly; and not having by me his original paper on the subject, I cannot cite his exact words; but his argument I take to be to this effect:—In construction of the passage there is a double comparison, which, though perfectly clear to the intelligent reader, causes some confusion when a doubt is first raised as to the meaning of the word, and which can be cleared up only by a thorough analysis. "The cloud-capp'd towers," &c., are first compared with "the baseless fabric of this vision," like which they "shall dissolve," and afterwards with "this insubstantial pageant," like which (having "faded") they shall "leave not a rack behind." A given object can be said to "leave behind" only that which was originally of its elements, and for this reason only a general term such as wreck or vestige will accord with the construction of the passage.
I am sorry to find that any one should misquote Shakspeare for the purpose of obtaining a temporary triumph: probably, however, in the instance I am about to cite, A. E. B. has really fallen into the common error of regarding two similes as one. He says, giving the substance of Shakspeare's passage, "the globe itself shall dissolve, and, like this vision, leave not a wreck behind." What Shakspeare in substance does say is, "The globe itself, like this vision, shall dissolve, and, like this faded pageant, shall leave not a rack behind." A. E. B.'s question, therefore, "in what was the resemblance to the vision to consist, if not in melting, like it, into thin air?" is thus answered: The resemblance does consist in dissolving, or "melting" away.
My object in making these remarks is not to express an opinion on one side or the other, but to draw the attention of your readers to the real question at issue. I therefore say nothing as to whether Shakspeare may or may not have had a prevision of the nebular theory; though I cannot see that this would be in the least affected by our decision as to the meaning of this word, since the wrack or wreck of the world might well be represented by the "vapour" for which A. E. B. contends. As, however, this gentleman says such is its meaning "beyond all doubt," (a rather dogmatic way of settling the question, by the way, seeing that a doubt had been thrown upon it in the very paper he has engaged himself to answer,) I should like to be informed if there is any authority for the use of the word in Shakspeare, or his cotemporaries, as mere "haze" or "vapour." I have generally understood it to mean a particular description of cloud, or, as some say, more properly, the course of the clouds in motion.
In fine, as Prospero did undoubtedly point to the dissolution of the globe and all that it contained, it is quite clear that it could in such case leave neither "cloud" nor "vapour," nor anything else behind it. The simple question then remains: Is the word rack, as elsewhere used by Shakspeare and his contemporaries, logically applicable there?
A LOOKER-ON.
Dawlish, Aug. 16. 1851.
Wolken Zug, English Term corresponding to.
—Coleridge (Death of Wallenstein, Act V. Sc. 1.) gives the lines—
"Fast fly the clouds, the sickle of the moon
Struggling, darts snatches of uncertain light."
as a translation of
"—— schnell geht
Der Wolken Zug: die Mondessichel wankt
Und durch die Nacht zuckt ungewisse Helle."
In a note on this passage he says:
"The words wanken and schweben are not easily translated. The English words by which we attempt to render them are either vulgar or pedantic, or not of sufficiently general application. So 'der Wolken Zug,' the draft, the procession of clouds, the masses of the clouds sweep onward in swift stream."
On reading this, it struck me that the English word rack exactly expresses the meaning of "der Wolken Zug."
Malone, in his note on the Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1., says:
"Rack is generally used for a body of clouds, or rather for the course of clouds in motion."
I add a few instances of the use of this word, many of which are collected in the note I have referred to.
In Antony and Cleopatra—
"That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns."
In Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess—
"shall I stray
In the middle air, and stay
The sailing rack."
In Dryden's tenth Æneid—
"the doubtful rack of heaven
Stands without motion."
The term scud, used by sailors, seems to express the same idea.
X. Z.
RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE.
(Vol. iv., pp. 49. 116.)
The productions of the writer known by the name of the Hermit of Hampole have been hitherto much neglected: they afford copious illustrations of ancient manners, and are very valuable in a philological point of view. I would especially name the Speculum Vitæ, or Mirrour of Life, of which I possess two MSS. in entirely distinct dialects.
Your Cambridge correspondent has shown that the Metrical Sermons contain interesting passages also illustrative of manners and as the extracts he has made have given occasion to some glossarial Queries from an Oxford correspondent, J. E., should they not be more satisfactorily answered by C. H., to whom they are addressed, perhaps the following attempt to resolve them may not be unacceptable.
1. By the devenisch most probably the Danish is meant, which we find elsewhere written Deniske, Daniske, and Danske.
2. Guystroun should be quystroun, which is used by Chaucer in the Romaunt of the Rose, and signifies a scullion, as is evident from this passage. It is from the O. Fr. quistron or cuistron. Thus in K. Alisaunder (Weber's Metr. Rom.), v. 2511.:
"Ther n'as knave no quistron
That he no hadde gôd waryson."
3. By Chaunsemlees we may probably understand schoon-semeles, signifying, no doubt, sandals.
4. "Hir chere was ay semand sori," which your correspondent says is "an expression very strange to English verse," is nothing more than the old form of seeming: her cheer was ever sorrowful or sad-seeming. The termination and or ande, as well as inde, was formerly used where we now have ing. Examples are numerous of this form; as semand and semynd, spekand, strikinde, &c. &c.
In Gawin Douglas, Eneados, we have glaidsembland for an appearance of joy or gladness, a cheerful countenance; and in b. ii. v. 159.:
"As that drery unarmyt wicht was sted
And with eine
[8] blent about semyn ful red."
[8] Your correspondent's extract has ane; but eyes are evidently meant.
There are other words which appear in an uncommon form in these extracts, for instance, telid and telith, hirched and hirching; and the following plural form I do not recollect to have observed elsewhere:
"For ser deyntes and many mes
Make men falle in many sicknes."
In the last line of the first page, Salhanas should be Sathanas:
"And so slew Jesu Sathanas,"
reminding us of the tradition mentioned by DR. RIMBAULT, "the Devil died when Christ suffered," not when he was born.
S. W. Singer.
Mickleham, Aug. 18. 1851.