Volume Ii Part 28 (2/2)

[359] Book I. 562-567.

[360] Ibid., 615-618.

[361] Apology for Smectymnuus.

[362]

”For him I was not sent, nor yet to free That people, victor once, now vile and base, Deservedly made va.s.sal.”--P.R. IV. 131-133.

[363] If things are to be scanned so micrologically, what weighty inferences might not be drawn from Mr. Ma.s.son's invariably printing [Greek: _apax legomena_!]

[364]

”That you may tell heroes, when you come To banquet with your wife.”

_Chapman's Odyssey_, VIII. 336, 337.

In the facsimile of the sonnet to Fairfax I find

”Thy firm unshak'n vertue ever brings,”

which shows how much faith we need give to the apostrophe.

[365] Mr. Ma.s.son might have cited a good example of this from Drummond, whom (as a Scotsman) he is fond of quoting for an authority in English,--

”Sleep, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest.”

The survival of _Horse_ for _horses_ is another example. So by a reverse process _pult_ and _shay_ have been vulgarly deduced from the supposed plurals _pulse_ and _chaise_.

[366] Chapman's spelling is presumably his own. At least he looked after his printed texts. I have two copies of his ”Byron's Conspiracy,” both dated 1608, but one evidently printed later than the other, for it shows corrections. The more solemn ending in _ed_ was probably kept alive by the reading of the Bible in churches.

Though now dropped by the clergy, it is essential to the right hearing of the more metrical pa.s.sages in the Old Testament, which are finer and more scientiflc than anything in the language, unless it be some parts of ”Samson Agonistes.” I remember an old gentleman who always used the contracted form of the participle in conversation, but always gave it back its embezzled syllable in reading. Sir Thomas Browne seems to have preferred the more solemn form. At any rate he has the spelling _empuzzeled_ in prose.

[367] He thinks the same of the variation _strook_ and _struck_, though they were probably p.r.o.nounced alike. In Marlowe's ”Faustus”

two consecutive sentences (in prose) begin with the words ”Cursed be he that struck.” In a note on the pa.s.sage Mr. Dyce tells us that the old editions (there were three) have _stroke_ and _strooke_ in the first instance, and all agree on _strucke_ in the second. No inference can be drawn from such casualties.

[368] The lines are _not_ ”from one of the Satires,” and Milton made them worse by misquoting and bringing _love_ jinglingly near to _grove_. Hall's verse (in his Satires) is always vigorous and often harmonious. He long before Milton spoke of rhyme almost in the very terms of the preface to Paradise Lost.

[369] Mr. Ma.s.son goes so far as to conceive it possible that Milton may have committed the vulgarism of leaving a _t_ out of _slep'st_, ”for ease of sound.” Yet the poet could bear _boast'st_ and--one stares and gasps at it--_doat'dst_. There is, by the way, a familiar pa.s.sage in which the _ch_ sound predominates, not without a touch of _sh_, in a single couplet:--

”Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe su_ch_ divine enchanting ravi_sh_ment?”

So

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