270 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



The use of the word by as in this passage would seem familiar 

 enough, and yet in the * Hye Way to the Spittel Hous Mr. 

 Hazlitt explains it as meaning be. Any boy knows that without 

 sometimes means unless (Fielding uses it often in that sense), 

 but Mr. Hazlitt seems unaware of the fact. In his first volume 

 (p. 224) he gravely prints : 



They trowed verelye that she shoulde dye ; 

 With that our ladye wold her helpe and spede. 



The semicolon after dye shows that this is not a misprint, but 

 that the editor saw no connection between the first verse and 

 the second. In the same volume (p. 133) we have the verse, 



He was a grete tenement man, and ryche of londe and lede, 



and to lede Mr. Hazlitt appends this note : * Lede, in early Eng 

 lish, is found in various significations, but here stands as the 

 plural of lad, a servant. In what conceivable sense is it the 

 plural of lad? And does /^necessarily mean a servant ? The 

 Promptorium has ladde glossed by garcio, but the meaning 

 servant, as in the parallel cases of Tra&amp;lt;c, puer, garden, and boy, 

 was a derivative one, and of later origin. The word means 

 simply man (in the generic sense) and in the plural people. So 

 in the * Squyr of Low Degre, 



I will forsake both land and lede, 



and in the Smyth and his Dame, 



That hath both land and lytk. 



The word was not used in various significations. Even so 

 lately as * Flodden Ffeild we find, 



He was a noble leed of high degree. 



Connected with land it was a commonplace in German as well 

 as in English. So in the Tristan of Godfrey of Strasburg, 



(Sr SJeoald) fin Hot onbe fin lant 



2(n fines marfcalfeS fyant. 



Mr. Hazlitt is more nearly right than usual when he says that in 

 the particular case cited above lede means servants. But were 

 these of only one sex ? Does he not know that even in the middle 

 of the last century, when an English nobleman spoke of my 

 people, he meant simply his domestics ? 



Encountering the familiar phrase No do! (Vol. IV. p. 64), 

 Mr. Hazlitt changes it to Not do ! He informs us that Goddes are 

 (Vol. I. p. 197) means God s heir ! He says (Vol. II. p. 146) : 

 * To borrow, in the sense of to take, to guard, or to protect, is so 

 common in early English that it is unnecessary to bring forward 

 any illustration of its use in this way. But he relents, and 



