378 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 129. 



He then proposes bis reading : 



" The dram of base 

 Doth all the noble substance of worth out 

 To his own scandal ; " 



observing that " the dram of base " means the 

 alloy of baseness or vice, and that it is frequent 

 with our poet to use the adjective of quality in- 

 stead of the substantive signilying the thing. 



It would be tedious to enumerate all the hapless 

 attempts at emendation which have been subse- 

 quently made, but I must be allowed to refer to 

 that adopted by Mr. Singer as long since as the 

 year 1826, when he vindicated the original read- 

 ing, doubt, from the unnecessary meddling of 

 Steevens and Malone. Mr. Singer thus printed 

 the passage : 



" The dram of bale 



Doth all the noble substance often doubt, 



To his own scandal." 



Sale was most probably preferred to base as 

 more euphonous, and nearer to the word eale in 

 the ^}-st quarto ; but Mr. S. would now perhaps 

 adopt base, as suggested by the word ease, in the 

 second quarto, for the reasons given by Theobald 

 and your correspondent A. E. B. 



It is evident that dout cannot have been the 

 poet's word, for, as your correspondent remarks, 

 the meaning is obviously, that " the dram of base " 

 renders all the noble substance doubtful or sus- 

 picious, not that it extinguishes it altogether. This 

 will appear from what precedes : 



" Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens 

 The form of plausive manners," &c. 

 Under present impressions, therefore, I should 

 prefer, as the least deviation from the old copies, 

 to read : 



" The dram of base 

 Doth, all the noble substance o'er, a doubt. 

 To his own scandal : " 



i. e. doth cast a doubt over all the noble substance, 

 hring into suspect all the noble qualities by the 

 leaven of one dram of baseness. This, according 

 to your correspondent's own showing, is the very 

 sense required by the context, " the base doth doubt 

 to the noble, i. e. imparts doubt to it, or renders it 

 doubtful." And when we recollect the frequent 

 use of the elision o'er for over by the poet, and 

 the ease with which of might be substituted for it 

 by the compositor, I cannot but think it conclusive. 

 To me the proposed reading, " offer doubt," does 

 not convey a meaning quite so clear and unequi- 

 vocal. 



Conjectural emendation of the text of our great 

 poet is always to be made with extreme caution, 

 and that reading which will afford a clear sense, 

 with the slightest deviation from the first editions, 

 is always to be preferred. The errors are chiefly 

 typographical, and often clearly perceptible, but 

 they are also not unfrequently perplexing. 



That Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight, who do 

 not often sin in this way, should on the present 

 occasion have countenanced such a wide departure 

 from the old copies as to read ill and doubt, may 

 well have surprised A. E. B., as it certainly did 



PeRIERGUS BlBLIOPHILUS. 



"THE MAN IN THE ALMANACK. 



(Vol. v., p. 320.) 



Nat Lee's Man i tK Almanack stuck with Pins 

 has no reference to "pricking for fortunes;" but 

 to the figure of a man surrounded by the signs of 

 the zodiac found in old almanacks, and intended 

 to indicate the favourable, adverse, or indifferent 

 periods for bloodletting. From the various signs 

 are lines drawn to various parts of the naked figure; 

 and these lines give it very much the aj)pearance 

 of being stuck with pins. 



I have not ready access to any old English al- 

 manacks ; but a German one of the early part of 

 the sixteenth century contained the figure as above 

 described, with this inscription : 



" In dieser Figur sihet man in welchem 

 Zeichen gilt, mittel, oder boss lassen sey." 



Surrounding the frame, the words " giit," 

 " mittel," or " boss " are placed against each sign 

 of the zodiac from which the lines are drawn ; 

 and underneath the figure are the following verses: 

 " Im Glentz und in des Sommers zelt, 

 So lass du aufF der rechten seyt, 

 In Winters zeit, und in dem Herbst, 

 AufF der lincken; — dass du nit sterbst." 



Some former possessor has written on the mar- 

 gin : 



" Signa coeli sunt 1 2. sq' : 



" Quatuor loni: Aries, Libra, Sagittarius, et Aqua- 

 rius. 



" Et etiam quatuor medii, sq'. : Cancro, Virgo, 

 Scorpio, et Pisces. 



" Et quatuor mali : Geminij, Leo, Capricornus, et 

 Taurus." 



Similar figures no doubt occur in our old 

 English almanacks. I will merely add that the 

 figure above described is pasted on the back of the 

 title-page of an edition of Regimen Sunitatis, with 

 an interlineary version in German verse, bearing 

 the following imprint : " Impressum Auguste per 

 Johannem Froschauer, Anno Dm Moij." 4to. 



The book also bears a German title, which, as it 

 mentions the subject of bloodletting [lassen], I 

 may as well transcribe : (L Diss ist das Regiment 

 der Oesuntheyt durch all monat des ganzen iars, wie 

 man sich halten sol mit essen und trincken, und auck 

 von lassen. I presume that the rules for blood- 

 letting which accompany the old almanacks are 

 chiefly derived from this Regimen Sanitatis, which 

 is founded upon that of the school of Salerno, as 

 they form a principal feature in its precepts. 



