To make cold nymphs chaste crowns."
Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1.
The above is the reading of the first folio. Pioned is explained by Mr. Collier, "to dig," as in Spenser; but Mr. Halliwell (Monograph Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 425.) finds no authority to support such an interpretation. Mr. Collier's anonymous annotator writes "tilled;" but surely this is a very artificial process to be performed by "spongy April." Hanmer proposed "peonied;" Heath, "lilied;" and Mr. Halliwell admits this is more poetical (and surely more correct), but appears to prefer "twilled," embroidered or interwoven with flowers. A friend of mine suggested that "lilied" was peculiarly appropriate to form "cold nymphs chaste crowns," from its imputed power as a preserver of chastity: and in Mr. Halliwell's folio, several examples are quoted from old poets of "peony" spelt "piony;" and of both peony and lily as "defending from unchaste thoughts." Surely, then, the reading of the first folio is a mere typographical error, and peonied and lilied the most poetical and correct.
Este.
Minor Notes.
Monumental Inscriptions (Vol. viii., p. 215. &c.).—I have never seen the monumental inscription of Theodore Palæologus accurately copied in any book. When in Cornwall lately, I took the trouble to copy it, and as some of your readers may like to see the thing as it is, I send it line for line, word for word, and letter for letter. It is found, as is well known, in the little out-of-the-way church of St. Landulph, near Saltash.
Here lyeth the body of Theodoro Paleologus
Of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye Imperyail
Lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece
Being the sonne of Camilio, ye son̄e of Prosper
the sonne of Theodoro the sonne of Iohn, ye sonne
of Thomas, second brother to Constantine
Paleologus, the 8th of that name and last of
yt lyne yt raygned in Constantinople, untill subdewed
by the Turkes, who married with Mary
Ye daughter of William Balls of Hadlye in
Souffolke Gent, & had issue 5 children, Theodoro,
Iohn, Ferdinando, Maria & Dorothy, and departed
this life at Clyfton ye 21th of January, 1636."
Ed. St. Jackson.
Marlborough at Blenheim.—Extract from a MS. sermon preached at Bitton (in Gloucestershire?) on the day of the thanksgiving for the victory near Hochstett, anno 1704. (By the Reverend Thomas Earle, afterwards Vicar of Malmesbury?)