Notes and Queries, Number 15, February 9, 1850Various
History
Notes and Queries, Number 15, February 9, 1850
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
The following are examples of corrections being adopted: P. 6. Latin
ed. "Quod abunde probabitur in principio libri secundi." For the
last word _subsequentis_ is substituted, and the English has
_following_. P. 35. "Hippolitus" is added to the authorities in
the MS.; and in the English, p. 36., "Anastasius Sinaiti, S.
Gaudentius, Q. Julius Hilarius, Isidorus Hispalensis, and
Cassiodorus," are inserted after Lactantius, in both. P. 37.
"Johannes Damascenus" is added after St. Augustin in both. P. 180. a
clause is added which seems to have suggested the sentence
beginning, "Thus we have discharged our promise," &c. But, on the
other hand, in p. 8. the allusion to the "Orphics," which is struck
out in the Latin, is retained in the English; and in the latter
there is no notice taken of "Empedocles," which is inserted in the
margin of the Latin. In p. 11. "Ratio naturalis" is personified, and
governs the verb _vidit_, which is repeated several times. This
is changed by the corrector into vidimus; but in the English
passage, though varying much from the Latin, the personification is
retained. In p. 58., "Dion Cassius" is corrected to "Xiphilinus;"
but the mistake is preserved in the English version.
JOHN JEBB.
* * * * *
SHAKSPEARE'S EMPLOYMENT OF MONOSYLLABLES.
I offer the following flim-flam to the examination of your readers,
all of whom are, I presume, more or less, readers of Shakspeare, and
far better qualified than I am to "anatomize" his writings, and "see
what bred about his heart."
I start with the proposition that the language of passion is almost
invariably broken and abrupt, and the deduction that I wish to draw
from this proposition, and the passages that I am about to quote is,
that--_Shakspeare on more than one occasion advisedly used
monosyllables, and monosyllables only, when he wished to express
violent and overwhelming mental emotion_, ex. gratiâ:--
_Lear._ "Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl, and cry:--I will preach to thee; mark me.
[_Gloster._ "Alack! alack the day!]
_Lear._ "When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools,--This a good block?"
--_King Lear_, Act IV. Sc. 6.
In this passage [I bracket Gloster] we find no fewer than
_forty-two monosyllables_ following each other consecutively.
Again,
"------but through his lips do throng
Weak words, so thick come, in his poor heart's aid,
That no man could _distinguish_ what he said."
_Rape of Lucreece_, Stanza 255.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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