"Behold how ready we are, how willingly the women of Sparta will die and live with their husbands."—The Pilgrimage of Kings and Princes, p. 29.
Except in Shakspeare's behalf, it would not have been worth while to exemplify so unambiguous a phrase. The like remark may also be extended to the next word that falls under consideration.
Kindly, in accordance with kind, viz. nature. Thus, the love of a parent for a child, or the converse, is kindly: one without natural affection (ἄστοργος) is unkind, kindless, as in—
"Remorselesse, treacherous, letcherous, kindles villaine."
Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.
Thence kindly expanded into its wider meaning of general benevolence. So under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions "genuinus," and by Mr. Boyer rightly translated "les fruits de la terre chaqu'un selon son espèce;" for which Pegge takes him to task, and interprets kindly "fair and good," through mistake or preference adopting the acquired and popular, in lieu of the radical and elementary meaning of the word. (Anonymiana, pp. 380—1. Century viii. No. lxxxi.) The conjunction of this adjective with gird in a passage of King Henry VI. has sorely gravelled Mr. Collier: twice over he essays, with equal success, to expound its purport. First, loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then that kindly is said ironically; because there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) Mr. Collier's note concludes with a supposition that gird may possibly be a misprint. This is the misery! Men will sooner suspect the text than their own understanding or researches. In Act I. Sc. 1. of Coriolanus, dissatisfied with his previous note, Mr. Collier tries again, and thinks a kindly gird may mean a gentle reproof. That the reader may be able to judge what it does mean, it will be necessary to quote the king's gird, who thus administers a kindly rebuke to the malicious preacher against the sin of malice, i.e. chastens him with his own rod:
"King. Fie, uncle Beauford, I have heard you preach,
That mallice was a great and grievous sinne:
And will not you maintaine the thing you teache,