The reader cannot fail to have observed the faultless punctuation of the Folios in the forecited passage, and I think concur with me, that like many, ay, most others, all it craves at the hands of editors and commentators is, to be left alone. The last two lines ask for no explanation even to the blankest mind. Words like contents are by no means rare in English. We have tidings and news, both singular and plural. Mr. Collier himself rebukes Malone for his ignorance of such usage of the latter word. If it be said that these two examples have no singular form, whereas contents has, there is means, at any rate precisely analogous. On the other hand, so capricious is language, in defiance of the logic of thought, we have, if I may so term it, a merely auricular plural, in the word corpse referred to a single carcase.
I should here close my account with "N. & Q." were it not that I have an act of justice to perform. When I first lighted upon the two examples of chaumbre in Udall, I thought, as we say in this country, it was a good "fundlas," and regarded it as my own property. It now appears to be but a waif or stray; therefore, suum cuique, I cheerfully resign the credit of it to Mr. Singer, the rightful proprietary. Proffering them for the inspection of learned and unlearned, I of course foresaw that speedy sentence would be pronounced by that division, whose judgment, lying ebb and close to the surface, must needs first reach the light. I know no more appropriate mode of requiting the handsome manner in which Mr. Singer has been pleased to speak of my trifling contributions to "N. & Q.," than by asking him, with all the modesty of which I am master, to reconsider the passage in Romeo and Juliet; for though his substitution (rumourers vice runawayes) may, I think, clearly take the wall of any of its rivals, yet, believing that Juliet invokes a darkness to shroud her lover, under cover of which even the fugitive from justice might snatch a wink of sleep, I must for my own part, as usual, still adhere to the authentic text.
W. R. Arrowsmith.
P. S.—In answer to a Bloomsbury Querist (Vol. viii., p. 44.), I crave leave to say that I never have met with the verb perceyuer except in Hawes, loc. cit.; and I gave the latest use that I could call to mind of the noun in my paper on that word. Unhappily I never make notes, but rely entirely on a somewhat retentive memory; therefore the instances that occur on the spur of the moment are not always the most apposite that might be selected for the purpose of illustration. If, however, he will take the trouble to refer to a little book, consisting of no more than 448 pages, published in 1576, and entitled A Panoplie of Epistles, or a Looking-glasse for the Unlearned, by Abraham Flemming, he will find no fewer than nine examples, namely, at pp. 25. 144. 178. 253. 277. 285. (twice in the same page) 333. 382. It excites surprise that the word never, as far as I am aware, occurs in any of the voluminous works of Sir Thomas More, nor in any of the theological productions of the Reformers.
With respect to speare, the orthography varies, as spere, sperr, sparr, unspar; but in the Prologue to Troilus and Cressida, sperre is Theobald's correction of stirre, in Folios '23 and '32. Let me add, what I had forgotten at the time, that another instance of budde intransitive, to bend, occurs at p. 105. of The Life of Faith in Death, by Samuel Ward, preacher of Ipswich, London, 1622. Also another, and a very significant one, of the phrase to have on the hip, in Fuller's Historie of the Holy Warre, Cambridge, 1647:
"Arnulphus was as quiet as a lambe, and durst never challenge his interest in Jerusalem from Godfrey's donation; as fearing to wrestle with the king, who had him on the hip, and could out him at pleasure for his bad manners."—Book ii. chap. viii. p. 55.
In my note on the word trash, I said (somewhat too peremptorily) that overtop was not even a hunting term (Vol. vii., p. 567.). At the moment I had forgotten the following passage:
"Therefore I would perswade all lovers of hunting to get two or three couple of tryed hounds, and once or twice a week to follow after them a train-scent; and when he is able to top them on all sorts of earth, and to endure heats and colds stoutly, then he may the better relie on his speed and toughness."—The Hunting-horse, chap. vii. p. 71., Oxford, 1685.