268 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



Let our readers admire with us the easy * it is commonly used 

 of Mr. Hazlitt, as if he had store of other examples in his note 

 book. He could an if he would ! But unhappily he borrowed 

 this single quotation from Nares, and, as usual, it throws no scin 

 tilla of light upon the point in question, for his habit in annota 

 tion is to find by means of a glossary some passage (or passages 

 if possible) in which the word to be explained occurs, and then 

 why, then to give the word as an explanation of itself. But in 

 this instance Mr. Hazlitt, by the time he had reached the middle 

 of his next volume (vol. III. p. 281), had wholly forgotten that 

 pryme was ( commonly used by early writers ; for noon, and in a 

 note on the following passage, 



I know not whates a clocke 

 But by the countre cocke, 

 The mone nor yet the pryme, 

 Vntyll the sonne do shyne, 



he informs us that it means six o clock in the morning ! Here 

 again this editor, who taxes Ritson with want of care, prints 

 mone for none in the very verse he is annotating, and which we 

 may therefore presume that he had read. A man who did not 

 know the moon till the sun showed it him is a match even for 

 Mr. Hazlitt himself. We wish it were as easy as he seems to 

 think it to settle exactly what pryme means when used by our 

 early writers/ but it is at least absolutely certain that it did not 

 mean noon. 



But Mr. Hazlitt, if these volumes are competent witnesses, 

 knows nothing whatever about English, old or new. In the 



* Mery Jest of Dane Hew he finds the following verses, 



Dame he said what shall we now doo 



Sir she said so mote go 



The munk in a corner ye shall lay, 



which we print purposely without punctuation. Mr. Hazlitt 

 prints them thus, 



Dame, he said, what shall we now doo ? 

 Sir, she said, so mote [it] go. 

 The munk, &c., 



and gives us a note on the locution he has invented to this effect, 



* ? so might it be managed. And the Chancellor said, / doubt! 

 Mr. Hazlitt s query makes such a singular exception to his more 

 natural mood of immediate inspiration that it is almost pathetic. 

 The amended verse, as everybody (not confused by too great 

 familiarity with our early writers ) knows, should read, 



Sir, she said, so might I go, 



and should be followed only by a comma, to show its connection 



