Old Seyward, with ten thousand warlike men,
Already at a point, was setting foorth:
Now we'll together, and the chance of goodnesse
Be like our warranted quarrel."
Now it is not easy to see why Malcolm should wish that "chance" should "be like," i. e. similar to, their "warranted quarrel;" inasmuch as that quarrel was most unfortunate and disastrous. Chance is either fortunate or unfortunate. The epithet just, which might apply to the quarrel in question, is utterly irreconcilable with chance. Still this sense has pleased the editors, and they have made "of goodnesse" a precatory and interjectional expression. Surely it is far more probable that the poet wrote belike (belicgan, geliggen) as one word, and that the meaning of the passage is simply "May good fortune attend our enterprise." Mr. Collier's old corrector passes over this difficulty in silence, doubtless owing to the circumstance that the word was well understood in his time.
I have alluded to the word like as expressive in the English language of three distinct ideas, and in the A.-S. of at least four; is it not possible that these meanings, which, as we find the words used, are undoubtedly widely distinct, having travelled to us by separate channels, may nevertheless have had originally one and the same source? I should be glad to elicit the opinion of some one of your more learned correspondents as to whether the unused Hebrew
ילן
may not be that source.
H. C. K.
—— Rectory, Hereford.