200 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 43. 



of books, interleaved, and containing about 200 

 pages, with the following title: — 



" Catalogus Variorum, in quavis Facultate et ma- 

 teria Librorum inooinpactum Oftiehiie Joannis Maire, 

 quorum Auctio publice habebitur in a;dibus Joannis 

 INIaire, bora octava matutina et secunda postmeridiana 

 ad diem , 1G61. Lugduni IJatavorura, ex 



Typographia Nicola! Herculis, 1661." 



On the back is the following notice to 

 '' buyers : " — 



" ]\Ionitos Tolumus Emptores, hosce Libros ea vendi 

 conditione, ut cum eorum traditione pri.tiuni pijesenti 

 pecunia persolvatur. Et si quis Libios a se emptos 

 intra sex septimanarum spatium, a prima Auctionis 

 die nuiiierandum, a Bibliopola non exegerit, eos cum 

 emptoris prioris damno aliis vendere integrum erit ac 

 licitum. 



" Monentiir etlam et rogantur, ut ante meridiem ad 

 hora; octavEB, post meridiem vero ad secuiidae punctum 

 pra;sentes sese sistere dignentur." 



Can any of your readers give me pai'ticulars 

 about this John Maire ' W.J. 



Havre. 



SHAKSPEARe's use of the -word " DELIGHTED." 



(Vol. ii., pp. 113. 139.) 



Although Mr. Hickson's notion of the meaning 

 of delight, in the three passages of Shakspeare he 

 has cited, is somewhat startling, it was not to be 

 summarily rejected without due examination ; and 

 yet, from a tolerably extensive accjuaintance with 

 old English phraseology, I fear 1 cannot flatter 

 liim with the expectation of having it conhrmed by 

 instances from other writers. 



I believe that lighted is rather an unusual form 

 to express lightened, disenciimhered, but that it was 

 someiunes used is apparent ; for in Hution's Dic- 

 tioiutry, 1583, we have "AUevo, to make light, to 

 light." — " Allevatus, lifted up, lighted" And in 

 the Cambridge Dictionary, 1-594, " Allevatus, 

 lifted up, lighted, raised, eased or recovered." 

 The use of the prefix de in the common instance 

 of depart for to part, divide, is noticed by Ms.. 

 HicKsoN ; and demerits was used for merits by 

 many of our old writers as well as Shakspeare. 

 I find decompound for compound in Ileylvu's JMicro- 

 co-smos, 16-27, p. 249., thus : — " The English lan- 

 guage is a decompound of Dutch, French, and 

 Latin." 



These instances may serve to show that it is not 

 at all improbable Shakspeare may have used de- 

 lighted for lighted=^lightened=^f reed from incum- 

 brance; and it must be confessed that the sense and 

 spirit of the passage in Pleasure for Measure 

 would be much improved by taking this view of it. 



On the other hand, it certainly does appear 

 that the poet uses the termination -ed for -ing. 



in the passages eited by Mr. Haleiwele, where 

 we have professed for professi/ig', becomed for 

 becomwg-, guil«Z for guil/n^, broodwZ for brood- 

 ing, and deformed for deforuj/wg- .• it was not un- 

 reasonable, therefore, to conclude that he had 

 done so in these other instances, and that de- 

 lighte<f stood for delightwo-, and not for delight/i/Z, 

 as Mr. Haeeiwell implies. How far the gram- 

 matical usages of the poet's time may have au- 

 thorised this has not yet been shown ; but it 

 appears also that the converse is the ease, and that 

 he has used the termination -ing for -ed; e.g. 

 long/?io- for longef/, all-obey/Ho- for all-obeyerf, dis- 

 content/ng- for discontented, niultiplyiVfO' for mul- 

 tiplicfZ, unrecall/n^ for unrecallef/. Dr. Crombie 

 (J£tymology and Syntax of the English Language, 

 p. 150.) says : — 



" The participle in ed T consider to be perfectly 

 analogous to the participle in ing, and used bke it in I 

 eitber an active or passive sense, belonging, therefore, | 

 neither to the one voice nor the other exclusively." I 



Supposing for a moment that Shakspeare used j 

 dolighterf for delightui^, the sense of the passages 

 would, I presume, be in Measure for Measure, 

 " the spirit affording delight ;" in Othello, " if 

 virtue want no beauty atfurding delight ;" vaCym- 

 heline, " the gifts delighting more from being de- 

 layed." Here we have a simple, and, in the last 

 two instances, I think, a more satisfactory mean- 

 ing than Mr. Hickson's sense of lightened, disen- 

 cumbered, affords, even could it be more unques- 

 tionably established. 



I have, however, met with ap.assagein Sir Philip 

 Sidney's Arcadia (ed. J59S, p. 294.) which might 

 lead to a different interpretation of delighted in 

 these passages, and which would not, perhaps, be 

 less startling than that of Mr. Hickson. 



" All this night (in despite of darknesse) he held his 

 eyes open; and in the morning, when the delight began 

 to restore to each body his colour, then with curtains 

 bar'd he himselfe from the enjoying of it; neither 

 willing to fcele tlie comfort of the day, nor the ease of 

 the night" 



Here, delight is apparently used for tJie return 

 of light, and the prefix de is probably only inten- 

 sive. Now, presuming that Shakspeai'e also used 

 delighted for lighted, illumined, the passage in Mea- 

 sure for Pleasure would bear this interpretation : 

 " the delighted sjjirit, i. e., the spirit restored to 

 light,'" freed from " that dark house in which it 

 i long was pent." In Othello, " if virtue lack no 

 delighted beauty," i. e. " icant not the light of 

 ! beauty, yonr son-in-law shows far more fair than 

 1 black." Here the opposition between light and 

 black is much in its favour. In Cymbeline, I 

 j must confess it is not quite so clear : " to make 

 ' my gifts, by the dark uncertainty attendant upon 

 . delay, more lustrous (delighted), more radiant 

 I when given," is not more satisfactory than Mb. 



