288 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 204. 



who possessed a most curiously-shaped skull, broad and 

 flat at the top, and projecting greatly on each side over 

 the ears, deposed : ' I live about a furlong and a lialf 

 from where the body was found. I have seen the 

 body of the deceased. I had never seen her before her 

 death. On the night of Friday, the 29th of July, I 

 dreamt three successive times that I heard the cry of 

 murder issuing from near the bottom of a close called 

 Little Ditchraent Close (the place where the body was 

 found). The first time I dreamt I heard the cry it 

 woke me. I fell asleep again, and dreamt the same 

 again. I then woke again, and told my wife, I could 

 not rest ; but I dreamt it again after that. I got up 

 between four and five o'clock, but I did not go down 

 to the close, the wheat and barley in which have since 

 been cut. I dreamt once, about twenty years ago, 

 that I saw a woman hanging in a barn, and on passing 

 the next morning the barn which appeared to me in 

 my dream I entered, and did find a woman there hang- 

 ing, and cut her down just in time to save her life. I 

 never told my wife I heard any cries of murder, but I 

 have mentioned it to several persons since. I saw the 

 body on the Saturday it was found. I did not mention 

 my dream to any one till a day or two after that. I 

 saw the field distinctly in my dream and the trees 

 thereon, but I saw no person in it. On the night of 

 the murder the wind lay from that spot to my house.' 

 " Rhoda Jessop, wife of the last witness, stated that 

 her husband related his dreams to her on the evening 

 of the day the body was found." 



In Mr. John Ilill Burton's Narratives from 

 Criminal Trials in Scotland, is a chapter entitled 

 " Spectral and Dream Testimony," to which the 

 above evidence will be a curious addition. 



C. II. COOPEK. 



Cambridge. 



SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE. 



" Priam's six-gated city,'" Sfc. 

 to Troilus and Cressida occurs 



-In the prologue 



" . . . . Priam's six-gated city, 



Dardan and Tymbria, Ilias, Chetas, Trojan, 

 And Antenorides, with massy staples. 

 And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts." 



What struck me here was the omission of the 

 only gate of Troy really known to fame, the Sccean, 

 which looked on the tomb of the founder Laome- 

 don ; before which stood Hector, " full and fixed," 

 awaiting the fatal onslaught of Achilles ; where 

 Achilles, in turn, received his deatli-wound from 

 the shaft of Paris; and through which, finally, the 

 wooden horse was triumphantly conveyed into the 

 doomed city. 



The six names are shown to be taken by Shak- 

 speare in part from Caxton, and in part from 

 Lydgate : and in Knight's edition we are told that 

 they are " pure inventions of the middle age of 

 romance- writers." 



Let us examine this assertion. The names are 

 to be found pretty nearly as above, but with one 



important difference, in Dares' History of the 

 Trojan War. My authority is Iluasus, the Del- 

 phine editor of Virgil (see his note at ^n. ii. 

 612.). Now Dares (perhaps the oldest of the pro- 

 fane writers whom we know) was a Phrygian, who 

 took part in the Trojan war, and wrote its history 

 in Greek : and the Greek original was still e.xtant 

 in the time of iElian, from a.d. 80 to 140. Of 

 this, now lost, a Latin translation still survives, by 

 some attributed to Cornelius Nepos, and by some 

 regarded as spurious ; but, either way, its date must 

 be long antecedent to " the middle age of romance- 

 writers." It was doubtless from this Latin history 

 that Caxton or Lydgate, or both, derived directly 

 or indirectly the names they adopted ; and yet it 

 is to be noted that they give respectively the 

 names of Chetas and Cetheas to one of their gates, 

 and omit the well-known Scaan, which Dares 

 expressly mentions ; for I presume that no prin- 

 ciple of philology will sanction the identification 

 of Sccean with either of the terms used by these 

 two writers. 



I have trespassed somewhat on your space, but 

 let me hope the subject may be farther elucidated. 

 The points I wish to put forward are, Shakspeare's 

 omission of the Scajan gate, and the proposition 

 by Knight (for a proposition it is, though in a 

 participular form), that these six names are " pure 

 inventions of the middle age of romance-writers." 



W. T. M. 



Hong Kong. 



On the Wo7'd "delighted" in "Measure for 

 Measure" Sj-c. (Vol. viii., p. 241.). — Inasmuch as 

 the controversy respecting this word seems to be 

 over, and no one of the critics and commentators 

 on Shakspeare's text appefTTs to have the slightest 

 clue to the real meaning and derivation, I will 

 enlighten them. But, first, I must say, I am sur- 

 prised that Dr. Kennedy should (though he has 

 certainly hit on the right meaning) be unable to 

 give a better account of the word than that in 

 Vol. ii., pp. 139. 2.:!;0. And as to the passage quoted 

 (Vol. ii., p. 200.) by Mr. Singer from Sidney's 

 Arcadia, I beg to inform him that the word delight, 

 which occurs therein, is a misprint for daylight ! 



We find, in the Latin, the substantive delicice, 

 delight, pleasure, enjoyment; and the adjective 

 (derived from the same roof, and guiding us to the 

 original meaning of the substantive) delicatus, which, 

 amongst other meanings, has that of tender, soft, 

 gentle, delicate, dainty. 



As the early English scholars were not very 

 particular about the form of the words they intro- 

 duced from the Latin, or indeed of those which 

 were purely English, for they changed them at 

 their pleasure, — and that this is the case, I pre- 

 sume no one at all versed in the literature of the 

 time of Henry VIII. will dispute, — it requires no 

 great exertion of fancy to believe, that, finding 



