176 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 147. 



Thomas Goffe. — Who was Thos. Goffe, author 

 of three tragedies, the second edition of whicli 

 appeared in 1656 ? J. R. Relton. 



[Thomas GofFe, a divine and dramatic writer, was 

 born in Essex about 1592, and educated at the West- 

 minster School, and at Christ Church, Oxford. In 

 1623 he was preferred to the living of East Clandon, 

 in Surrey, where he died in 1629. He wrote sermons 

 and tragedies, and two Latin funeral orations (see 

 Watt's Biblioth. Britan.) Consult also Baker's Bio- 

 graphia Dramaiica.'] 



Beef-eaters. — Can any subscriber to "N". & Q." 

 give the origin of the name of beef-eaters ? 



W. M. M. 



[The Yeomen of the Guard are so called from its 

 having been formerly one of their duties to watch the 

 beauffet ; and hence they were called beauffetiers, vulgo, 

 beef-eaters.] 



A PASSAGE IN THE " MERCHANT OF VENICE," 

 ACT III. SC. 2. 



(Vol. vi., pp. 59. 106.) 



To the appeal of Mb. Hickson respecting the 

 suggested readings of the above passage, I feel that 

 I am in courtesy bound to reply. It is pleasant 

 when such controversies are conducted in a con- 

 ciliatory spirit, manifesting that the disputants 

 contend for truth and not for victory. 



Much as I respect his authority, and that of 

 your Leeds correspondent A. E. B., I regret that 

 I cannot fully subscribe to the objections taken by 

 either of them on this occasion to the readings I 

 advocate, for be it remembered that none of them 

 originate with me. 



To Mb. Hickson's first question, "Do I think 

 that gilded shore gives any meaning whatever ? " 

 I answer confidently that I do, and even the very 

 sense which he himself says is clearly required, 

 deceitful. That the poet may have used it in this 

 sense will appear from the following passage in 

 A Lover's Complaint : 



" For further could I say this man's untrue, 

 And knew the patternes of his foule beguiling, 

 Heard where his plants in other orchards grew, 

 Saw how deceits were guilded in his smiling." 

 I have not forgotten that two years since I fur- 

 nished a quotation from Tarquin and Lucrece, 

 which seemed to countenance the reading guiled 

 shore, and Mb. Hickson's interpretation of it as 

 guile-covered, or charactered shore ; and I now 

 only prefer gilded-shore, the reading of the second 

 folio, as giving, in my mind, a clearer and less 

 equivocal sense. 



In regard to the reading Indian gipsie, sug- 

 gested by the late Mr. Sidney Walker, instead of 

 the old reading, Indian heautie, I am not wedded 

 to it, and admit that perhaps the epithet Indian 



makes against it; but I cannot concede to Mb. 

 HicKsoN that the term gipsie, as applied to Cleo- 

 patra, " is not applied depreciatingly," when I re- 

 collect Mercutio's "Laura to his lady was a 

 kitclien-wench ; Dido a dowdie ; Cleopatra a 

 gipsie; Helen and Hero hildings and harlots." 

 Notwithstanding the reasons adduced by A. E. B. 

 in favour of beautie, which Mb. Hickson thinks 

 decisive, I am still of opinion that it was not the 

 poet's word. 



I am much gratified to find that Mb. Hickson 

 agrees with me in the substitution of stale for ^jaZe", 

 about which I never had the slightest hesitation. 

 Confident that pale and common could not be right, 

 I sought confirmation from Shakspeai'e himself, and 

 found it. With regard to the epithet paleness ap- 

 plied to lead, it is supported by such numerous 

 examples as to leave no doubt. Dr. Farmer ob- 

 serves that we have the same antithesis in 3Iid- 

 summer Night's Dream, in which Theseus says : 



" Where I have seen great clerks look pale — 

 I read as much, as from the rattling tongue 

 Of saucy and audacious eloquence." 



S. W. Singer. 

 Mickleham. 



LUNAR OCCULTATIONS. 



(Vol. vi., p. 73.) 



Your correspondent H. C. K. says he will ba 

 thankful to any one who will show the fallacy of 

 his explanation of the phenomenon of the appear- 

 ance of a star on the face of the moon during its 

 transit, which he accounts for by supposing, that 

 as the light from the star would be 1'25 seconds in 

 traversing the space between the moon and the 

 earth, " the angular velocity of the moon is suffi- 

 cient to project the star on her disc ;" but he for- 

 gets that the light from the moon itself must be 

 exactly the same time in reaching us, and imagines 

 that the eye would see the moon in its actual posi- 

 tion at the moment, and the star in that which it 

 occupied r25 seconds before! As to red rays 

 being the slowest of transmission, he should know 

 that our ordinary white light is produced by the 

 union of all the colours of the prism, and were 

 one kept back we should only receive the comple- 

 mentary colour, which in this case is green ; so 

 that if this were true, any white light would, when 

 first seen, be of that hue. 



I may also notice a singular assertion of JEgro- 

 Tus, at p. 75., that " heat is a constituent of light, 

 and in proportion to its intensity !" It is no more 

 so than bread is of cheese, though perhaps as fre- 

 quent an accompaniment. The three emanations 

 from the sun, light, heat, and chemical influence, 

 now called actinism, though generally united, are 

 separable and subject to different laws. The light 

 from the moon, and I think that from electricity 



