Qnd S, No 9., Mar. 1. °56.] 
NOTES AND QUERIE S. 
167 
its muzzle, and bore upon the bit as though it 
would pull the reins, however long, out of its 
rider’s hand: and also the virtue of a good cup of 
ale to rouse his sinking energies. With equal 
knowledge of stable phraseology, Mr. Collier sup- 
ports the reading “weeds” instead of “ steeds,” 
in Measure for Measure, by an exposition of the 
former word that would pass current nowhere out 
of the sound of Bow bells. - 
To return to Middleton, Act IV. Sc. 5., vol. ii. 
p- 289.: 
«“ What soonest grasps advancement, men’s great suits, 
Trips down rich widows, gains repute and name, 
Makes way where’er it comes, bewitches all?” 
Mr. Dyce’s note is “ men’s] Query mends, 1. e. 
helps.” Is not this a rather strained sense of 
mends? Does not wins better suit the purport of 
the sentence, and express a more familiar speech, 
without much greater deviation from the trace of 
the letters in the text ? 
A Mad World, my Masters, Act IV. Sc. 1, 
p- 386. : 
« Suc. Shall we let slip this mutual hour, 
Comes so seldom in her power?” 
Mr. Dyce’s note is “ her] i. e. of the hour, which 
I notice because in the margin of an old copy, now 
before me, some reader has conjectured our.” It 
is to be regretted that Mr. Dyce did not explain 
what he conceives to be the meaning of the hag, 
when she says the hour comes so seldom in tis 
own power. I am not ashamed to confess it 
eludes my comprehension. 
The Second Part of The Honest Whore, Act III. 
Se. 1. vol. iii. p. 170. : 
“ Inf. These lines are even the arrows Love let flies, 
The very ink dropt out of Venus’ eyes.” 
Mr. Dyce’s note is, — 
“ These lines, &c.| Probably, to amend the grammar, 
we ought to read, — 
* These lines are ev’n the arrows Love lets fly, 
The very ink dropt out of Venus’ eye.’ — Collier. 
ay Ibelieve the author wrote the couplet as given in the 
ext.’ 
Concurring with Mr. Dyce in his rejection of Mr. 
Collier's amendment, I yet think that the latter 
fares with him much like “the old man and his 
ass;” for when Mr. Collier retains in the Merry 
Wives of Windsor the authorised reading, “a 
- blind bitch’s puppies,” he is sharply censured by 
Mr. Dyce for not adopting Theobald’s transpo- 
sition, “a bitch’s blind puppies.” Now I do not 
see why that of Shakspeare may not stand as well 
as this of Middleton, In either reading of Shak- 
speare’s words no one disputes that “blind” is 
adjective to “ puppies,” any more than in Row- 
ley’s “artificial Jew of Malta’s nose,” that “ ar- 
tificial” is adjective to “nose.” Neither must it 
be overlooked that Mr. Dyce has given a most 
dogmatic suffrage to “ busiless,” that monstrous 
compound of Theobald’s, barbarously foisted into 
a sentence, as perspicuous, as grammatical, and as 
agreeable to its author’s style, and the style of his 
times, as was ever written. ‘‘ Most busy, least, 
when I do it,” z. e. most busy, least (so), are Shak- 
speare’s words, substantially in the first folio, 
literally in the second, at the end of Ferdinand’s 
speech, Act III. Se. 1., of The Tempest. These 
words Mr. Collier, in his happier hour, retained ; 
while Mr. Dyce, adopting Theobald’s prodigious 
solecism, ‘busiless,” with the same facility, the 
same matter-of-course assurance, with which its 
inventor assumed it, pronounces them to be “an 
outrage upon language, taste, and common sense.” 
Now let the reader clearly understand, this word 
“ busiless” is Theobald’s own manufacture; it 
occurs nowhere besides in any English writer, 
ancient or modern, nor any compound analogous 
to it. Vocables that will at once obtrude them- 
selves upon a reader’s memory, such as resisiless, 
relentless, opposeless, exceptless, ceascless, exhaust- 
less, quenchless, dureless, utterless, &c., being com- 
pounds of Jess with substantives, or, at all events, 
with substantives or verbs, furnish no precedent, 
afford no warrant for its composition with an ad- 
jective like busy. Should Mr. Dyce still persist 
in forcing upon Shakspeare and the English 
tongue this portentous compound, “busiless,” I 
hope he will not stop there, but proceed to enrich 
the vocabulary of succeeding generations with 
others of the same kind, such as strongless for 
strengthless, happiless for hapless, steadiless for 
unsteady, and so on. 
It has been represented to me that I am alto- 
gether mistaken in supposing the very primitive 
phrase, “to go to ground,” to be a Herefordshire 
relic, forasmuch as Yorkshire also remembers, in 
the same words, this homely practice of uncivilised 
life. It is given, I am aware, in Mr. Halliwell’s 
Dictionary of Archaic Words, but that that useful 
compilation is not always to be relied on with an 
implicit trust, the subjoined specimen will con- 
tribute to evince. ‘ Breeding-in-and-in, crossing 
the breed,” says the dictionary, whereas the re- 
verse is the truth; or, not crossing the breed, 
breeding between near kindred. 
Through some oversight in my last contribution 
to “N. & Q.,” the Hebrew word chetiv was 
wrongly written hetiv. W. XR. Arrowsmiru. 
(To be continued.) 
RECIPES FOR INK-MAKING, ETC. 
I have great pleasure in fulfilling my intention 
of making public, in your pages, a few recipes 
for ink-making, written in the beginning of the 
fifteenth century, copied from a fly-leaf in the be- 
