5. The dates assigned to the Monumenta Sancti Pauli are "1613, 1616, 1618, and 1633." Here are three errors in as many lines. The first edition is dated in 1614. The edition of 1633, which is entitled Ecclesia Sancti Pauli illustrata, is the second. No other editions exist.
Answer. The edition of 1614 was certainly the first, and that of 1633 certainly the second. In the preface to the latter the author says, "My first collection of these Monumentall Epitaphs I published anno 1614, full nineteen yeeres sithence." My authority, however, for the "three errors in as many lines" is Cole's Collections for an Athenæ Cantabrigenses. (See Brydges Restituta, vol. iii p. 215.)
6. "Holland also printed a copy of Latin verses before Alexander's Roxana, 1632." No such work exists. He may have printed verses before the Roxana of W. Alabaster, who was his brother-collegian.
Answer. My authority again is Cole's Collections in Restituta, vol. iii. p. 215, where, under the head of "Hugh Holland, fellow of Trinity College," is this line: "Has a copy of Latin verses before Dr. Alexander's Roxana, 1632." I shall therefore leave the shade of Cole and MR. BOLTON CORNEY to settle the question as to whether any such work exists.
I have now disposed of the six statements, and have only to add, that the authorities which I have consulted are those which I have named.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
"PRENZIE" IN "MEASURE FOR MEASURE"
(Vol. iii., p. 522)
The suggestion of primzie is too ingenious, and too apparently happy, to be passed over without adducing some reason for refusing to give it the preference to Tieck's reading of precise.
The terminal adjuncts zie, sie, some, generally imply some playful diminutive variation of the original word, certainly they never add force or gravity to it: prim, in itself, is a diminutive of primitive, and applies more to external appearance than to internal character. I do not think, therefore that even prim would be a word sufficiently dignified for the situation and context; much less is its diminutive primsie.
It seems to me that the character of Angelo is generally mistaken; he is too often looked upon as a mere hypocrite, whereas Shakspeare depicts him, before his fall, as a rigid but sincere ascetic. This view of his character accounts for his final condemnation of Claudio: he has no mercy for the crime, even while committing it himself; and he was just the man who, had he escaped detection, would probably have passed the remainder of his life in the exercise of self-inflicted penance.