ee 
Noy. 24. 1849.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
53 
DYCE VERSUS WARBURTON AND COLLIER — 
AND SHAKSPEARE’S MSS. 
In Mr. Dyce’s Remarks on Mr. J. P. Col- 
lier’s and Mr. C. Knights Editions of Shak- 
speare, pp: 115, 116, the following note 
occurs : — 
“ King Henry IV., Part Second, activ. se. iv. 
“ As humorous as winter, and as sudden 
As flaws congealed in the spring of day.” 
“ Alluding,” says Warburton, “ to the opinion of 
some ‘philosophers, that the vapours being con- 
gealed in air by cold, (which is most intense to- 
wards the morning,) and being afterwards rarified 
and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion 
those sudden and impetuous gusts of wind which 
are called flaws.” — Coxiier. 
“ An interpretation altogether wrong, as the 
epithet here applied to ‘ flaws’ might alone deter- 
mine; ‘congealed gusts of wind’ being nowhere 
mentioned among the phenomena of nature except 
in Baron Munchausen’s. Travels. Edwards rightly 
explained ‘flaws,’ in the present passage, ‘small 
blades of ice.’ I have myself heard the word used 
to signify both thin cakes of ice and the bursting of 
those cakes.” — Dycn. 
Mr. Dyce may perhaps have heard the word 
floe (plural floes) applied to floating sheet-ice, 
as it is to be found so applied extensively in 
Captain Parry’s Journal of his Second Voy- 
age; but it remains to be shown whether such 
a term existed in Shakspeare’s time. I 
think it did not, as after diligent search I 
have not met with it; and, if it did, and then 
had the same meaning, floating sheet-ice, how 
would it apply to the illustration of this pas- 
sage ? 
That the uniform meaning of flaws in the 
poet’s time was swzdden gusts of wind, and 
figuratively sudden gusts of passion, or fitful 
and impetuous action, is evident from the 
following passages : — 
“ Like a red morn, that ever yet’ betoken’d 
Wreck to the seamen, tempest to the field, 
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds, 
Gust and foul flaws to herdsmen and to herds.” 
Venus and Adonis. 
“ Like a great sea-mark standing every flaw.” 
re b oid 
Coriolanus, act Vv. sc, iii. 
“ —. patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw.” 
Hamlet, act. v. sc. i. 
“ Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams 
Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.” 
3d Pt. Henry VI, actiii, se. i. 
“ —___ these flaws and. starts (impostors to true 
fear).” Macbeth, act iv. se. iv. 
“Falling in the flaws of her own youth, hath 
blistered her report.” 
Meas. for Meas., act ii. se. iii. 
So far for the poet’s acceptation of its 
Meaning. 
Thus also Lord Surrey : — 
* And toss’d with storms, with flaws, with wind, 
with weather.” 
And Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Pil- 
grim :— 
“ What flaws, and whirles of weather, 
Or rather storms, have been aloft these three 
days. 
Shakspeare followed the popular meteoro- 
logy of his time, as will appear from the 
following passage from a little ephemeris 
then very frequently reprinted :— 
* De Repentinis Ventis. 
“8, Typhon, Plinio, Vortex, aliis Turbo, et vi- 
bratus Eenephias, de nube gelida (ut dictum est) 
abruptum aliquid saepe numero secum voluit, 
ruinamque suam illo pondere aggravat: quem 
repentinum flatum &% nube prope terram et mare 
depulsum, definuerunt’ quidam, ubi in gyros ro- 
tatur, et proxima (ut monuimus) verrit, sudque 
vi sursum raptat.” — Mizatpus, Ephemeridis 
Aeris Perpetuus: seu Rustica tempestatum Astro- 
logia, 12° Lutet. 1584, 
T have sometimes thought that Shakspeare 
may have written: — 
* As flaws congested in the spring of day.” 
It is an easy thing to have printed con- 
gealed for that word, and congest occurs in A 
Lover's Complaint. Still I think change 
unnecessary. 
Has the assertion made in An Answer to 
Mr. Pope's Preface to Shakspeare, by a 
Strolling Player, 1729, respecting the de- 
struction of the poet’s MSS. papers, beem ever 
verified? If that account is authentic, it 
will explain the singular dearth of all auto- 
graph remains of one who must have written 
so much, As the pamphlet is not common, I 
transcribe the essential passage: — 
“ Flow much it is to be lamented that’ Two large 
Chests full of this Great Man’s loose papers and 
Manuscripts in the hands of an ignorant Baker of 
Warwick (who married one of the descendants 
from Shakespear), were carelessly scattered and 
thrown about as Garret Lumber and Litter, to 
aes SR SSS SSS ae | | 
