134 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[No. 9. 
of Suckling, is of a class common enough in the 
time of Charles I. George ‘Wither, rather than 
Suckling, I consider as the head of a race of poets 
peculiar to that age, as “ Shall I wasting in Des- 
pair” may be regarded as the type of this class of 
poems. ‘he present instance I do not think of 
very high merit, and certainly not good enough 
for Suckling. Such as it is, however, with a few 
unimportant variations, it may be found at page 
101. of the Ist vol. of The Hive, a Collection of 
the most celebrated Songs. My copy is the 2nd 
edit. London, 1724. ’ 
I will, with your permission, take this oppor- 
tunity of setting Mr. Dyce right with regard to a 
passage in the Two Noble Kinsmen, in which he is 
only less wrong than all his predecessors. It is to 
be found in the second scene of the fourth act, and 
is as follows : — 
“ Here Love himself sits smiling: 
Just such another wanton Ganymede 
Set Jove afire with,” &c. 
One editor proposed to amend this by inserting 
the nominative “he” after ‘“ Ganymede ;” and 
another by omitting “ with” after “afire.” Mr. 
Dyce saw that both these must be wrong, as 
a comparison between two wanton Ganymedes, 
one of which sat in the countenance of Arcite, 
could never have been intended ; — another, some- 
thing, if not Ganymede, was wanted, and he, there- 
fore, has this note:—‘* The construction and 
meaning are ‘ With just such another smi/e (which 
is understood from the preceding ‘ smiling’) 
wanton Ganymede set Jove afire.’” When there 
is a choice of nouns to make intelligible sense, how 
can that one be understood which is not expressed ? 
It might be “with just such another Love ;” but, 
as I shall shortly show, no conjecture on the sub- 
ject is needed. ‘The older editors were so fond of 
mending passages, that they did not take ordinary 
pains to understand them; and in this instance 
they have been so successful in sticking the epithet 
“wanton” to Ganymede, that even Mr. Dyce, 
with his clear sight, did not see that the very word 
he wanted was the next word before him. It puts 
one in mind of a man looking for his spectacles who 
has them already across his nose. ‘“ Wanton” is a 
noun as well as an adjective; and, to prevent it 
from being mistaken for an epithet applied to 
Ganymede, it will in future be necessary to place 
after it a comma, when the passage will read 
thus; — 
“ Here Love himself sits smiling : 
Just such another wanton,” (as the aforesaid smiling 
Love) “ Ganymede 
Set Jove afire with,” &c. 
The third act of the same play commences thus :— 
«The duke has lost Hippolita; each took 
A several land.” 
Mr. Dyce suspects that for “land” we should 
read “Jaund,” an old form of lawn. ‘“ Land” 
being either wrong, or having a sense not under- 
stood now, we must fall back on the general sense 
of the passage. When people go a hunting, and 
don’t keep together, it is very probable that they 
may take a several “ direction.” Now hand means 
‘direction,’ as we say “to the right” or “left 
hand.” Is it not, therefore, probable, that we should 
read “a several hand?” Samuext Hicxson. 
“ GOTHIC” ARCHITECTURE. 
It would require more space than you could 
allot to the subject, to explain, at much length, 
“the origin, as well as the date, of the intro- 
duction of the term ‘ Gothic,’ as applied to pointed 
styles of ecclesiastical architecture,’ required by 
R. Vincent, of Winchester, in your Fourth Num- 
ber. There can be no doubt that the term was 
used at first contemptuously, and in derision, by 
those who were ambitious to imitate and revive 
the Grecian orders of architecture, after the re- 
vival of classical literature. But, without citing 
many authorities, such as Christopher Wren, and 
others, who lent their aid in depreciating the old 
medieval style, which they termed Gothic, as sy- 
nonymous with every thing that was barbarous 
and rude, it may be suflicient to refer to the cele- 
brated Treatise of Sir Henry Wotton, entitled 
The Elements of Architecture, 4to., printed in 
London so early as 1624, This work was so popu- 
lar, that it was translated into Latin, and annexed 
to the works of Vitruvius, as well as to Freart’s 
Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the Mo- 
dern, Dufvresnoy, also, who divided his time be- 
tween poetry and painting, and whose work on 
the latter art was rendered popular in this coun- 
try by Dryden’s translation, uses the term ‘“ Go- 
thique” in a bad sense. But it was a strange 
misapplication of the term to use it for the pointed 
style, in contradistinction to the circular, formerly 
called Saxon, now Norman, Romanesque, &c. 
These latter styles, like the Lombardic, Italian, 
and the Byzantine, of course belong more to the 
Gothie period then the light and elegant struc- 
tures of the pointed order which succeeded them. 
Felibien, the French author of the Lives of Archi- 
tects, divides Gothic architecture into two distinct 
kinds —the massive and the light; and as the 
latter superseded the former, the term Gothic, 
which had been originally applied to both kinds, 
seems to have been restricted improperly to the 
latter only. As there is now, happily, no fear of 
the word being understood in a bad sense, there 
seems to he no longer any objection to the use of 
it in a good one, whatever terms may be used to 
discriminate all the varieties of the style observ- 
able either at home or abroad. J. 1. 
Trinity College, Oxford. 
