252 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



is probably nearer to flood than flute. But conceive of two 

 gentlemen, members of one knows not how many learned so 

 cieties, like Messrs. Wright and Halliwell, pretending to edit 

 Nares, when they query a word which they could have found in 

 any French or German dictionary ! 

 On page 93 we have 



Hayle, holy cold ! chaste temper, hayle ! the fire 

 Raved o er my purer thoughts I feel t expire. 



Mr. Hazlitt annotates thus : l Rav d seems here to be equivalent 

 to reav d or bereav d. Perhaps the correct reading may be 

 &quot; reav d.&quot; See Worcester s Dictionary \ art. RAVE, where Menage s 

 supposition of affinity between reave and bereave is perhaps a 

 little too slightingly treated/ 



The meaning of Lovelace was, the fire that raved. But what 

 Mr. Hazlitt would make with * reaved o er my purer thoughts/ 

 we cannot conceive. On the whole, we think he must have 

 written the note merely to make his surprising glossological 

 suggestion. All that Worcester does for the etymology, by the 

 way, is to cite Richardson, no safe guide. 



Where now one so so spatters, t other : no ! (p. 112.) 



The comma in this verse has, of course, no right there, but Mr. 

 Hazlitt leaves the whole passage so corrupt that we cannot spend 

 time in disinfecting it. We quote it only for the sake of his note 

 on so so. It is marvellous. 



1 An exclamation of approval when an actor made a hit. The 

 corruption seems to be somewhat akin to the Italian, &quot; si, si,&quot; a 

 corruption of &quot; sia, sia.&quot; 



That the editor of an English poet need not understand 

 Italian we may grant, but that he should not know the mean 

 ing of a phrase so common in his own language as so-so is 

 intolerable. Lovelace has been saying that a certain play might 

 have gained applause under certain circumstances, but that 

 everybody calls it so-so something very different from an ex 

 clamation of approval/ one should say. The phrase answers 

 exactly to the Italian cosl cosl, while si (not si) is derived from 

 sic, and is analogous with the affirmative use of the German so 

 and the Yankee/^/ so. 



Oh, how he hast ned death, burnt to be fryed ! (p. 141.) 



The note on fryed is 



* I.e. freed. Free and freed were sometimes pronounced like 

 fry and fryed; for Lord North, in his Forest of Varieties, 1645, 

 has these lines : 



