(_Continued from_ p. 544.)
Let no one say that a tithe of these instances would have sufficed. Whoever
thinks so, little understands the vitality of error. Most things die when
the brains are out: error has no brains, though it has more heads than the
hydra. Who could have believed it possible that after Steevens's heaped-up
proofs in support of the authentic reading, "_carded_ his state" (_King
Henry IV._, Act III. Scene 2.), Warburton's corruption, _'scarded_, i. e.
_discarded_, was again to be foisted into the text on the authority of some
nameless and apocryphal commentator? Let me be pardoned if I prefer
Shakspeare's genuine text, backed by the masterly illustrations of his
ablest glossarist, before the wishy-washy adulterations of Nobody: and as a
small contribution to his abundant avouchment of the original reading, the
underwritten passage may be flung in, by way of make-weight:
"_Carded_ his state (says King Henry),
_Mingled_ his royaltie with carping fooles."
"Since which it hath been and is his daily practice, either to broach
doctrinas novas et peregrinas, new imaginations never heard of before,
or to revive the old and new dress them. And these--for that by
themselves they will not utter--_to mingle and to card_ with the
Apostles' doctrine, &c., that at the least yet he may so vent
them."--One of the Sermons upon the Second Commandment, preached in the
Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on the Ninth of January, A.D.
MDXCII.: Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 55. _Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol._
* * * * *
_Trash_, to shred or lop.--So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with
it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of
{567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man
of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist
Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously
small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a
horizontal course. _Overrun_, _overshoot_, _overslip_, are terms in
hunting, _overtop_ never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild
huntsman of the Alps. _Trash_ occurs as a verb in the sense above given,
Act I. Sc. 2. of the _Tempest_: "Who t'aduance, and who to _trash_ for
over-topping." I have never met with the _verb_ in that sense elsewhere,
but overtop is evermore the appropriate term in arboriculture. To quote
examples of that is needless. Of it metaphorically applied, just as in
Shakspeare, take the following example:
"Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in a manner doth
overtop the rest, and like a foregrown member depriveth the other of
their proportion of growth."--Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., _Lib.
Ang.-Cath. Theol._
Have we not the substantive _trash_ in the sense of shreddings, at p. 542.
book iii. of a _Discourse of Forest Trees_, by John Evelyn? The extract
that contains the word is this:
"Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one
stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to
prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and
ends with _trash_ and short sticks, which had been omitted in the
former statute."
Possibly some of the statutes referred to by Evelyn may contain examples of
the verb. In the meantime it will not be impertinent to remark, that what
appears to be nothing more than a dialectic variety of the word, namely
_trouse_, is of every-day use in this county of Hereford for trimmings of
hedges; that it is given by Grose as a verb in use in Warwickshire for
trimming off the superfluous branches; and lastly, that it is employed as a
substantive to signify shreddings by Philemon Holland, who, if I rightly
remember, was many years head master of Coventry Grammar School:
"Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with stone; and for want
thereof, laid with green willow bastons, and for default of them, with
vine cuttings, or such _trousse_, so that they lie halfe a foot
thicke."--The Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's _Naturall History_, chap.
xi. p. 513.: London, 1634.
_Trash_ no one denies to be a kennel term for hampering a dog, but it does
not presently follow that the word bore no other signification; indeed,
there is no more fruitful mother of confusion than homonomy.
* * * * *
_Clamor_, to curb, restrain (the tongue):
"_Clamor_ your tongues, and not a word more."
_The Winter's Tale_, Act IV. Sc. 4.
Most judiciously does NARES reject Gifford's corruption of this word into
_charm_, nor will the suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one jot
contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe
discipline of many years' study, and the daily access of accumulating
knowledge, have schooled into a wholesome sense of their extreme
fallibility in such matters. Without adding any comment, I now quote, for
the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts:
"For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he _chaumbreed_
his tongue in season, ther should ere l[=o]g bee one oxe the fewer for
hym."--_Apoptheymis of Erasmus_, translated by Nicolas Vdall,
MCCCCCXLII, the First Booke, p. 10.
"From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he refrein or _chaumbre_ the
tauntying of his tongue."--_Id._, p. 76.
After so many Notes, one Query. In the second folio edition of Shakspeare
(my first folio wants the whole play), I find in _Cymbeline_, Act V. Sc.
3., the next beautiful passage:
"_Post._ Still going? This is a lord: Oh noble misery
To be ith' field, and aske what newes of me:
To-day how many would have given their honors
To have sav'd their carkasses? Tooke heele to doo't,
And yet dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd,
Could not find death, where I did heare him groane,
Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly monster,
'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds,
Sweet words; or hath moe ministers then we
That draw his knives ith' war. Well I will finde him:
For being now a favourer to the Britaine,
No more a Britaine, I have resum'd againe
The part I came in."
In the antepenultimate line, Britaine was more than a century ago changed
by Hanmer into Roman, therefore retained by Warburton, again rejected by
Steevens and Johnson, once more replaced by Knight and Collier, with one of
his usual happy notes by the former of the two, without comment by the
latter, finally left unnoticed by Dyce. My Query then is this. What amount
of obtuseness will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tinkering and
cobbling the noblest passages of thought that ever issued from mortal
brain, while at the same time he stumbles and bungles in sentences of that
simplicity and grammatical clearness, as not to tax the powers of a
third-form schoolboy to explain?[1] If editors, commentators, {568}
critics, and all the countless throng who are ambitious to daub with their
un-tempered mortar, or scribble their names upon the most majestic edifice
of genius that the world ever saw, lack the little discernment necessary to
interpret aright the above extract from _Cymbeline_, for the last hundred
years racked and tortured in vain, let them at length learn henceforth to
distrust their judgment altogether.