228 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[No. 15. 
corrections were adopted; this, however, but in a 
few instances, while in one, to be mentioned pre- 
sently, a palpable mistake, corrected in the MS. 
Latin notes, stands in the translation. The En- 
glish version differs very materially from the 
Latin. The author says in his Preface : — 
«This English version is the same in substance 
with the Latin, though, I confess, ’tis not so properly 
a translation, as a new composition upon the same 
ground, there being several additional chapters in it, 
aud several new moulded.” 
The following are examples of corrections being 
adopted: P. 6. Latin ed. “Quod abunde pro- 
babitur in principio libri secundi.” For the last 
word subsequentis is substituted, and the English 
has following. P. 35. “ Hippolitus” is added to 
the authorities in the MS.; and in the English, 
p. 36., ‘ Anastasius Sinaita, S. Gaudentius, Q. 
Julius Hilarius, Isidorus Hispalensis, and Cassio- 
dorus,” are inserted after Lactantius, in both. 
P. 37. “Johannes Damascenus” is added after 
St. Augustin in both. P.180. a clause is added 
which seems to have sugyested the sentence be- 
ginning, “ Thus we have discharged our pro- 
mise,” &c. But, on the other hand, in p. 8. the 
allusion to the “Orphics,” which is struck out in 
the Latin, is retained in the English; and in the 
latter there is no notice taken of “‘ Empedocles,” 
which is inserted in the margin of the Latin, 
In p.11. “Ratio naturalis” is personified, and 
governs the verb vidit, which is repeated several 
times. This is changed by the corrector into 
vidimus; but in the English passage, though 
varying much from the Latin, the personification 
is retained. In page 58, “ Dion Cassius” is cor- 
rected to “ Xiphilinus;” but the mistake is pre- 
served in the English version. JOHN JEBB. 
SHAKSPEARE’S EMPLOYMENT OF MONOSYLLABLES. 
I offer the following flim-flam to the ex- 
amination of your readers, all of whom are, I 
presume, more or less, readers of Shakspeare, and 
far better qualified than I am to “ anatomize” his 
writings, and “see what bred about his heart.” 
I start with the proposition that the language 
of passion is almost invariably broken and abrupt, 
and the deduction that I wish to draw from this 
proposition and the passages that Iam about to 
quote is, that—Shakspeare on more than one oc- 
casion advisedly used monosyllables, and mono- 
syllables only, when he wished to express violent and 
overwhelming mental emotion, ex. gratia: — 
Lear, “ Thou know’st the first time that we smell 
the air, 
We wawl, and ery : —I will preach to thee; mark me. 
[ Gloster, “ Alack! alack the day") 
Lear. ‘“« When we are born, we ery, that we are come 
To this great stage of fools.—This a good block?” 
— King Lear, Act LV. Se. 6. 
In this passage [I bracket Gloster] we find no 
fewer than forty-two monosyllables following each 
other consecutively. Again, 
“e 
but through his lips do throng 
Weak words, so thick come, in his poor heart’s aid, 
That no man could distinguish what he said.” 
Rape of Lucreece, Stanza 255. 
After I had kept this among other flim-flams 
for more than a year in my note-book, I submitted 
it in a letter to the examination of a friend; his 
answer was as follows: —“ Your canon is inge- 
nious, especially in the line taken from the sonnet. 
I doubt it however, much, and rather believe that 
sound is often sympathetically, and as it were 
unconsciously, adapted to sense. Moreover, mo- 
nosyllables are redundant in our tongue, as you 
will see in the scene you quote. In King John, 
Act III. Se. 3., where the King is pausing in his 
wish to incense Hubert to Arthur’s murder, he 
says : — 
‘ Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet: 
But thou shalt have: and creep time ne’er so slow, 
Yet it shall come, for me to do thee good. 
I had a thing to say, — But let it go:’ — 
forty monosyllables.” 
“ Credimus? an qui amant ipsi sibi somnia fingunt?” 
The very passage he quoted seemed, to my 
eyes, rather a corroboration of the theory, than an 
argument against it! I might, I think, have quoted 
the remainder of Lear’s speech ending with the 
words “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill,’ and with 
the exception of three words consisting entirely 
of monosyllables, and one or two other passages. 
But I have written enough to express my mean- 
ing. C. Forzgs. 
Temple. 
NOTES UPON CUNNINGHAM’S HAND-BOOK FOR 
LONDON. 
Wild House, Drury Lane. — Mr. Cunningham 
says, ‘‘ Why so called, I am not aware.” Wild is 
a corruption of Weld. It was the town mansion 
of the family of the Welds, of Lutworth Castle. 
Compton Street, Soho. — Built in the reign of 
Charles the First by Sir Francis Compton. New 
Compton Street, when first formed, was deno- 
minated Stiddolph Street, after Sir Richard 
Stiddolph, the owner of the land. It afterwards 
changed its name, from a demise of the whole 
adjoining marsh land, made by Charles the Second 
to Sir Francis Compton. All this, and the inter- 
mediate streets, formed part of the site of the 
Hospital of St. Giles. 
Tottenhum Court Road.— The old manor-house, 
sometimes called in ancient records “ Totham 
Hall,” was, in Henry the Third’s reign, the resi- 
dence of William de Tottenhall. Part of the old 
buildings were remaining in 1818. 
