(_Continued from_ p. 353.)
_To miss_, to dispense with. This usage of the verb being of such
ordinary occurrence, I should have deemed it superfluous to illustrate,
were it not that the editors of Shakspeare, according to custom, are at
a loss for examples:
"We cannot _miss_ him."
_The Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2. (where see Mr. Collier's note, and
also Mr. Halliwell's, Tallis's edition).
"All which things being much admirable, yet this is most, that
they are so profitable; bringing vnto man both honey and wax,
each so wholesome that we all desire it, both so necessary that
we cannot _misse_ them."--_Euphues and his England._
"I will have honest valiant souls about me;
I cannot _miss_ thee."
Beaumont and Fletcher, _The Mad Lover_, Act II. Sc. 1.
"The blackness of this season cannot _miss_ me."
The second _Maiden's Tragedy_, Act V. Sc. 1.
"All three are to be had, we cannot _miss_ any of them."--Bishop
Andrewes, "A Sermon prepared to be preached on Whit Sunday, A.D.
1622," _Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology_, vol. iii. p. 383.
"For these, for every day's dangers we cannot _miss_ the
hand."--"A Sermon preached before the King's Majesty at
Burleigh, near Oldham, A.D. 1614," _Id._, vol. iv. p. 86.
"We cannot _miss_ one of them; they be necessary all."--_Id._,
vol. i. p. 73.
It is hardly necessary to occupy further room with more instances of so
familiar a phrase, though perhaps it may not be out of the way to
remark, that _miss_ is used by Andrewes as a substantive in the same
sense as the verb, namely, in vol. v. p. 176.: the more usual form being
_misture_, or, earlier, _mister_. Mr. Halliwell, in his _Dictionary_,
most unaccountably treats these two forms as distinct words; and yet,
more unaccountably, collecting the import of _misture_ for the context,
gives it the signification of misfortune!! He quotes Nash's _Pierce
Pennilesse_; the reader will find the passage at p. 47. of the
Shakspeare Society's reprint. I subjoin another instance from vol. viii.
p. 288. of Cattley's edition of Foxe's _Acts and Monuments_:
"Therefore all men evidently declared at that time, both how
sore they took his death to heart; and also how hardly they
could away with the _misture_ of such a man."
In Latin, _desidero_ and _desiderium_ best convey the import of this
word.
_To buckle_, bend or bow. Here again, to their great discredit be it
spoken, the editors of Shakspeare (Second Part of _Hen. IV._, Act I. Sc.
1.) are at fault for an example. Mr. Halliwell gives one in his
_Dictionary_ of the passive participle, which see. In Shakspeare it
occurs as a neuter verb:
"... And teach this body,
To bend, and these my aged knees to _buckle_,
In adoration and just worship to you."
Ben Jonson, _Staple of News_, Act II. Sc. 1.
"For, certainly, like as great stature in a natural body is some
advantage in youth, but is but burden in age: so it is with
great territory, which, when a state beginneth to decline, doth
make it stoop and _buckle_ so much the faster."--Lord Bacon, "Of
the True Greatness of Great Britain," vol. i. p. 504. (Bohn's
edition of the _Works_).
And again, as a transitive verb:
"Sear trees, standing or felled, belong to the lessee, and you
have a special replication in the book of 44 E. III., that the
wind did but rend them and _buckle_ them."--_Case of Impeachment
of Waste_, vol. i. p. 620.
_On the hip_, at advantage. A term of wrestling. So said Dr. Johnson at
first; but, on second {376} thoughts, referred it to _venery_, with
which Mr. Dyce consents: both erroneously. Several instances are adduced
by the latter, in his _Critique of Knight and Collier's Shakspeare_; any
one of which, besides the passage in _The Merchant of Venice_, should
have confuted that origin of the phrase. The hip of a chase is no term
of woodman's craft: the haunch is. Moreover, what a marvellous
expression, to say, A hound has a chase _on_ the hip, instead of _by_.
Still more prodigious to say, that a hound _gets_ a chase _on_ the hip.
One would be loth to impute to the only judicious dramatic commentator
of the day, a love of contradiction as the motive for quarrelling with
Mr. Collier's note on this idiom. To the examples alleged by Mr. Dyce,
the three following may be added; whereof the last, after the opinion of
Sir John Harington, rightly refers the origin of the metaphor to
wrestling:
"The Divell hath them _on the hip_, he may easily bring them to
anything."--_Michael and the Dragon_, by D. Dike, p. 328.
(_Workes_, London, 1635).
"If he have us at the advantage, _on the hip_ as we say, it is
no great matter then to get service at our hands."--Andrewes, "A
Sermon preached before the King's Majesty at Whitehall, 1617,"
_Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology_, vol. iv. p. 365.
"Full oft the valiant knight his hold doth shift,
And with much prettie sleight, the same doth slippe;
In fine he doth applie one speciall drift,
Which was to get the Pagan on the _hippe_:
And hauing caught him right, he doth him lift,
By nimble sleight, and in such wise doth trippe:
That downe he threw him, and his fall was such,
His head-piece was the first that ground did tuch."
Sir John Harington's Translation of _Orlando
Furioso_, Booke xlvi. Stanza 117.
In some editions, the fourth line is printed "_namely_ to get," &c.,
with other variations in the spelling of the rest of the stanza.