Oxford.
_Ampers and (& or &)_ [Transcriber's note: Two different typefaces.]
(Vol. viii., p. 173.).--"N. & Q." has exhibited a forgetfulness, of which
he is very seldom guilty. If he and his correspondent MR. MANSFIELD
INGLEBY will refer to Vol. ii., p. 230., they will find the same question
asked by MR. M. A. LOWER and if they will turn over the leaves to p.
284., they will find an answer by Φ., which he now begs to repeat. The
word designated is _and-per-se-and_. Curiously enough, the first of the
above printed symbols seeing to have been formed from Φ.'s explanation,
that it was nothing more than a flourishing "et."
Φ.
_Its_ (Vol. viii., p. 12.).--In compliance with the request of your
correspondent B. H. C., I have the pleasure to inform him that in Richard
Burnfields _Poems_ (reprinted by James Boswell for the Roxburgh Club),
"The Complaint of Poetrie for the death of Liberalitie," 1598, is one of
the pieces, and on the first page of signature C. the word _its_ occurs,
but as a contraction of _it is_:
"The maimed souldier comming from the warre;
The woefull wight, whose house was lately burnd;
The sillie soule; the woful traueylar;
And all, whom Fortune at her feet hath spurnd;
Lament the losse of Liberalitie;
_Its_ ease to haue in griefe some companie."
{255}
While on the opposite page we have "_it_ soule" for "_its_ soule," thus:
"But as a woefull mother doeth lament,
Her tender babe, with cruel death opprest;
Whose life was spotlesse, pure and innocent,
(And therefore sure _it_ soule is gone to rest):
So Bountie, which herselfe did upright keepe,
Yet for her losse, loue cannot chuse but weepe."
May not this lead to the conclusion that it was to avoid confusion with
the ellipsis of _it is_, that the possessive case was thus written _it_?