^ 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 140, 



fluence. Superstition, I believe, may be proved 

 to be perfectly independent of education, as it 

 exists almost equally amonir the highly educated 

 and the most ignorant, while persons from both 

 these classes may be found equally free from its 

 degrading trammels. A work designed to illus- 

 trate this fact or opinion would be extremely in- 

 teresting and instructive, and I shall be glad to 

 hear that some able person has entered on such an 

 undertaking. The folk lore of " N. & Q." will be 

 very useful, and may be made more so towards 

 the accomplishment of this object, if instances of 

 superstitious notions and practices among the 

 higher classes, and they abound, be also included. 

 I am prepared to contribute some instances, and I 

 shall do It the moi-e readily when a definite and 

 useful object is known to be in view. W. H. K. 



Weather Prophecy (Vol. v., p. 534.). — I have 

 heard the very same prophecy in Sweden, where 

 it is said never to fail. This summer the oak has 

 come out before the ash in Aberdeenshire, which 

 I beg thus to place on record. G. J. R. G. 



Ellen Castle, Aberdeenshire. 



pbentee's errors in thk inseparable par- 

 ticles IN SHAKSPEARH. 



Among^ the most frequent causes of obscurity in 

 the text of the old editions, this stands pre-eminent. 

 The instances are many and manifold. Two pas- 

 sages in the play of King Lear have occurred to 

 me, which need, I think, only be pointed out to 

 carry conviction even to the most rigid stickler 

 for the integrity of the old copies. 



In Act II. Sc. 1., where Edmund misrepresents 

 to his father his encounter with his brother Edgar, 

 he says : " Full suddenly he fled." On which 

 Gloucester exclaims : 



" Let him fly far : 

 Not in this land shall he remain uncaught, 

 And found; dispatch, the noble Duke my master 

 . comes to-night." 



Thus the passage stands in the first Iblio. The 

 Variorum Edit., which is followed by Mr. Collier 

 and Mr. Knight, prints it as if the sense was 

 interrupted, and entirely departs from the punc- 

 tuation of the old copy, thus : 



" Let him fly far : 

 Not in this land shall he remain uncaught ; 

 And found — Dispatch — The noble Duke my master 

 comes to-night." 



We have not a word to tell us of the innovation, 

 Vrhich was certainly uncalled for. The context 

 plainly shows that we should read, preserving the 

 punctuation of the folio : 



" Let him fly far ; 

 Not in this land shall he remain uncaught, 

 l/wfound ; " &c. 



The printer has, singularly enough, committed 

 the same mistake in the first line of Act IV. A 

 passage from which, as it stands in all the late 

 editions, it would be vain to try to extract a^ 

 meaning. 



Edgar enters in his disguise, and is made to say : 

 " Yet better thus and known to be conteran'd 

 Than still contemn'd and flatter'd." 



Now it must be evident to common sense, that he 

 alludes to his disguised condition ; and that to 

 make sense of the passage, we must read, as John- 

 son suggested : 



" Yet better thus unknown," &c. 

 Edgar could not mean to say that he was known 

 in his disguise ! The plain meaning must be, " It 

 is better to be contemned in this beggarly disguise 

 unknown, than in my true rank and character to- 

 be flattered though secretly contemned." 



From a similar lapse of the printer, a passage ia 

 King John, Act III. Sc. 1., has been made the- 

 subject of much unnecessary comment, some or 

 which, from Its pseudo-Collins character, mights 

 well have been spared. Constance says : 



" O Lewis, stand fast ; the devil tempts thee here 

 In likeness of a new untrimmed bride." 



Theobald proposed to read, " a new and trimmed^ 

 bride." And Dr. Richardson, in his excellent 

 Dictionary, suggests that untrimmed vtsis a mere cor- 

 ruption oi entrimmed. Mr. Dyce, to whom every 

 reader of our early drama is so much indebted^ 

 informs me that he hastily fell into the views of" 

 the commentators regarding the meaning ofuntrini' 

 med, but that he is now convinced It is here simply 

 an error of the printer ibr uptrimmed ; a mistake 

 easily made at press. Trimmed up, and decked up,. 

 were the current phrases applied to a bride dressed 

 for her nuptials. We have both phrases in Romea 

 and Juliet : Capulet says to the nurse, — 



" Go waken Juliet, go and trim Iter up." 

 He had previously said to his wife : 



" Go thou to Juliet, help to deck her up." 



It is satisfactory, by such a simple and un- 

 doubted correction, to get rid of heaps of idle 

 babble and verbiage about a word that the poet 

 certainly never wrote, and certainly never con- 

 ceived, with the meaning that some of the com- 

 mentators would give to it. This will be evident 

 from a passage in his eighteenth sonnet : 

 " And every fair from fair sometimes declines, 

 By chance, on Nature's changing course, untrimnCd." 



S. W. SlNGEE- 



DR. GUMMING ON ROMANS Till. 



I cannot pretend to any acquaintance with 

 Dr. Cummlng's works, which appear to be at pre- 

 sent very popular, and am therefore unable to say 



