July 24. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



85 



the emendation in Coriolanus found in Mr. Col- 

 i^ieb's second folio, of hissoii multitude for bosom 

 multiplied^ perhaps I may be allowed to add a few 

 words in reply to your correspondent A. E. B. 

 (Vol. vi., p. 26.), who, as he once designated him- 

 self " a charmed listener " to Shakspeare, will not 

 listen approvingly to annotators "charm they never 

 so wisely." On this occasion he dissents from 

 the " general acclaim " with which this excellent 

 conjectural emendation has been received, in a 

 very elaborate and ingenious argument, which I 

 regret to say has failed to convince me. I still 

 think that had Mr. Collier's second folio only 

 afforded this one very happy correction, it would 

 have done good service to the text of a play in 

 which the printei-'s errors are numerous. 



To the argument of your excellent correspon- 

 dent, it seems to me, one fatal objection offers 

 itself: the context requires a plural noun to be in 

 concord witli they and their, and therefore " this 

 bosome multiplied " cannot be right ; for dare we 

 say the poet was wrong ? Think of the greatest 

 master of language the world ever saw writing 



" this bosome multiplied . 

 What's like to be their words : ' We did request it : ' " &e. 



I submit that we may confidently read the pas- 

 sage thus : 



" Til' accusation 

 AVhlch theij have often made against the senate, 

 All cause unborn, could never be the motive 

 Of our so frank donation. Well, what then? 

 How shall this bisson-multitude digest 

 The senate's courtesy ? Let deeds express 

 What's like to be their words:" &c. 



Your correspondent will see that I adopt 

 Mason's correction of motive for native, which he, 

 I think unjustly, treats as "meddling." At the 

 risk of being placed in the same category, I will 

 add that in the very next speech of Coriolanus we 

 have another absurd printer's error. The first 

 folio gives us — 



" To iumpe a body with a dangerous physic." 



The second folio improves this into jumpe, 



I read (meo periculo). To impe a body, i. e. re- 

 store or increase its power. This term from fal- 

 conry was familiar to the poet. 



We have all the same object in view, I trust; 

 that is, to restore, as far as it is possible, the text 

 from the fatal injuries inflicted on it by careless 

 printing and imprudent " meddling." I yield to 

 no one in awful reverence for its integrity, but 

 cannot persuade myself that the printers, or the 

 player-editors of the old copy, have infallibly given 

 what Shakspeare wrote, especially when it leads to 

 absurdity or nonsense. 



" Oh ! mighty poet ! Thy works are not as those of 

 other men, simply and merely great works of art ; but 

 are also like the pha3nomena of nature, like the sun and 

 the sea, the stars and the flowers, — like frost and 



snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which arc 

 to be studied with entire submission of our own facul- 

 ties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be 

 no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert — but 

 that, the farther we press in our discoveries, the more 

 we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting 

 arrangement, where the careless eye had seen nothing 

 but accident." * 



I conclude with these eloquent words, after the 

 dry bones of our verbal disputes, that the acces- 

 sory, as Sir Henry Wotton says, may help out the 

 principal, according to the art of stationers, and to 

 leave the reader con la bocca dolce. 



S. W. Singer. 



Mickleham. 



^tpXitS ta Minax <Ruttiti. 



Milton and Tacitus (Vol. v., p. 606.). — There 

 is an oft-quoted line expressing the same senti- 

 ment : 



" Ambition is the vice of noble minds." 

 Who is the proprietor of it? — author one can 

 hardly call him ? A. A. D. 



Emaciated Monumental Effigies (Vol. v., p. 497.). 

 — There is in Lichfield Cathedral an emaciated 

 figure shown as part of the monument of Dean 

 Hey wood, who died October 25, 1492. Shaw 

 (Staffordshire, vol. i. p. 249.) quotes the following 

 account of the monument from Dugdale's Visita- 

 tion in the Herald's College : — 



" In a south wall opposite the choir is a very elegant 

 monument of a man in full proportion, with a red 

 gown and white hood, and over that a red one : his 

 hands are elevated as in prayer, and his head reclines 

 upon a blue cushion, and under that is placed a red 

 one. In the bottom of the monument immediately 

 under him is the figure of a corpse laid out in its 

 winding sheet, his arms crossed over his gown. The 

 sheet is tied at the top, and the head is laid upon a 

 blue pillow." 



Shaw gives an engraving of it in its complete 

 state taken from Dugdale's Visitation; but I be- 

 lieve the bottom part is all that now remains. 



C. H. B. 



30. Clarence Street, Islington. 



''La Garde meurt" (Vol. v., p. 425.; Vol. vi., 

 p. 11.). — A note to A Voice from Waterloo, one 

 of the most interesting and authentic and carefully 

 compiled accounts of the battle which has yet ap- 

 peared, written by Serjeant-Major Cotton of the 

 7th Hussars, who was orderly to Sir Hussey 

 Vivian in the battle, tells us — 



" It was Halkett himself who marked out Cam- 

 bronne, and, having ridden forward at full gallop, was 

 on the point of cutting down the French general, when 



* Note " On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," 

 by Mr. De Quincey, in the London Magazine, vol. viii. 

 1823, p. 356. 



