It is not a little singular that this account of the word _belike_ enables us to understand a passage in _Macbeth_, which has been unintelligible to all the commentators and readers of Shakspeare down to the present day. I allude to the following, which stands in my first folio, Act IV. Sc. 3., thus: " . . . . What I am truly Is thine, and my poor countries, to command: Whither indeed before they heere approach, Old Seyward, with ten thousand warlike men, Already at a point, was setting foorth: Now we'll together, and the chance of goodnesse Be like our warranted quarrel." Now it is not easy to see why Malcolm should wish that "chance" should "be _like_," i. e. similar to, their "warranted quarrel;" inasmuch as that quarrel was most unfortunate and disastrous. Chance is either fortunate or unfortunate. The epithet _just_, which might apply to the quarrel in question, is utterly irreconcilable with _chance_. Still this sense has pleased the editors, and they have made "of goodnesse" a precatory and interjectional expression. Surely it is far more probable that the poet wrote _belike_ (_belicgan_, _geliggen_) as one word, and that the meaning of the passage is simply "May good fortune attend our enterprise." MR. COLLIER'S old corrector passes over this difficulty in silence, doubtless owing to the circumstance that the word was well understood in his time. I have alluded to the word _like_ as expressive in the English language of three distinct ideas, and in the A.-S. of at least four; is it not possible that these meanings, which, as we find the words used, are undoubtedly widely distinct, having travelled to us by separate channels, may nevertheless have had originally one and the same source? I should be glad to elicit the opinion of some one of your more learned correspondents as to whether the unused Hebrew [Hebrew: YLN] may not be that source. H. C. K. ---- Rectory, Hereford. * * * * * {360} DRUSES. Comparing the initiatory undertaking or covenant of the Druses, as represented by Col. Churchill in his very important disclosures (_Lebanon_, ii. 244.), with the original Arabic, and the German translation of Eichhorn (_Repertorium fuer Bibl. und Morgenland_, lib. xii. 222.), I find that the following additions made by Col. Churchill (or De Sacy, whom he follows) are not in the Arabic, but appear to be glosses or amplifications. For example: "I put my trust and confidence in our Lord Hakem, the One, the Eternal, without attribute and without number." "That in serving Him he will serve no other, whether past, present, or to come." "To the observance of which he sacredly binds himself by the present contract and engagement, should he ever reveal the least portion of it to others." "The most High, King of Kings, [the creator] of the heaven and the earth." "Mighty and irresistible [force]."