"Either a misprint, or noticeable idiom of the word _began_:
Yes! and a very beautiful idiom it is: the first colloquy or
address of the flesh."
The idiom is still in use in Scotland. "You had better not begin to me,"
is the first address or colloquy of the school-boy half-angry
half-frightened at the bullying of a companion. The idiom was once
English, though now obsolete. Several instances of it are given in the
last edition of Foxe's _Martyrs_, vol. vi. p. 627. It has not been
noticed, however, that the same idiom occurs in one of the best known
passages of Shakspeare; in Clarence's dream, _Richard III._, Act i. Sc.
4.:
"O, then _began_ the tempest _to_ my soul."
Herbert's _Poems_ will afford another illustration to Shakspeare,
_Hamlet_, Act iv. Sc. 7.:--
"And then this _should_ is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing."