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Notes and Queries, Number 15, February 9, 1850. Various
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St. John’s Wood, Jan. 26. 1850.
NOTES FROM FLY-LEAVES, NO. 6
In a copy of Burnet’s Telluris Theoria Sacra (in Latin), containing only the two first books (1 vol. 4to., Lond. 1689), there is the following entry in Bishop Jebb’s hand-writing:—
“From the internal evidence, not only of additional matter in the margin of this copy, but of frequent erasures and substitutions, I was led to suppose it was the author’s copy, illustrated by his own annotations and improvements. The supposition is, perhaps, sufficiently corroborated by the following extract from the Biographia Britannica, vol. iii. p. 18.
“‘It seems it was usual with Dr. Burnet, before he published any thing in Latin, to have two or three copies, and no more, printed off, which he kept by him for some time, in order to revise at leisure what he had written currente calamo, and sometimes, when he thought proper, to be communicated to his particular friends for their opinions, &c.’
“This copy, as it does not differ from any of the editions of 1689, was certainly not one of those proofs. But the Doctor’s habit of annotating on his own Latin books after they were printed, renders it extremely probable that this book was a preparation for a new edition. It would be well to compare it with the English translation.”
The nature of many of the corrections and additions (which are very numerous), evidently shows a preparation for the press. I have compared this copy with the English edition, published in the same year, and find that some of the corrections were adopted; this, however, but in a few instances, while in one, to be mentioned presently, a palpable mistake, corrected in the MS. Latin notes, stands in the translation. The English version differs very materially from the Latin. The author says in his Preface:—
“This English version is the same in substance with the Latin, though I confess, ’tis not so properly a translation, as a new composition upon the same ground, there being several additional chapters in it, and several new moulded.”
The following are examples of corrections being adopted: P. 6. Latin ed. “Quod abunde probabitur in principio libri secundi.” For the last word subsequentis is substituted, and the English has following. P. 35. “Hippolitus” is added to the authorities in the MS.; and in the English, p. 36., “Anastasius Sinaiti, S. Gaudentius, Q. Julius Hilarius, Isidorus Hispalensis, and Cassiodorus,” are inserted after Lactantius, in both. P. 37. “Johannes Damascenus” is added after St. Augustin in both. P. 180. a clause is added which seems to have suggested the sentence beginning, “Thus we have discharged our promise,” &c. But, on the other hand, in p. 8. the allusion to the “Orphics,” which is struck out in the Latin, is retained in the English; and in the latter there is no notice taken of “Empedocles,” which is inserted in the margin of the Latin. In p. 11. “Ratio naturalis” is personified, and governs the verb vidit, which is repeated several times. This is changed by the corrector into vidimus; but in the English passage, though varying much from the Latin, the personification is retained. In p. 58., “Dion Cassius” is corrected to “Xiphilinus;” but the mistake is preserved in the English version.
SHAKSPEARE’S EMPLOYMENT OF MONOSYLLABLES
I offer the following flim-flam to the examination of your readers, all of whom are, I presume, more or less, readers of Shakspeare, and far better qualified than I am to “anatomize” his writings, and “see what bred about his heart.”
I start with the proposition that the language of passion is almost invariably broken and abrupt, and the deduction that I wish to draw from this proposition, and the passages that I am about to quote is, that—Shakspeare on more than one occasion advisedly used monosyllables, and monosyllables only, when he wished to express violent and overwhelming mental emotion, ex. gratiâ:—
Lear. “Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl, and cry:—I will preach to thee; mark me.
[Gloster. “Alack! alack the day!]
Lear. “When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools,—This a good block?”
In this passage [I bracket Gloster] we find no fewer than forty-two monosyllables following each other consecutively. Again,
“– but through his lips do throng
Weak words, so thick come, in his poor heart’s aid,
That no man could distinguish what he said.”
After I had kept this among other flim-flams for more than a year in my note-book, I submitted it in a letter to the examination of a friend; his answer was as follows:—“Your canon is ingenious, especially in the line taken from the sonnet. I doubt it however, much, and rather believe that sound is often sympathetically, and as it were unconsciously, adapted to sense. Moreover, monosyllables are redundant in our tongue, as you will see in the scene you quote. In King John, Act III. Sc. 3., where the King is pausing in his wish to incense Hubert to Arthur’s murder, he says:—
‘Good friend, though hast no cause to say so yet:
But thou shall have; and creep time ne’er so slow,
Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good.
I had a thing to say,—But let it go:’—
forty monosyllables.”
“Credimus? an qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt.”
The very passage he quoted seemed, to my eyes, rather a corroboration of the theory, than an argument against it! I might, I think, have quoted the remainder of Lear’s speech ending with the words “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,” and, with the exception of three words, consisting entirely of monosyllables, and one or two other passages. But I have written enough to express my meaning.
Temple.
NOTES UPON CUNNINGHAM’S HAND-BOOK FOR LONDON
Wild House, Drury Lane.—Mr. Cunningham says, “Why so called, I am not aware.” Wild is a corruption of Weld. It was the town mansion of the family of the Welds, of Lutworth Castle.
Compton Street, Soho.—Built in the reign of Charles the First by Sir Francis Compton. New Compton Street, when first formed, was denominated Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard Stiddolph, the owner of the land. It afterwards changed its name, from a demise of the whole adjoining marsh land, made by Charles the Second to Sir Francis Compton. All this, and the intermediate streets, formed part of the site of the Hospital of St. Giles.
Tottenham Court Road.—The old manor-house, sometimes called in ancient records “Totham Hall,” was, in Henry the Third’s reign, the residence of William de Tottenhall. Part of the old buildings were remaining in 1818.
Short’s Gardens, Drury Lane.—Dudley Short, Esq., had a mansion here, with fine garden attached, in the reign of Charles the Second.
Parker Street, Drury Lane.—Phillip Parker, Esq., had a mansion on this site in 1623.
Bainbridge and Buckridge Streets, St. Giles’s.—The two streets, now no more, but once celebrated in the “annals of low life,” were built prior to 1672, and derived their names from their owners, eminent parishioners in the reign of Charles the Second.
Dyot Street, St. Giles’s.—This street was inhabited, as late as 1803,