That of the shefe she sholde be the corn.
Chaucer, Legend of Good Women (Skeat, p. 118).
For well ye worthy bene forworth and gentle thewes.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 33.
Faire Helena, the fairest living wight,
Who in all godly thewes and goodly prayse
Did far excell.
Id., ib., 10, 59.
| Think, | } |
| Thought, | |
| Thoughtful. |
Many, as they read or hear in our English Bible these words of our Lord, ‘Take no thought for your life’ (Matt. vi. 25; cf. 1 Sam. ix. 5), are perplexed, for they cannot help feeling that there is some exaggeration in them, that He is urging here something which is impossible, and which, if possible, would not be desirable, but a forfeiting of the true dignity of man. Or perhaps, if they are able to compare the English with the Greek, they blame our Translators for having given an emphasis to the precept which it did not possess in the original. But neither is the fact. ‘Thought’ is constantly anxious care in our earlier English, as the examples which follow will abundantly prove; and ‘to think,’ though not so frequently, is to take anxious care. To this day they will say in Yorkshire, ‘it was thought that did for her,’ meaning that it was care that killed her.