And women t'were they wrong'd."
Now it seems to me that the same feeling is implied in Rosalind's reproof to Phebe; and that there is no ground whatever for saying that mother is used as a warranty for female beauty, but rather as one for feminine qualities. Rosalind in effect says, "who might your mother be that you should be so unfeeling?" And, as she tells her plainly she sees no beauty in her, it is clearly to be inferred that it must have been for some other quality that her mother was to be "warranty." Rosalind, in other words, might have said, "Had you a mother, a woman, that you can so discredit the character of womanhood as to exult, insult and all at once, over the wretched?"
It might however be contended, that Rosalind's question referred to the rank, condition, or personal appearance of the mother. The latter only bears upon this question; and with regard to that it may be said, that if beauty had been transmitted to the daughter (independently of the questioner having decided that it had not), the question was not needed. Rosalind, in short, seeks for a better cause for Phebe's pride or want of feeling than her own insufficient attractions, in the nature or quality of her mother. It will be observed that, in this view, I have conceded that who may be taken with something of the signification of what; but the answer to the question, taken strictly, must be the name of some individual who might be known to the Querist, and be in some measure a warranty for the disposition of the daughter, though for no personal beauty but her own.
Samuel Hickson.
NOTES ON BOOKS, NO. III.—LAURENCE HUMPHREY, PRESIDENT OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD,
AND DEAN OF WINCHESTER.
In the year 1558 a handsome volume was printed at Basle, in folio in Greek, by Jerome Frobenius and Nicholas Episcopius, with the following title:
"ΚΕΡΑΣ ΑΜΑΛΘΕΙΑΣ, Η ΩΚΕΑΝΟΣ. ΤΩΝ ΕΞΗΓΗΣΕΩΝ ΩΜΗΡΙΚΩΝ, ἐκ των του Ἐυσταθείου παρεκβολὼν συνηρμοσμένων—i.e. Copiæ Cornu sive Oceanus Enarrationum Homericarum, ex Eustathii in eundem commentariis concinnatarum, Hadriano Junio autore."
To an Oxford man, independent of its merit as a compendium of the prolix comment of Eustathius, this volume should be especially interesting, on account of the prefatory dissertation "Ad
Magdalinenses," entitled De Græcis Literis et Homeri Lectione et Imitatione, by Laurence Humphrey. This worthy was sometime Greek reader in the university, but went abroad on account of religion at the accession of Queen Mary, and did not return until happier times after her death. He seems to have been living at Basle with Frobenius and Episcopius in honestissimo loco, but he could not avoid often thinking of his native land,—of Newport-Pagnell in Bucks, where he was born,—of Cambridge, where he received the rudiments of Latin and Greek,—but more especially of Oxford, where he completed his education. His feeling panegyric of his Alma Mater, shows him to have been at least one of her grateful sons. The dissertation is highly creditable to him, considering the period at which it was written; and the passage in which he gives an account of the work is not devoid of interest.