Footnote 1:[(return)]
In a passage from L. L. L., lately winnowed in the pages of "N. & Q.," divers attempts at elucidation (whereof not one, in my judgment, was successful) having been made, it was gravely, almost magisterially proposed by one of the disputants, to corrupt the concluding lines (Mr. Collier having already once before corrupted the preceding ones by substituting a plural for a singular verb, in which lay the true key to the right construction) by altering "their" the pronoun into "there" the adverb, because (shade of Murray!) the commentator could not discover of what noun "their" could possibly be the pronoun in these lines following:
"When great things labouring perish in their birth,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth."
And it was left to Mr. Keightley to bless the world with the information that it was "things."
VERNEY PAPERS—THE CAPUCHIN FRIARS, ETC.
In the appendix to Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, edited by Mr. Bruce for the Camden Society in 1845, are "Notes written in a Cipher," which Mr. Bruce gives in the hope that the ingenuity of some reader will discover their meaning. I venture thus to decypher the same:
"The Capuchin's house to be dissolued.
No extracts of letters to be aloued in this house.