The special application to a book may be seen in Baret’s Alvearie: “To ouerlooke and peruse a booke againe, Retractare librum.” And accordingly it need not surprise us that Levins, in 1570, translated to peruse by peruti.
There is just one more suggestion which I venture to make, though I fear, like most conjectures which are made with respect to Shakespeare, it is probably valueless. When King Lear appears, in Act iv. sc. 4—
“Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With hor-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn”—
I cannot help being reminded of Fitzherbert’s list of weeds in sect. 20 (p. 29), in which he includes haudoddes, i.e. corn blue-bottles, as is obvious from his description; see also Britten and Holland’s English Plant-names. It is certainly remarkable that the haudod is precisely one of “the idle weeds that grow in corn,” and that its bright colour would be particularly attractive to the gatherer of a wild garland. We must not, however, overlook the form hardhake, which Mr. Wright has found in a MS. herbal as a name for the knapweed; see his note upon the passage. The two results do not, however, greatly differ, and it is conceivable that the same name could be applied at different times to both these flowers, the latter being Centaurea nigra, and the former Centaurea Cyanus. We also find the term hardewes, occurring as a name for the wild succory; see Hawdod in the Glossarial Index, p. 156. In any case, the proposal of Dr. Prior to explain hordock by the burdock (Arctium lappa), merely because he thinks the burs were sometimes entangled with flax, and so formed lumps in it called hards, is a wild guess that should be rejected. Hards are simply the coarse parts of flax, without any reference to burdocks whatever.
The wood-cut on the title-page is copied from the edition of 1598. The longer handle of the plough is on the left. See the description on p. 128.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “And [I give] to euery of my seruentes that be used to Ryde with me,” etc.; Sir A. Fitzherbert’s Will, quoted below at p. xviii.