Sept. 17. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



267 



it is corrupt. Now it appears to me that the 

 critic who proposed to read shows, came very 

 near the truth, and would have hit it completely 

 if he had retained Alcides\ for it is the genitive 

 with robe understood. To explain : 



Austria has on him the " skin-coat " of Coeur- 

 de-Lion, and Blanch cries, — 



" O ! well did he become that lion's robe, 

 That did disrobe the lion of that robe." 



" It lies," observes the Bastard, 



" It lies as sightly on the back of him {Austria) 

 As great Alcides' {robe) shows upon an ass: — 

 But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back," &c. 



Were it not that doth is the usual word in this 

 play, I might be tempted to read does. In read- 

 ing or acting, then, the cwsura should be made at 

 Alcides\ with a slight pause to give the hearer 

 time to supply role. I need not say that the robe 

 is the lion's skin, and that there is an allusion to 

 the fable of the ass. 



Now to justify this reading. Our ancestors 

 knew nothing of our mode of making genitives by 

 turned commas. They formed the gen. sing., and 

 nom. and gen. pi., by simply adding s to the nom. 

 sing. ; thus king made kings, kings, kings (not 

 king's, kings, kings'), and the context gave the 

 case. If the noun ended in se, ce, she, or che, the 

 addition of s added a syllable, as horses, princes, 

 &c., but it was not always added. Shakspeare, 

 for example, uses Lucrece and cockatrice as ge- 

 nitives. I find the first instances of such words 

 as James s, &c., about the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century, but I am not deeply read in old 

 books, so it may have been used earlier. 



In foreign words like Alcides, no change ever 

 took place ; it was the same for all numbers and 

 Gases, and the explanation was left to the context. 

 Here are a couple of examples from Shakspeare 

 himself : 



" My fortunes every way as fairly ranked — 

 If not with vantage — as Demetrius." 



Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I, Sc. 1, 



" To Brutus, to Cassius. Burn all. Some to De- 

 cius house, and some to Cascas ; some to Ligarius. 

 Away ! go !" — Julius Ccesar, Act III. Sc. 3. 



All here are genitives, as well as Cascas. If any 

 doubt, Brutus and Cassius, we had just been told, 

 " Are rid like madmen through the gates of Borne," 

 so they could not be burned. I say now, judicet 

 lector ! 



I must not neglect to add that there was an- 

 other mode of forming the genitive, namely, by 

 the possessive pronoun, as the king his palace. 

 "_ A fly that flew into my mistress her eye," is the 

 title of one of Carew's poems. 



Thos. Keightlet. 



iHtnor itaUS. 



Longfellow s Poetical Works. — One of the best 

 printed editions of Longfellow's Poetical Works 

 which has appeared in England is ushei'ed in by 

 "An Introductory Essay" by the Bev. G. GilfiUan, 

 A.M. I had lived in hopes, through each suc- 

 cessive edition, that either the good taste of the 

 publishers would strike out the preface entirely, 

 or the amended taste of its author curtail some of 

 its redundancies. As neither has been the case, 

 but the 4th edition of the book now lies before 

 me, I beg to ofibr the following examples : 



1. Of Ancient History : 



" His [Longfellow's] ornaments, unlike those of the 

 Sabine maid, have not crushed him." 



2. Of Modern Histoi'y — Dickens a Poet : 



" A prophet may wrap himself up in austere and 

 mysterious solitude : a poet must come ' eating and 

 drinking.' Thus came Sliakspeare, Dry den, Burns, 

 Scott, Gothe ; and thus have come in our day, Dickens, 

 Hood, and Longfellow." 



Is the song of " The Ivy Green " in Pickwick suffi- 

 cient to justify this appellation ? I do not re- 

 member any other " Poem " by Charles Dickens. 



3. Of Metaphors. Out of sixteen pages it is 

 difficult to make a selection ; but the following 

 are striking : 



" If not a prophet, torn hy a secret burden, and uttering 

 it in wild tumultuous strains, .... he has found in- 

 spiration ... in the legends of other lands, whose 

 7iative vein, in itself exquisite, has been highly cultivated 

 and delicately cherished." 



" Excelsion," we are told, " is one of those happy 

 thoughts which seem to drop down, like fine days, from 

 some serener region, or like moultings of the celestial 

 dove, which meet instantly the ideal of all minds, and run 

 on afterwards, and for ever, in the current of the human 

 heart." 



Does not this almost come up to Lord Castle- 

 reagh's famous metaphor ? It certainly goes 

 beyond Mr. Gilfillan's own praise of Longfellow, 

 whose sentiment is described as " never false, nor 

 strained, nor mawkish. It is alxoays mild, . . . and 

 sometimes it appi'oaches the sublime" Mr. G. goes 

 one step farther. W. W. 



Northamptonshire. 



Sir Walter Raleigh. — I find the following re- 

 monstrance in defence of this distinguished man, 

 against the imputation of Hume, in a letter ad- 

 dressed by Dr. Parr to Charles Butler : 



" Why do you follow Hume in representing Raleigh 

 as an infidel? For Heaven's sake, dear Sir, look to 

 his preface to his History of the World ; look at his 

 Letters, in a little 1 8mo., and here, but here only, you 

 will find a tract [entitled The Sceptic], which led 

 Hume to talk of Raleigh as an unbeliever. It is an 

 epitome of the principles of the old sceptics ; and to 

 me, who, like Dr. Clarke and Mr. Hume, am a reader 



