(_Continued from_ p. 522.)
_Dare_, to lurk, or cause to lurk; used both transitively and
intransitively. Apparently the root of _dark_ and _dearn_.
"Here, quod he, it ought ynough suffice,
Five houres for to slepe upon a night:
But it were for an olde appalled wight,
As ben thise wedded men, that lie and _dare_,
As in a fourme sitteth a wery hare."
Tyrwhitt's utterly unwarranted adoption of Speght's interpretation is
"_Dare_, v. Sax. to stare." The reader should always be cautious how he
takes upon trust a glossarist's sly fetch to win a cheap repute for
learning, and over-ride inquiry by the mysterious letters Sax. or Ang.-Sax.
tacked on to his exposition of an obscure word. There is no such Saxon
vocable as _dare_, to stare. Again, what more frequent blunder than to
confound a secondary and derivative sense of a word with its radical and
primary--indeed, sometimes to allow the former to usurp the precedence, and
at length altogether oust the latter: hence it comes to pass, that we find
_dare_ is one while said to imply peeping and prying, another while
trembling or crouching; moods and actions merely consequent or attendant
upon the elementary signification of the word:
"I haue an hoby can make larkys to _dare_."
Skelton's _Magnifycence_, vol. i. p.269. l. 1358., Dyce's edition;
on which line that able, but therein mistaken editor's note is, "_to dare_,
i. e. to be terrified, to tremble" (he however also adds, it means to lurk,
to lie hid, and remits his reader to a note at p. 379., where some most
pertinent examples of its true and only sense are given), to which add
these next:
" . . let his grace go forward,
And _dare_ vs with his cap, like larkes."
First Fol., _Henry VIII._, Act III, Sc. 2.
"Thay questun, thay quellun,
By frythun by fellun,
The dere in the dellun,
Thay droupun and _daren_".
_The Anturs of Arthur at the Tarnewathelan_,
St. IV. p. 3. Camden Society's Publications.
"She sprinkled vs with bitter juice of vncouth herbs, and strake
The awke end of hir charmed rod vpon our heades, and spake
Words to the former contrarie. The more she charm'd, the more
Arose we vpward from the ground on which we _darde_ before."
The XIIII. Booke of Ouid's _Metamorphosis_,
p. 179. Arthur Golding's translation: London, 1587.
"Sothely it _dareth_ hem weillynge this thing; that heuenes weren
before," &c.
And again, a little further on:
"Forsothe yee moste dere, one thing _dare_ you nougt (or be not
unknowen): for one day anentis God as a thousande yeeris, and a
thousande yeer as one day."--_C^m 3^m Petre 2._, Wycliffe's
translation:
in the Latin Vulgate, _latet_ and _lateat_ respectively; in the original,
[Greek: lanthanei] and [Greek: lanthaneto]. Now the book is before me, I
beg to furnish MR. COLLIER with the references to his usage of _terre_,
mentioned in Todd's _Dictionary_, but not given (Collier's _Shakspeare_,
vol. iv. p. 65., note), namely, 6th cap. of Epistle to Ephesians, _prop.
init._; and 3rd of that to Colossians, _prop. fin._
* * * * *
_Die and live._--This _hysteron proteron_ is by no means uncommon: its
meaning is, of course, the same as live and die, _i. e._ subsist from the
cradle to the grave:
" . . . Will you sterner be.
Than he that _dies and lives_ by bloody drops?"
First Fol., _As You Like It_, Act III. Sc. 5.
All manner of whimsical and farfetched constructions have been put by the
commentators upon this very homely sentence. As long as the question was,
whether their wits should have licence to go a-woolgathering or no, one
could feel no great concern to interfere: but it appears high time to come
to Shakspeare's rescue, when MR. COLLIER'S "clever" old commentator, with
some little variation in the letters, and not much less in the sense, reads
"kills" for dies; but then, in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act II. Sc.
3., the same "clever" authority changes "cride-game (cride I ame), said I
well?" into "curds and cream, said I well?"--an alteration certainly not at
odds with the host's ensuing question, "said I well?" saving that that, to
liquorish palate, might seem a rather superfluous inquiry.
"With sorrow they both _die and live_
That unto richesse her hertes yeve."
_The Romaunt of the Rose_, v. 5789-90.
"He is a foole, and so shall he _dye and liue_,
That thinketh him wise, and yet can he nothing."
_The Ship of Fooles_, fol. 67., by Alexander Barclay, 1570.
{543}
"Behold how ready we are, how willingly the women of Sparta will _die
and live_ with their husbands."--_The Pilgrimage of Kings and Princes_,
p. 29.
Except in Shakspeare's behalf, it would not have been worth while to
exemplify so unambiguous a phrase. The like remark may also be extended to
the next word that falls under consideration.
* * * * *
_Kindly_, in accordance with kind, viz. nature. Thus, the love of a parent
for a child, or the converse, is kindly: one without natural affection
([Greek: astorgos]) is unkind, kindless, as in--
"Remorselesse, treacherous, letcherous, _kindles_ villaine."
_Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.
Thence _kindly_ expanded into its wider meaning of general benevolence. So
under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to
express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or
standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking,
appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the
Litany, "the _kindly_ fruits of the earth" is, in the Latin versions
"genuinus," and by Mr. Boyer rightly translated "les fruits de la terre
chaqu'un selon son espece;" for which Pegge takes him to task, and
interprets _kindly_ "fair and good," through mistake or preference adopting
the acquired and popular, in lieu of the radical and elementary meaning of
the word. (_Anonymiana_, pp. 380--1. Century VIII. No. LXXXI.) The
conjunction of this adjective with _gird_ in a passage of _King Henry VI_.
has sorely gravelled MR. COLLIER: twice over he essays, with equal success,
to expound its purport. First, _loc. cit._, he finds fault with _gird_ as
being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common
meaning of taunt or reproof, then that _kindly_ is said ironically; because
there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion
of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) MR.
COLLIER'S note concludes with a supposition that _gird_ may possibly be a
misprint. This is the misery! Men will sooner suspect the text than their
own understanding or researches. In Act I. Sc. 1. of _Coriolanus_,
dissatisfied with his previous note, MR. COLLIER tries again, and thinks a
_kindly gird_ may mean a gentle reproof. That the reader may be able to
judge what it does mean, it will be necessary to quote the king's _gird_,
who thus administers a kindly rebuke to the malicious preacher against the
sin of malice, _i.e._ chastens him with his own rod:
"_King._ Fie, uncle Beauford, I have heard you preach,
That mallice was a great and grievous sinne:
And will not you maintaine the thing you teache,
But prove a chief offender in the same?
_Warn._ Sweet king: the bishop hath a _kindly gyrd_."
First Part of _King Henry VI._, Act III. Sc. 1. 1st Fol.
A _gird_, akin to, in keeping with, fitting, proper to the cardinal's
calling; an evangelical _gird_ for an evangelical man: what more _kindly_?
_Kindly_, connatural, homogeneous. But now for a bushel of examples, some
of which will surely avail to insense the reader in the purport of this
epithet, if my explanation does not:
"God in the congregation of the gods, what more proper and
_kindly_"?--Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 212. _Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol._
"And that (pride) seems somewhat _kindly_ too, and to agree with this
disease (the plague). That pride which swells itself should end in a
tumour or swelling, as, for the most part, this disease doth."--_Id._,
p. 228.
"And so, you are found; and they, as the children of perdition should
be, are lost. Here are you: and where are they? Gone to their own
place, to Judas their brother. And, as is most _kindly_, the sons to
the father of wickedness; there to be plagued with him for
ever."--_Id._, vol. iv. p. 98.
"For whatsoever, as the Son of God, He may do, it is _kindly_ for Him,
as the Son of Man, to save the sons of men."--_Id._, p. 253.
"There cannot be a more _kindly_ consequence than this, our not failing
from their not failing: we do not, because they do not."--_Id._, p.
273.
"And here falls in _kindly_ this day's design, and the visible 'per
me,' that happened on it."--_Id._, p. 289.
"And having then made them, it is _kindly_ that viscera misericordiae
should be over those opera that came de visceribus."--_Id._, p. 327.
"The children came to the birth, and the right and _kindly_ copulative
were; to the birth they came, and born they were: in a kind consequence
who would look for other?"--_Id._, p. 348.
"For usque adeo proprium est operari Spiritui, ut nisi operetur, nec
sit. So _kindly_ (proprium) it is for the spirit to be working as if It
work not, It is not."--_Id._, vol. iii. p. 194.
"And when he had overtaken, for those two are but presupposed, the more
_kindly_ to bring in [Greek: epelabeto], when, I say, He had overtaken
them, cometh in fitly and properly [Greek: epilambanetai]."--_Id._,
vol. i. p. 7.
"No time so _kindly_ to preach de Filio hodie genito as hodie."--_Id._,
p. 285.
"A day whereon, as it is most _kindly_ preached, so it will be most
_kindly_ practised of all others."--_Id._, p. 301.
"Respice et plange: first, 'Look and lament' or mourn; which is indeed
the most _kindly_ and natural effect of such a spectacle."--_Id._, vol.
ii. p. 130.
"Devotion is the most proper and most _kindly_ work of
holiness."--_Id._, vol. iv. p. 377.
Perhaps the following will be thought so apposite, that I may be spared the
labour, and the reader the tedium of perusing a thousand other examples
that might be cited:
And there is nothing more _kindly_ than for them that will be touching,
to be touched themselves, and to {544} be touched home, in the same
_kind_ themselves thought to have touched others."--_Id._, vol. iv. p.
71.[1]