334 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2'"» S. VII. April 23. '59. 



Fair, but such as would be quickly, nay instantly, 

 caught and appreciated by every class of readers. 

 The cavalier tract under notice, therefore, affords 

 us direct evidence of the continued popularity of 

 the catch " Hold thy peace, thou knave," at the 

 distance of forty years after the date of its first 

 publication. 



But we may, I also think, go farther ; and shall 

 not strain probability to suppose that the majority 

 of the persons into whose hands the tract was 

 likely to fall, were familiar with " Hold thy peace" 

 only through the medium of Tivelflh Night; and 

 if so, we have a strong proof of the nature of the 

 impression which that most admirable comedy had 

 made upon the public mind ; — an impression 

 which it would seem neither the lapse of half a 

 century, nor the withdrawal of the play from pub- 

 lic representation by the closing of the theatres, 

 had tended to weaken, much less to eradicate, — 

 and at the same time an additional and striking 

 refutation (were such needed) of the allegation 

 that Shakspeare was, after his retirement from the 

 stage, all but forgotten. W. H. Husk. 



Text. 

 le langaye. 

 je me souviendraj*. 

 je suls le bon escholier. 

 vistement. 

 les appellons. 

 il est fort bon anglois. 

 je m'en faitz la repetition, 

 il est trop difficile, Madame, comme je penae. 

 je m'en oublie. 



je ne doute point d'apprendrc. 

 je r^citeray a vous. 

 non pour les dames d'honneur d'user. 

 pour tout le monde. 

 allon-nous k diner. 



The mistakes of which I have taken no notice 

 appear to me to be such as must have resulted 

 from the blundering of the compositor, and the 

 carelessness (or ignorance) of the editor, if any, such 

 as en peu ; la main, il est appelle ; de Jingres, &c. 

 But in the majority of cases in the list I have 

 given, the French is just such as would result 

 from an Englishman attempting to transplant the 

 idioms of his own tongue into French. War- 

 burton and Farmer seem to have been fully aware 

 of the fact that the French in Hen. V. never was 

 (not even in the time of Hen. IV. of France or 

 earlier) genuine French. As to the other French 

 scene in the play (IV. 4.), the mistakes of the 

 French soldier are not so numerous in propor- 

 tion to the quantity spoken as those of Katherine 

 and Alice : and we have no right to find fault 

 with the boy's French as he is English. But the 

 pronunciation of hras, is what has given offence to 

 the old critics. Doubtless they are right in assum- 

 ing that in bras the final s was never sounded : "" 



* To appeal to French rhymes, as Farmer does, is futile ; 

 for in French poetry rhymes are written for the eye. 



SHAKSPEARE S FRENCH. 



iTour correspondent A. A. (2"'' S. vii. 124.) 

 says very safely that Shakspeare seems to have 

 understood Italian better than French, Some 

 commentators seem innocent of even sufficient 

 knowledge of French for the correction of those nu- 

 merous blunders in Shakspeare's French for which 

 he is indebted to his printers and pseudo-editors. 

 For instance, in Henry V. Act III. Sc. 4, some mo- 

 dern editions, following, I surmise, the quartos, 

 read "Ces sont mots de son mauvais," &c. ; whereas 

 the folios read correctly, " Ce sont des mot mau- 

 vais," &c. Whether all the errors of construction 

 which appear in all the old copies of this scene are 

 in like manner referable to the corruption of prin- 

 ters, is a question which I decidedly think must 

 be answered in the negative. The list is so long 

 and the blunders are so peculiarly English, and 

 there is so little correct French in the scene, that 

 I cannot doubt that the writer of that scene knew 

 French very imperfectly. I select the principal 

 faults, and annex the corrections : — 



Correction. 

 la langue. 



je m'en souviendray. 

 je suis une bonne ^colifere, 

 viste. 



nous les appelons. 

 c'est de fort bon anglois. 

 je m'en vais faire la repetition, 

 je pense que c'est trop difficile, 

 j'oblie. 



je ne doute point que j'apprendray. 

 je vais vous reciter. 



dont les dames qui ont de I'honneur ne peuvent faire usage, 

 pour tout au monde. 

 aliens diner. 



whether, as Farmer says, it was ever pronounced 

 " brau" I cannot say. Neither was moyeyer pro- 

 nounced as in English, though it certainly was 

 formerly pronounced as if it had been written 

 moe. 



But, after all, who was responsible for these 

 French scenes ? Had Shakspeare edited his plays 

 like Ben Jonson, and such English-French had 

 been retained in such edition, the inference that 

 Shakspeare had little knowledge of French would 

 have been inevitable. But if, as is most probable, 

 he was to a great extent at the mercy of his ac- 

 tors, these scenes might have been foisted on his 

 plays, and he might have been perfectly indif- 

 ferent as to the quality of the intrusion. I leave 

 this crux for abler critics than I profess myself to 

 be. At any rate, it is not well to defend Shak- 

 speare at the expense of French construction, as 

 some critics (in ignorance of French, I trust,) 

 have done. C. Mansfield Ingleby. 



Birmingham. 



