LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 365 



Let our readers admire with us the easy "it is com- 

 monly 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 scintilla of light upon 

 the point in question, for his habit in annotation 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 fol- 

 lowing 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 morn- 

 ing " ! 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. Haz- 

 litt 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 cer- 

 tain that it did not mean noon. 



But Mr. Hazlitt, if these volumes are competent wit- 

 nesses, 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 con.er ye shall lay '* 



