Sprag. That is, sprack, which meant quick, ready. The word is Scotch, as well as Provincial English, and Scott uses it in Waverley (chap, xliii.): "all this fine sprack [lively] festivity and jocularity."
Page 105.—A passage from Terence. In the play, as in the Grammar, it reads: "Redime te captum quam queas minimo." The original Latin is: "Quid agas, nisi ut te redimas captum," etc.
Page 106.—Richard Mulcaster. The poet Spenser was one of his pupils at Merchant-Taylors School in 1568 see (Church's Spenser in "English Men of Letters" series). In 1596 Mulcaster became master of St. Paul's School. He died in 1611. The title of the book quoted here was The First Part of the Elementarie ... of the Right Writing of our English Tung. The author's theory was better than his practice, as the specimen of his "right writing" given here will suffice to show. It is to be hoped that his oral style was less clumsy and involved.
Correctors for the print. Whether this refers to persons correcting manuscript for the press or to proof-readers is doubtful, but probably the former. Some have denied that there was any proof-reading in the Elizabethan age; but variations in copies of the same edition of a book (the First Folio of Shakespeare, published in 1623, for instance) prove that corrections in the text were sometimes made even after the printing had begun. The author also sometimes did some proof-reading. At the end of Beeton's Will of Wit (1599) we find this note: "What faults are escaped in the printing, finde by discretion, and excuse the author, by other worke that let [hindered] him from attendance to the presse."
Rip up. That is, analyze.
Page 107.—The natural English. That is, natives of England.
Will not yield flat to theirs. Will not conform exactly to theirs.
Page 108.—Bewrayeth. Shows, makes known. Cf. Proverbs, xxvii. 16; Matthew, xxvi. 73.
Enfranchisement. This evidently refers to the "naturalization" of foreign words taken into the language, or making their orthography conform to English usage.
Prerogative, etc. This paragraph is somewhat obscure at first reading; but it appears to mean that common use, or established usage, settles certain questions concerning which there might otherwise be some doubt.