Eamus tamen ubi is sit,
Quomodo id jam se habeat (quo in statu sint res ejus),
Etiamsi jam sepultus jaceat."
On which Schilter remarks:
"Zi thiu'z nu sar giligge quomodo se res habeat, hodie standi verbo utimur,—wie es stehe, zustehe."
We thus see that the radical meaning of the word belike is to lie or be near, to attend; from which it came to express the simple condition, or state of a thing: and it is in this latter sense that the word is used as an adverbial or rather an interjectional expression, when it may be rendered, it may be so, so it is, is it so, &c. Sometimes ironically, sometimes expressing chance, &c.; in the course of time it became superseded by the more modern term perhaps. Instances of similar elliptical expressions are common at the present day, and will readily suggest themselves: the modern please, used for entreaty, is analogous.
It is not a little singular that this account of the word belike enables us to understand a passage in Macbeth, which has been unintelligible to all the commentators and readers of Shakspeare down to the present day. I allude to the following, which stands in my first folio, Act IV. Sc. 3., thus:
" . . . . What I am truly
Is thine, and my poor countries, to command:
Whither indeed before they heere approach,