Oct. 15. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



961 



driving before liiin a horse, across whose back 

 was thrown a sack of corn : the sack having fallen 

 a little to one side, the man asked Ussheen to 

 assist him in balancing it properly ; Ussheen 

 instantly stooped from his horse, and catching the 

 sack in his right hand, gave it such a heave that 

 it fell over on the other side. Annoyed at his 

 mistake, he forgot the injunctions of his bride, and 

 sprung from his horse to lift the sack from the 

 ground, letting the bridle fall from his hand at 

 the same time : instantly the horse struck fire 

 from the ground with his hoofs, and uttering a 

 neigh louder than thunder, vanished ; at the same 

 instant his curling locks fell from Ussheen's head, 

 darkness closed over his beaming eyes, the more 

 than mortal strength forsook his limbs, and, a 

 feeble helpless old man, he stretched forth his 

 hands seeking some one to lead him : but the 

 mental gifts bestowed on him by his immortal 

 bride did not leave him, and, though unable to 

 serve his countrymen Avith his sword, he bestowed 

 upon them the advice and instruction which 

 flowed from wisdom greater than that of mortals. 

 Francis Egbert Davies. 



SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE. 



On " Run-awayes " in Romeo and Juliet. — 



" Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steedes, 

 Towards Phoebus' lodging such a wagoner 

 As Phaeton would whip you to the west, 

 And bring in cloudie niglit immediately. 

 Spred thy close curtaine, Love-performing night, 

 That run-awayes eyes may wincke, and Romeo 

 Leape to these armes, vntalkt of and vnseene." 



Your readers will no doubt exclaim, is not this 

 question already settled for ever, if not by Mr. 

 Singer's substitution of rumour ers, at least by 

 that of R. H. C, viz. rude days ? I must confess 

 that I thought the former so good, when it first 

 appeared in these pages, that nothing more was 

 wanted ; yet this is surpassed by the suggestion 

 of R. H. C. As conjectural emendations, they 

 may rank with any that Shakspeare's text has 

 been favoured with ; in short, the poet might un- 

 doubtedly have written either the one or the other. 



But this is not the question. The question is, 

 did he write the passage as it stands in the first 

 folio, which I have copied above? Subsequent 

 consideration has satisfied me that he did. I find 

 the following passage in the Merchant of Venice, 

 Actll. Sc. 6.: J ^ 



" but come at once, 



For the close night doth play the run-away. 

 And we are staid for at Bassanio's feast." 



Is it very difficult to believe, that the poet who 

 called the departing night a run-aioay would apply 

 the same term to the day under similar circum- 

 stances ? 



Surely the first folio is a much more correctly 

 printed book than many of Shakspeare's editor* 

 and critics would have us believe. H. C. K- 



Rectory, Hereford. 



The Word " clamour " in " The Winters TaLeT 

 — Mr. Keightley complains (Vol viii., p. 241.) 

 that some observations of mine (p. 169.) on the 

 word clamow\ in The Winters Tale., are precisely 

 similar to his own in Vol. vii., p. 615. Had 

 they been so in reality, I presume our Editor 

 would not have inserted them ; but I think they 

 contain something farther, suggesting, as they do, 

 the A.-S. origin of the word, and going far te 

 prove that our modern calm, the older dame, the 

 Shakspearian clamour, the more frequent cZe«, 

 Chaucer's clum, &c., all of them spring from the 

 same source, viz. the A.-S. clam or clom, which 

 means a band, clasp, bandage, chain, prison ; from 

 which substantive comes the verb clcemian, to 

 clam, to stick or glue together, to bind, to imprisoa. 



If I passed over in silence those points on which 

 Mr. Keightley and myself agreed, I need scarcely 

 assure him that it was for the sake of brevity, and 

 not from any want of respect to him. 



I may remark, by the way, on a conjecture of 

 Mr. Keightley's (Vol. vii., p. 615.), that perhaps, 

 in Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5., Shakspeare might 

 have written " till famine clem thee," and not, as it 

 stands in the first folio, " till famine cling thee," 

 that he is indeed, as he says, "in the region of 

 conjecture : " cling is purely A.-S., as he will find 

 in Bosworth, " Clingan, to wither, pine, to cling 

 or shrink up ; marcescere." H. C. K. 



Rectory, Hereford. 



Three Passages in " Measure for Measured — 

 H. C. K. has a treacherous memory, or rather, 

 what I believe to be the truth, he, like myself, 

 has not a complete Shakspeare apparatus. Col- 

 lier's first edition surely cannot be in his library, 

 or he would have known that Warburton, long 

 ago, read seared for feared, and that the same 

 word appears in Lord Ellesmere's copy of the 

 first folio, the correction having been made, as 

 Mr. Collier remarks, while the sheet was at press. 

 I however assure H. C. K. that I regard his cor- 

 rection as perfectly original. Still I have my 

 doubts if seared be the poet's word, for I have 

 never met it but in connexion with hot iron ; and 

 I should be inclined to prefer sear or sere; but this 

 again is always physically dry, and not meta- 

 phorically so, and I fear that the true word is not 

 to be recovered. 



I cannot consent to go back with H. C. K. to 

 the Anglo-Saxon for a sense of building, which I 

 do not think it ever bore, at least not in our poet's 

 time. His quotation from the " Jewel House," 

 &c. is not to the point, for the context shows that 

 " a building word" is a word or promise that will 



