June 11. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



ot>7 



Queen Elizabeth. I fear hrs memory deceived 

 him, or why should a man of" his sound learninar 

 afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist 

 Warburton ? whose knowledge of dogs, by the 

 way, must have been marvellously small, or he 

 could never have imagined them to overtop one 

 another in a horizontal course. Overrun, over- 

 shoot, overslip, are terms in hunting, overtop 

 never ; except perchance in the vocabulary of the 

 virild huntsman of the Alps. Trash occurs as a 

 verb in the sense above given. Act I. Sc. 2. of the 

 Tempest: "Who t'aduance, and who to trash for 

 over- topping." I have never met with the verb in 

 that sense elsewhere, but overtop is evermore the 

 appropriate term in arboriculture. To quote 

 examples of that is needless. Of it metaphorically 

 applied, just as in Shakspeare, take the following 

 example : 



" Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in 

 a manner dotli overtop the rest, and like a foregrown 

 member depriveth the other of their proportion of 

 growth." — Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., Lib. 

 Ang.-Cath. Theol. 



Have we not the substantive trasJi in the sense 

 of shreddings, at p. 542. book iii. oi' a Discourse of 

 Forest Trees, by John Evelyn ? The extract that 

 contains the word is this : 



" Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, 

 excepting only one stick of one foot long, to harden 

 and wedge the binding of it ; this to prevent tiie abuse, 

 too much practised, of filling the middle part and ends 

 with trash and short sticks, which had been omitted in 

 the former statute." 



Possibly some of the statutes referred to by 

 Evelyn may contain examples of the verb. In 

 the meantime it will not be impertinent to remark, 

 that what appears to be nothing more than a dia- 

 lectic variety of the word, namely trouse, is of 

 every-day use in this county of Hereford for trim- 

 mings of hedges ; that it is given by Grose as a 

 verb in use in Warwickshire for trimming off the 

 superfluous brnnches; and lastly, that it is em- 

 ployed as a substantive to signify shreddings by 

 Philemon Holland, who, if I rightly remember, 

 was many years head master of Coventry Grammar 

 School : 



" Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with 

 stone; and for want tliereof, laid with green willow 

 bastons, and for default of them, with vine cuttings, or 

 such frousse, so that they lie halfe a foot tliicke." — 

 The Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's Naturall History, 

 chap. xi. p. 513. : London, 1634. 



Trash no one denies to be a kennel term for ham- 

 pering a dog, but it does not presently follow that 

 the word bore no other signification ; indeed, there 

 is no more fruitful mother of confusion than ho- 

 monomy. 



Clamor, to curb, restrain (the tongue) : 

 " Clamor your tongues, and not a word more." 

 The Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4. 

 Most judiciously does Nares reject GifTord's cor- 

 ruption of this word into charm, nor will the' 

 suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one jot 

 contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, 

 whom the severe discipline of many years' study, 

 and the daily access of accumulating knowledge, 

 have schoole<l into a wholesome sense of their ex- 

 treme fallibility in such matters. Without adding 

 any comment, I now quote, for the inspection of 

 learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts : 



" For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that 

 onelesse he chaumbreed his tongue in season, ther 

 should ere log bee one oxe the fewer for hym." — 

 Apoptheymis of Erasmus, translated by Nicolas Vdall, 

 McccccxLii, the First Booke, p. 10. 



" From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he 

 refrein or chaumbre the tauntyng of his tongue." — 

 Id., p. 76. 



After so many Notes, one Query. In the second 

 folio edition of Shakspeare Cmy first folio wants 

 the whole play), I find in Cymbeline, Act V. Sc. 3., 

 the next beautiful passage : 



" Post. Still going? This is a lord : Oh noble misery 

 To be ith' field, and aske what newes of me : 

 To-day how many would have given their honors 

 To have sav'd their carkasses ? Tooke heele to dooV 

 And yet dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd, 

 Could not find death, where I did heare him groane, 

 Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly 



monster, 

 'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds, 

 Sweet words; or hath moe ministers then we 

 That draw his knives ith' war. Well I will finde 



hitn : 

 For being now a favourer to the Britaine, 

 No more a Britaine, I have resum'd againe 

 The part I came in." 



In the antepenultimate line, Britaine was more- 

 than a century ago changed by Hanmer into Roman, 

 therefore retained by Warburton, again rejected 

 by Steevens and Johnson, once more replaced by 

 Knight and Collier, with one of his usual happy 

 notes by the former of the two, without comment 

 by the latter, finally left unnoticed by Dyce. My 

 Query then is this. What amount of obtuseness 

 will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tin- 

 kering and cobbling the noblest passages of thought 

 that ever issued from mortal brain, while at the 

 same time he stumbles and bungles in sen- 

 tences of that simplicity and grammatical clear- 

 ness, as not to tax the powers of a third-form 

 schoolboy to explain ? * If editors, commentators, 



* In a passage from L. L. L., lately winnowed in the 

 pages of " N. & Q.," divers attempts at elucidation 

 (whereof not one, in my judgment, was successful) 



