272 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



Again, for our editor s blunders are as endless as the heads of 

 an old-fashioned sermon, in the * Schole-House of Women 

 (Vol. IV. p. 130), Mr. Hazlitt has a note on the phrase make 

 it nice/ 



(And yet alwaies they bible bable 

 Of euery matter and make it nice,) 



which reads thus : To make it pleasant or snug. I do not 

 remember to have seen the word used in this sense very fre 

 quently. But Gascoigne has it in a precisely similar way : 



The glosse of gorgeous Courtes by thee did please mine eye, 



A stately sight me thought it was to see the braue go by, 



To see their feathers flaunte, to make [marke !] their straunge deuise, 



To lie along in ladies lappes, to lispe, and make it nice. 



To make it nice means nothing more nor less than to play the 

 fool, or rather, to make a fool of yourself, faire le niais. In old 

 English the French niais and nice, from similarity of form and 

 analogy of meaning, naturally fused together in the word nice, 

 which, by an unusual luck, has been promoted from a derogatory 

 to a respectful sense. Gascoigne s lispe might have put Mr. Hazlitt 

 on his guard, if he ever considered the sense of what he quotes. 

 But he never does, nor of what he edits either. For example, in 

 the Smyth and his Dame we find the following note : Prowe, 

 m proffe, is not at all uncommon as a form at profit. In the 

 &quot; Seven Names of a Prison,&quot; a poem printed in Reliquice Anti- 

 q2ta&amp;gt;, we have, 



Quintum nomen istius fovese ita probatum, 



A place of proff for man to know bothe frend and foo. 



proiv are radically different works. 

 means proof, and if Mr. Hazlitt had read the stanza which he 

 quotes, he would have found (as in all the others of the same 

 poem) the meaning repeated in Latin in the last \vc\e, probacio 

 amicorum. 



But we wish to leave our readers (if not Mr. Hazlitt) in good 

 humour, and accordingly we have reserved two of his notes as 

 bonnes douches. In * Adam Bel, when the outlaws ask pardon 

 of the king, 



They kneled downe without lettyng 

 And each helde vp his hande. 



To this passage (tolerably plain to those not too familiar with 

 our early literature ) Mr. Hazlitt appends this solemn note: 

 To hold up the hand was formerly a sign of respect or con 

 currence, or a mode of taking an oath ; and thirdly as a signa 

 for mercy. In all these senses it has been employed from the 

 most ancient times ; nor is it yet out of practice, as many savage 



