Most judiciously does Nares reject Gifford's corruption of this word into charm, nor will the suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one jot contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe discipline of many years' study, and the daily access of accumulating knowledge, have schooled into a wholesome sense of their extreme fallibility in such matters. Without adding any comment, I now quote, for the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts:
"For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he chaumbreed his tongue in season, ther should ere lōg bee one oxe the fewer for hym."—Apoptheymis of Erasmus, translated by Nicolas Vdall, mcccccxlii, the First Booke, p. 10.
"From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he refrein or chaumbre the tauntying of his tongue."—Id., p. 76.
After so many Notes, one Query. In the second folio edition of Shakspeare (my first folio wants the whole play), I find in Cymbeline, Act V. Sc. 3., the next beautiful passage:
"Post. Still going? This is a lord: Oh noble misery
To be ith' field, and aske what newes of me:
To-day how many would have given their honors
To have sav'd their carkasses? Tooke heele to doo't,
And yet dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd,
Could not find death, where I did heare him groane,
Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly monster,