July 31. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



105 



of tlie folio 1632, now lying before me, be the re- 

 sult of mere guess-work, the person who made 

 them has displayed a degree of sagacity superior 

 to that of all the commentators piit together. 



Although I am so far anticipating my book, I 

 cannot refrain from taking an instance from a page 

 of my folio, 1632, that happens to lie open. The 

 play is Coriolaiius, and in Act I. Sc. 4. the hero 

 thus addresses the cowardly Romans who had been 

 beaten back to their trenches ; I quote from the 

 Variorum edition, from which my own does not 

 differ, excepting in a letter and a point : 

 *' All the contagion of the south light on you, 



You shames of Rome ! you herd of boils and 



plagues 



Plaster you o'er ; that you may be abliorr'd 



Farther than seen, and one infect another 



Against tlie wind a mile." 



Here the difficulty has arisen out of the words, 



" You herd of boils and plagues 



Plaster you o'er ; " 



And it is to be observed that in the first and 

 second folios the spelling is " You Heard of IJyles 

 and Plagues," without any line between "of" and 

 " byles, " which line was introduced by Malone, in 

 order to show that the sentence was broken and 

 interrupted by the impetuosity of the speaker. 

 "This passage (says Malone), like almost every 

 other abrupt sentence in these plays, was rendered 

 unintelligible in the old copy by inaccurate punc- 

 tuation." Thence he proceeds to attempt to es- 

 tablish that the poet applies the word "herd "to 

 the soldiery ; in fact, from the first this passage has 

 been a stumbling-block, although Rowe repre- 

 sented " herd " as applying to " boils and plagues," 

 printing it, however, in the plural. Now, see how 

 easily and naturally the old corrector of my folio 

 1632 makes the passage run, by remedying a com- 

 paratively small misprint : 

 " All the contagion of the south light on you, 



You shauies of Rome ! unheard of boils and plagues 



Plaster you o'er," &-c. 



This must be right : how the egregious error of 

 the press came to be committed, or in what way ■ 

 the corrector arrived at the knowledge of it, j 

 whether by guess or otherwise, we are without in- I 

 formation, and must remain so, being content that i 

 the strange blunder has been detected, and that | 

 the text of Shakspeare will not hereafter be thus j 

 disfigured. As we are not yet able to authenticate i 

 the new readings in any other way than by the I 

 evidence they themselves carry about them, it j 

 seems to me that the setting riglit of such compa- ; 

 ratively small, but still highly important, errors, j 

 as that above pointed out, warrants us in giving | 

 considerable credence to more extensive changes 

 and additions which are elsewhere contained in my 

 volume. 



I have an inquiry to make respecting real or 



supposed variations between different copies of the 

 folio 1632, because I have discovered that mine, 

 in two not unimportant passages, is unlike others 

 that I have seen. This in(juiry I will reserve 

 imtil next week. Everybody is aware that copies 

 of the folio 1623 in particular places vary ma- 

 terially, and it may be the same with copies of the 

 folio 1632. J. Payne Collieb. 



Julv 25. 1852. 



ETYMOLOGY OF THE WOHD " DEVIL. 



(Vol. v., pp. 508. 595. ; Vol. vi., p. 59.) 



As you have allowed INIr. Littledale to expa- 

 tiate so largely on his most absurd (as I think it) 

 speculation on this point, and as you have also 

 allowed him to say that 7 had been so disrespect- 

 ful to you and your readers, as to have attempted 

 " to answer what I had not so much as read," I 

 trust you will allow me to state my share of this 

 question. 



jNIr. Littledale chose to assert that the "usual 

 etymology of Devil, from Aia^oXos, could not be 

 accurate ; because the Hebrew word translated 

 At70o\os, meant advcrsarius, an adversary:" to 

 which I replied that " I thought the Hebrew 

 words representing both Atd$o\os and adcersarws, 

 was rather a confirmation of the old derivation. 

 Had Mr. Littledale forgotten that ' the adver- 

 sary ' is often technically used for ' the Devil.' " 



To this remark Mr. Littledale makes no other 

 answer, than that " / had not read his arguments ;" 

 and he does not, in the three columns of his 

 rejoinders, make the slightest allusion to his original 

 thesis — that is, his oi'iginal blunder — about "the 

 adversary." It appears then that I had not only 

 read his argument, but demolished it ; for he has 

 dropped it altogether, and galloped off in another 

 direction ; discharging upon us, as a Parthiati 

 shaft, a repetition of the question "what is the 

 etymology of the word Devil f^ to which I shall 

 only reply by the old phrase, " Aut Diabolus, 

 aut — ;" leaving Mr. Littledale, when he gets 

 back to his books, to make a better guess at 

 filling the blank than such "fancy etymology" as 

 he is now puzzling himself with. C. 



The Devil and Mr. Litdedale. — Perhaps your 

 correspondent may not have met with the follow- 

 ing speculations on a subject to which he appears 

 to have devoted no ordinary research ? 



" Appel, abel, afel, is common to the Saxon, Danish* 

 and other northern languages, and by universal consent 

 hath been appropriated to particularise the forbidden 

 fruit. Abel, or as the Hebrews soften it, avel, signifies 

 sorrow, mourning, and woe ; and it is exactly agreeable 

 to the figurativencss of that language to transfer the 

 word to the fruit. Our English-Saxon word evil 

 seems to spring from the same source, and a doer of 

 eiil is contracted into devil. Malum, to signify an 



