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    Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124, March 13, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
    Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124, March 13, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
    Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124, March 13, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
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    Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124, March 13, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

    By Various Various and George Bell

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124, March 13, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

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      Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124, March 13, 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. - Various Various

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124,

      March 13, 1852, by Various

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 124, March 13, 1852

             A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists,

                    Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

      Author: Various

      Editor: George Bell

      Release Date: September 22, 2012 [EBook #40843]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES AND QUERIES, MARCH 13, 1852 ***

      Produced by Charlene Taylor, Jonathan Ingram and the Online

      Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

      file was produced from images generously made available

      by The Internet Library of Early Journals.)

      Vol. V.—No. 124.

      NOTES AND QUERIES:

      A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION

      FOR

      LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

      When found, make a note of.—CAPTAIN CUTTLE.

      VOL. V.—No. 124.

      SATURDAY, MARCH 13. 1852.

      Price Fourpence. Stamped Edition, 5d.

      CONTENTS.

      NOTES:—

      Readings in Shakspeare, No. III. 241

      Folk Lore:—Burning Fern brings Rain 242

      Translations, by C. Redding 243

      Ballad of Lord Delamere 243

      Minor Notes:—A Note on Henry III.—Old Books and New Titles—Bowdler's Family Shakspeare—The French Language—Curious Epitaph 244

      QUERIES:—

      Hogs Norton, where Pigs play upon the Organs, by Thos. Lawrence 245

      Minor Queries:—The Judge alluded to by South—English Translation of the Canons—Snuff-boxes and Tobacco-pipes—Cromwell—Meaning of Wallop—The Mistral—Deaths from Fasting—Ad Viscum—Whipping Graves—John Rogers, Protomartyr—Autograph Music by Handel—The Layard Family—C. L. A. A. P. D. P.—Prianho, De Pratellis and Prideaux Family—Joseph Adrien Le Bailly 246

      MINOR QUERIES ANSWERED:—The Great Bowyer Bible—Orloff, Derivation of—A Captain bold of Halifax—Goblin, Gorgeous, Gossip—Maheremium; Arc de Arbouin 248

      REPLIES:—

      Moravian Hymns 249

      Archaic and Provincial Words, by Robert Rawlinson, &c. 250

      Macaronic Poetry, by James Cornish 251

      Young's Narcissa 252

      Dulcarnon, by S. W. Singer, &c. 252

      St. George Heraldical MSS. 253

      Sterne in Paris 254

      Replies to Minor Queries:—Collar of Esses—Quid est Episcopus—Paper-making in England—Mother Damnable—Miniature of Cromwell—Etymology of Church—The Königsmarks—L'Homme de 1400 Ans—Close of the Wady Mokatteb Question—Was Queen Elizabeth dark or fair?—Meaning of Knarres—Cheap Maps—English Free Towns—Sir Alexander Cumming and the Cherokees—Junius—Hell-Rake—Ambassadors addressed as Peers—Red Book of the Irish Exchequer—Yankee, Derivation of—Indian Jugglers; Ballad of Ashwell Thorp—Meaning of Crabis—'Twas whisper'd in Heaven—Troilus and Cressida, Act I. Sc. 3.—Stone-pillar Worship—John of Padua—Modern Greek Names of Places—Beocherie, alias Parva Hibernia—Ruffles, when worn—Long Meg of Westminster—Family Likenesses—A Roaring Meg—Lyte Family—Nuremberg Token—The Old Countess of Desmond—Pimlico—Wise above that which is written—Sir John Cheke—Richard Earl of Chepstow—Maps of Africa—Lady Diana Beauclerk—Litera Scripta manet—Qui vult plene, &c.—Engraved Portraits 255

      MISCELLANEOUS:—

      Notes on Books, &c. 261

      Books and Odd Volumes wanted 262

      Notices to Correspondents 262

      Advertisements 263

      List of Notes and Queries volumes and pages

      Notes.

      READINGS IN SHAKSPEARE, NO. III.

      Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.

      My tables, my tables,—meet it is I set it down.

      This line (which might have suggested to our worthy patron, Captain Cuttle, the posy on our title-page) has, in my opinion, been misapplied and misinterpreted; and, as I am unable to convince myself that the view I take of it, albeit in opposition to all other readers of Shakspeare, is wrong, I venture to remove my light from under the bushel, although in so doing am sorely in dread of its being rudely puffed upon.

      The more so, because the natural hesitation which must be felt, in any case, when challenging for the first time the correctness of a generally received reading, is, in this instance, greatly augmented, by finding that an illustrious commenter upon Shakspeare—himself a great and congenial poet—has conferred a special approbation upon the old reading, by choosing it out as an item in his appreciation of Hamlet's character.

      I allude to Coleridge, whose remark is this:

      "Shakspeare alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet, to make his memory a blank of all maxims and generalised truths that 'observation had copied there,' followed immediately by the speaker noting down the generalised fact—

      "'That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.'

      "Now, that this last line is really what Shakspeare intended to be noted down, is precisely the point that goes so much against the stomach of my sense!

      This jotting down by Hamlet, upon a real substantial table, of one of those generalised truths which he had just excluded from the table of his memory, would be such a literalising of the metaphor, that it is a great relief to me to feel convinced that Shakspeare never intended it.

      In Hamlet's discourse there may be observed an under current of thought that is continually breaking forth in apostrophe. In the present instance it is directed to his uncle:

      "O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

      That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!

      At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark—

      So! uncle, there you are!"

      Is not all this one continued apostrophe? The second line an admirative comment upon the first, and the fourth line, even in the present day, a common exclamation expressive of misdeeds, or intentions, unexpectedly brought to light? But it is not this most trite reflection, in the second line, that Hamlet wishes to set down. No, it is the all-absorbing commandment:

      "And thy commandment all alone shall live

      Within the book and volume of my brain,

      Unmixed with baser matter—

      — — — —

      My tables, my tables,—meet it is I set it down!

      Set it down, in order that the exact words of the commandment—subsequently quoted to the very letter—may be preserved.

      To suppose that Hamlet gets forth his tables for the purpose of setting down a common-place truism, because he has reserved no place for such matters in the table of his memory, is surely to materialise a fine poetical image by contrasting it with a substantial matter of fact operation.

      And to suppose, with Coleridge, that the very absurdness of the act is a subtle indication of incipient madness, is an over refinement in criticism, as intenable as it is unnecessary.

      Hamlet evinces no semblance of unsettled mind, real or assumed, until joined by Horatio and Marcellus; and, even then, his apparently misplaced jocularity does not commence until he has finally determined to withhold the secret he had twice been on the point of disclosing:

      How say you then, would the heart of man once think it?— But you'll be secret.

      Again:

      There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark— But he's an arrant knave.

      I do not know whether I am singular in the view I take of these two sentences, but I understand them as inchoate disclosures, suddenly broken off through the irresolution of the speaker.

      For instance, I do not understand the last, as Horatio understood it—"There needs no ghost from the grave to tell us this;" but I understand it as an intended revelation, begun, withdrawn, and cleverly turned off by the substitution of a ridiculous termination. It is then, when Hamlet finally resolves to withhold the secret, at least from Marcellus (when or where Horatio afterwards acquires it, is not explained), that he seeks to conceal his overwrought feelings by assumed levity.

      Such is the way I read this scene; and, while I freely admit the difficulty presented in the fact, that, amongst so many acute students of Shakspeare, no one before should have seen any difficulty in the usual interpretation of this passage, I must at the same time declare, that I can perceive no single point in favour of that interpretation, save and except the placing of the stage direction where it now is. But this may have arisen from the early printers being misled by the apparent sequence of the word that, with which the next line commences:

      ——"meet it is I set it down

      That" &c.

      It may be observed, however, that such a commencement, to a sentence expressive of wonder or incredulity, was by no needs uncommon. As, for example, in the first scene of Cymbeline:

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