Mr. Hazlitt is more nearly right than usual when he says that in the particular case cited above lede means servants. But were these of only one sex? Does he not know that even in the middle of the last century when an English nobleman spoke of “my people,” he meant simply his domestics?
Encountering the familiar phrase No do! (Vol. IV. p. 64), Mr. Hazlitt changes it to Not do! He informs us that Goddes are (Vol. I. p. 197) means “God’s heir”! He says (Vol. II. p. 146): “To borrow, in the sense of to take, to guard, or to protect, is so common in early English that it is unnecessary to bring forward any illustration of its use in this way.” But he relents, and presently gives us two from Ralph Roister Doister, each containing the phrase “Saint George to borrow!” That borrow means take no owner of books need be told, and Mr. Hazlitt has shown great skill in borrowing other people’s illustrations for his notes, but the phrase he quotes has no such meaning as he gives it. Mr. Dyce in a note on Skelton explains it rightly, “St. George being my pledge or surety.”
We gather a few more of these flowers of exposition and etymology:—
“The while thou sittest in chirche, thi bedys schalt thou bidde.”
(Vol. I. p. 181.)
i. e. thou shalt offer thy prayers. Mr. Hazlitt’s note on bidde is, “i. e. bead. So in The Kyng and the Hermit, line 111:—
‘That herd an hermyte there within
Unto the gate he gan to wyn
Bedying his prayer.’”
Precisely what Mr. Hazlitt understands by beading (or indeed by anything else) we shall not presume to divine, but we should like to hear him translate “if any man bidde the worshyp,” which comes a few lines further on. Now let us turn to page 191 of the same volume. “Maydenys ben loneliche and no thing sekir.” Mr. Hazlitt tells us in a note that “sekir or sicker” is a very common form of secure, and quotes in illustration from the prose Morte Arthure, “A! said Sir Launcelot, comfort yourselfe, for it shall bee unto us as a great honour, and much more then if we died in any other places: for of death wee be sicker.” Now in the text the word means safe, and in the note it means sure. Indeed sure, which is only a shorter form of secure, is its ordinary meaning. “I mak sicker,” said Kirkpatrick, a not unfitting motto for certain editors, if they explained it in their usual phonetic way.
In the “Frere and the Boye,” when the old man has given the boy a bow, he says:—
“Shote therin, whan thou good thynke;
For yf thou shote and wynke,
The prycke thow shalte hytte.”
Mr. Hazlitt’s explanation of wynke is “to close one eye in taking aim,” and he quotes a passage from Gascoigne in support of it. Whatever Gascoigne meant by the word (which is very doubtful), it means nothing of the kind here, and is another proof that Mr. Hazlitt does not think it so important to understand what he reads as St. Philip did. What the old man said was, “even if you shut both your eyes, you can’t help hitting the mark.” So in “Piers Ploughman” (Whitaker’s text),