Qnd §, No 9,, Man, 1. °56,] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
165 
LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH |, 1856 
Notes. 
SONNET BY KING JAMES THE FIRST. 
It does not appear to be generally known that 
King James's autograph MS. of his celebrated 
BASIAIKON AQPON ; or, His Majestie’s Instructions 
to his dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince, is preserved 
in the British Museum, under the press mark 
MS. Reg., 18. B. xy. It is bound in purple 
yelyet, and ornamented upon one side with the 
arms and supporters of Scotland upon a plate of 
old, crowned, surrounded by the collar and 
jewel of St. Andrew, with this motto below: “ In 
my defence God me defend.’ ‘The borders 
appear to have been formerly adorned with 
thistles in gold, two or three only of which are 
remaining. 
This work was printed in Edinburgh by Ro- 
bert Waldegrave, the king’s printer, in 1603, 
12mo., and reprinted immediately upon the king’s 
arrival in London in the same year. Prefixed to 
both these editions is a sonnet addressed by the 
king to his son Henry, which Bishop Perey, who 
reprints it, tells us ‘would not dishonour any 
writer of that time.” Now, it is not a little sin- 
gular that in the MS. this sonnet does not appear, 
but in its place we haye the following 
« Sonett. 
“Loe heir my Sone a mirror viue and fair, 
Quhilk schawis the schadow of a vorthie King; 
Loe heir a booke, a paterne dois zow bring, 
Quhilk ze sould preas to follow mair and mair. 
This trustie freind the treuthe will never spair, 
Bot give a guid advyse unto zow heir, 
How it sould be zour chief and princelie cair 
To follow verteu, vyce for to forbeare: 
And in this booke zour lesson vill ze leire 
' For gyding of zour people great and small; 
Than, as ze aucht, gif ane attentive eare 
And paus how ze thir preceptis practise sall : 
Zour father biddis zow studie heir and reid 
How to become a perfyte King indeid.” 
When we compare this sonnet with that in the 
printed edition of the book in question, a sort of 
suspicion is raised that the latter is the production 
of some courtly poet well skilled in the “art of 
poesie,” and not that of his Sacred Majesty. The 
gennineness of the MS. sonnet is beyond all sus- 
picion. 
Park, in his edition of Walpole’s Royal and 
Noble Authors, does not notice the autograph 
MS. of the BASIAIKON ANPON ; but it is right to 
mention that’ I owe my knowledge of it to Sir 
Henry Ellis’s valuable collection of Original 
Letters (Virst Series, vol. iii. p. 79-). , 
Epwanrp F. Rimsaurz. 
A FEW SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES ON SOME PASSAGES 
IN MIDDLETON’s “ PLAYS.” 
(Continued from p. 86.) 
Your Five Gallants, Act Il. Se. 1., vol. ii. 
p- 239. : 
“ Sec. C. Come, I cannot miss it i'faith; beside, the 
gentleman that bestowed it on me, swore to me that if 
cost him twenty nobles.” 
“ Miss it] i.e. let it go,” says the note. Mr. 
Dyce evidently collects this sense of miss from 
the context, as no doubt he also did that of “ over- 
ture” above; a loose sort of interpretation, 
wherein the most unlearned reader may safely dis- 
pense with the aid of a glossarist. An exposition 
of a word that is adapted but to one example, or 
one class of examples, cannot be considered either 
satisfactory or scholarlike, for the best of all 
reasons, that it rarely hits the elementary signifi- 
cation. Substitute “let if go,” or “let go,” in 
the subjoined instance, and see what impertinency 
is the result : 
* Glotony. 
Man. 
Glotony. 
We shall have a warfare it ys told me. 
Ye; where is thy harnes? P 
Mary, here may ye se, 
Here ys harnes enow. 
Why hast thou none other harnes but thys? 
What the devyll harnes should I mys, 
Without it be a bottell? ” 
Interlude of Nature, Bl. L., no date. 
The truth is, miss exactly corresponds to “ want,” 
is synonymous with it, both as it means “to be 
without,” and “to need.” In the example from 
Middleton miss signifies “to be without ;” in that 
from the Interlude of Nature, “to need.” So 
likewise with regard to want; “the more the 
wanted, the lesse they desired,” is Phil. Holland’s 
translation of ‘‘ quanto rerum minus, tanto minus 
cupiditatis erat,” in Livy’s preface, where of 
course want means *‘to be without:” or that I 
may quote a still more apposite instance, wherein 
both senses of want are exemplified : 
“Nor doth he ask of God to be directed whether li- 
turgies be lawful, but presumes, and in a manner would 
persuade him, that they be so; praying that the church 
and he may never want them.” 
““ What could be prayed worse extempore? Unless he 
mean by wanting that they may never need them.”—Mil- 
ton’s Answer to Hikon Basilike, cap. Xvi. 
This use of miss it is, to which, in a note in the 
Tempest of his best of all modern editions of 
Shakspeare’s text, Mr. Collier, to whom Mr. Dyce 
dedicates his edition of Middleton, remarks the 
commentators had not paralleled a fellow. It is 
repeated again by Middleton in The Witch, 
Act I. Se. 1., vol. ili. p. 264. : 
“ Flo. I find thee still so comfortable, 
Beshrew my heart, if I know how to miss thee.” 
The cognate noun mister, or mistre, appears to 
have fared no less unhappily among scholars, for 
Wrath, 
Glotony. 
