542 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 188. 



" Sir Hans Sloane is known to have the finest col- 

 lection of butterflies in England, and perhaps in the 

 world ; and if rare monkish manuscripts are for Hearne 

 only, how can rarities be for Sloane, unless thou speci- 

 fyest what sort of rarities ? O thou numskull !" — No. 2., 

 pp. 15-16. 



The correction was evidently an improvement, 

 and therefore Pope wisely accepted the benefit, 

 and was the channel through which it was conveyed ; 

 and the passage accordingly now stands as altered 

 by the letter-writer. James CROssLEr. 



NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS. 



(^Continued from p. 522.) 



Dare, to lurk, or cause to lurk ; used both trans- 

 itively and intransitively. Apparently the root 

 oi dark and dearn. 



" Here, quod he, it ought ynough suffice. 

 Five houres for to slepe upon a night : 

 But it were for an olde appalled wight, 

 As ben thise wedded men, that lie and dare. 

 As in a fourme sitteth a wery hare." 



Tyrwhitt's utterly unwarranted adoption of 

 Speght's interpretation Is " Dare, v. Sax. to stare." 

 The reader should always be cautious how he 

 takes upon trust a glossarist's sly fetch to win a 

 cheap repute for learning, and over-ride inquiry 

 by the mysterious letters Sax. or Ang.-Sax. tacked 

 on to his exposition of an obscure wovd. There is 

 no such Saxon vocable as dare, to stare. Again, 

 •what more frequent blunder than to confound a 

 secondary and derivative sense of a word with its 

 radical and primary — indeed, sometimes to allow 

 the former to usurp the precedence, and at length 

 altogether oust the latter : hence it comes to pass, 

 that we find dare is one while said to imply peep- 

 ing and prying, another while trembling or crouch- 

 ing ; moods and actions merely consequent or 

 attendant upon the elementary signification of the 

 word : 



" I baue an hoby can make larkys to dare." 

 Skelton's Magnifycence, vol. i. p. 269. 1. 1 358. , 

 Dyce's edition ; 



on which line that able, but therein mistaken 

 editor's note is, " to dare, i. e. to be terrified, to 

 tremble" (he however also adds, it means to lurk, 

 to lie hid, and remits his reader to a note at p. 379., 

 where some most pertinent examples of its true 

 and only sense are given), to which add these 

 next : 



" . . . let his grace go forward, 

 And dare vs with his cap, like larkes." 

 First Fol., Henry VIII., Act III. Sc. 2. 

 " Thay questun, thay quellun, 

 By frythua by fellun, 

 The dere in the dellun, 

 Thay droupun and daren." 

 The Anturs of Arthur at the Tarnewathelan, 

 St. IV. p. 3. Camden Society's Publications. 



" She sprinkled vs with bitter iuice of vncouth herbs, 

 and strake 

 The awke end of hir charmed rod vpon our heades, 



and spake 

 Words to the former contrarie. The in;;re she 



charm'd, the more 

 Arose we vpward from the ground on which we 

 darde before." 



The XIIII. Booke of Quid's MelamorjJ,nsis, 

 p. 179. Arthur Golding's translation: Lon- 

 don, 1587. 



" Sothely it dareth hem weillynge this thing ; that 

 heuenes weren before," &c. 



And again, a little further on : 



" Forsothe yee moste dere, one thing dure you 

 nougt (or be not unknowen) : for one day imentis 

 God as a thousande yeeris, and a thousande veer as 

 one day." — C" 3'" Petre 2., WyclifFe's translation : 



in the Latin Vulgate, latet and lateat respectively ; 

 in the original, Xavddyei and XavQavira. Now the 

 book is before me, I beg to furnish Mr. Collier 

 with the references to his usage of terre, men- 

 tioned an Todd's Dictionary, but not given (Col- 

 lier's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 63., note), namely, 

 6th cap. of Epistle to Ephesians, prop, init.; and 

 3rd of that to Colosaians, ^rop._/?«. 



Die and live. — This Tiysteron proteron is by no 

 means uncommon : its meaning is, of course, the 

 same as live and die, i. e. subsist from the cradle 

 to the grave : 



" . . . . Will you sterner be 



Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?" 

 First Fol., As You Like It, Act III. So. 5. 



All manner of whimsical and farfetched con- 

 structions have been put by the commentators 

 upon this very homely sentence. As long as the 

 question was, whether their wits should have 

 licence to go a-woolgathering or no, one could 

 feel no great concern to interfere : but it appears 

 high time to come to Shakspeare's rescue, when 

 Mr. Collier's "clever" old commentator, with 

 some little variation in the letters, and not much 

 less in the sense, reads " kills" for dies ; but then, 

 in the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 3., 

 the same " clever " authority changes " cride-game 

 (cride I ame), said I well?" into "curds and 

 cream, said I well?" — an alteration certainly not 

 at odds with the host's ensuing question, " said I 

 well?" saving that that, to u liquorish palate, 

 might seem a rather superfluous inquiry. 



" With sorrow they both die and live 

 That unto richesse her hertes yeve." 



The Romaunt of the Rose, v. 5789-90. 



" He is a foole, and so shall he dye and Hue, 

 That thinketh him wise, and yet can he nothing." 

 The Ship of Fooles, fol, 67., by Alexander 

 Barclay, 1570. 



