Part 30

The emendation [de] is Ritson’s, and is probably right, though it would require, for the metre’s sake, the elision of _that_ at the beginning of the verse. But what is _enuyte_? Ritson reads _enmyte_, which is, of course, the true reading. Mr. Hazlitt prints (as usual either without apprehending or without regarding the sense),

“With browes _bent_ and eyes full mery,”

where Ritson has _brent_, and gives parallel passages in his note on the word. Mr. Hazlitt gives us

“To here the bugles there yblow, With their _bugles_ in that place,”

though Ritson had made the proper correction to _begles_. Mr. Hazlitt, with ludicrous _nonchalance_, allows the Squire to press into the throng

“With a _bastard_ large and longe,”

and that with the right word (_baslarde_) staring him in the face from Ritson’s text. We wonder he did not give us an illustrative quotation from Falconbridge! Both editors have allowed some gross errors to escape, such as “come _not_” for “come” (v. 425); “so leue _he_ be” for “ye be” (v. 593); “vnto _her_ chambre” for “vnto your” (v. 993); but in general Ritson’s is the better and more intelligent text of the two. In the “Knight of Curtesy,” Mr. Hazlitt has followed Ritson’s text almost _literatim_. Indeed, it is demonstrable that he gave it to his printers as copy to set up from. The proof is this: Ritson has accented a few words ending in _tè_. Generally he uses the grave accent, but now and then the acute. Mr. Hazlitt’s text follows all these variations exactly. The main difference between the two is that Ritson prints the first personal pronoun _i_, and Mr. Hazlitt, I. Ritson is probably right; for in the “Scholehouse of Women” (vv. 537, 538) where the text no doubt was

“i [i. e. _one_] deuil a woman to speak may constrain, But all that in hel be cannot let it again,”

Mr. Hazlitt changes “i” to “A,” and says in a note, “Old ed. has _I_.” That by his correction he should miss the point was only natural; for he evidently conceives that the _sense_ of a passage does not in the least concern an editor. An instance or two will suffice. In the “Knyght and his Wyfe” (Vol. II. p. 17) we read,

“The fynd tyl hure hade myche tene As hit was a sterfull we seme!”

Mr. Hazlitt in a note explains _tene_ to mean “trouble or sorrow”; but if that were its meaning here, we should read _made_, and not _hade_, which would give to the word its other sense of _attention_. The last verse of the couplet Mr. Hazlitt seems to think perfectly intelligible as it stands. We should not be surprised to learn that he looked upon it as the one gem that gave lustre to a poem otherwise of the dreariest. We fear we shall rob it of all its charm for him by putting it into modern English:--

“As it was after full well seen.”

So in the “Smyth and his Dame” (Vol. III. p. 204) we read,

“It were a lytele maystry To make a blynde man to se,”

instead of “_as_ lytell.” It might, indeed, be as easy to perform the miracle on a blind man as on Mr. Hazlitt. Again, in the same poem, a little further on,

“For I tell the now trevely, Is none so wyse ne _to_ sle, But ever _ye_ may som what lere,”

which, of course, should be,

“ne _so_ sle But ever _he_ may som what lere.”

Worse than all, Mr. Hazlitt tells us (Vol. I. p. 158) that when they bury the great Khan, they lay his body in a tabernacle,

“With sheld and spere and other wede With a whit mere to gyf him in ylke.”

We will let Sir John Maundeville correct the last verse: “And they seyn that when he shale come into another World ... the mare schalle _gheven him mylk_.” Mr. Hazlitt gives us some wretched doggerel by “Piers of Fulham,” and gives it swarming with blunders. We take at random a couple of specimens:--

“And loveship goith ay to warke Where that presence is put a bake,” (Vol. II. pp. 13, 14,)

where we should read “love’s ship,” “wrake,” and “abake.” Again, just below,

“Ffor men haue seyn here to foryn, That love laughet when men be forsworn.”

Love should be “Iove.” Ovid is the obscure person alluded to in the “men here to foryn”:

“Jupiter e cœlo perjuria ridet amantum.”

We dare say Mr. Hazlitt, if he ever read the passage, took it for granted that “to foryn” meant _too foreign_, and gave it up in despair. But surely Shakespeare’s

“At lovers’ perjuries, They say, Jove laughs,”

is not too foreign to have put him on the right scent.

Mr. Hazlitt is so particular in giving us _v_ for _u_ and _vice versa_, that such oversights are a little annoying. Every man his own editor seems to be his theory of the way in which old poetry should be reprinted. On this plan, the more riddles you leave (or make) for the reader to solve, the more pleasure you give him. To correct the blunders in any book edited by Mr. Hazlitt would give the young student a pretty thorough training in archaic English. In this sense the volumes before us might be safely recommended to colleges and schools. When Mr. Hazlitt undertakes to correct, he is pretty sure to go wrong. For example, in “Doctour Doubble Ale” (Vol. III. p. 309) he amends thus:--

“And sometyme mikle strife is Among the ale wyfes, [y-wis];

where the original is right as it stands. Just before, in the same poem, we have a parallel instance:--

“And doctours dulpatis That falsely to them pratis, And bring them to the gates.”

The original probably reads (or should read) _wyfis_ and _gatis_. But it is too much to expect of Mr. Hazlitt that he should remember the very poems he is editing from one page to another, nay, as we shall presently show, that he should even read them. He will change _be_ into _ben_ where he should have let it alone (though his own volumes might have furnished him with such examples as “were go,” “have se,” “is do,” and fifty more), but he will sternly retain _bene_ where the rhyme requires _be_, and Ritson had so printed. In “Adam Bel” the word _pryme_ occurs (Vol. II. p. 140), and he vouchsafes us the following note: “i. e. noon. It is commonly used by early writers in this sense. In the _Four_ P. P., by John Heywood, circa 1540, the apothecary says

‘If he taste this boxe nye aboute the pryme By the masse, he is in heven or even songe tyme.’”

Let our readers admire with us the easy “it is commonly used” of Mr. Hazlitt, as if he had store of other examples in his note-book. He could an if he would! But unhappily he borrowed this single quotation from Nares, and, as usual, it throws no scintilla of light upon the point in question, for his habit in annotation is to find by means of a glossary some passage (or passages if possible) in which the word to be explained occurs, and then--why, then to give the word as an explanation of itself. But in this instance, Mr. Hazlitt, by the time he had reached the middle of his next volume (Vol. III. p. 281) had wholly forgotten that _pryme_ was “commonly used by early writers” for _noon_, and in a note on the following passage,

“I know not whates a clocke But by the countre cocke, The mone nor yet the pryme, Vntyll the sonne do shyne,”

he informs us that it means “six o’clock in the morning”! Here again this editor, who taxes Ritson with want of care, prints _mone_ for _none_ in the very verse he is annotating, and which we may therefore presume that he had read. A man who did not know the moon till the sun showed it him is a match even for Mr. Hazlitt himself. We wish it were as easy as he seems to think it to settle exactly what _pryme_ means when used by our “early writers,” but it is at least absolutely certain that it did not mean _noon_.

But Mr. Hazlitt, if these volumes are competent witnesses, knows nothing whatever about English, old or new. In the “Mery Jest of Dane Hew” he finds the following verses,

“Dame he said what shall we now doo Sir she said so mote go The munk in a corner ye shall lay”

which we print purposely without punctuation. Mr. Hazlitt prints them thus,

“Dame, he said, what shall we now doo? Sir, she said, so mote [it] go. The munk,” &c.,

and gives us a note on the locution he has invented to this effect, “? so might it be managed.” And the Chancellor said, _I doubt!_ Mr. Hazlitt’s query makes such a singular exception to his more natural mood of immediate inspiration that it is almost pathetic. The amended verse, as everybody (not confused by too great familiarity with our “early writers”) knows, should read,

“Sir, she said, so might I go,”

and should be followed only by a comma, to show its connection with the next. The phrase “so mote I go,” is as common as a weed in the works of the elder poets, both French and English; it occurs several times in Mr. Hazlitt’s own collection, and its other form, “so mote I fare,” which may also be found there, explains its meaning. On the phrase _point-device_ (Vol. III. p. 117) Mr. Hazlitt has a positively incredible note, of which we copy only a part: “This term, which is commonly used in early poems” [mark once more his intimacy with our earlier literature] “to signify extreme exactitude, originated in the points which were marked on the astrolabe, as one of the means which the astrologers and dabblers in the black art adopted to enable them (as they pretended) to read the fortunes of those by whom they were consulted in the stars and planetary orbs. The excessive precision which was held to be requisite in the delineation of these points” [the delineation of a _point_ is good!] “&c. on the astrolabe, led to _point-device_, or points-device (as it is sometimes found spelled), being used as a proverbial expression for minute accuracy of any kind.” Then follows a quotation from Gower, in which an astrolabe is spoken of “with points and cercles merveilous,” and the note proceeds thus: “Shakespeare makes use of a similar figure of speech in the _Tempest_, I. 2, where the following dialogue takes place between Prospero and Ariel:--

‘_Prosp._ Hast thou, spirit, Performed _to point_ the tempest that I bade thee? _Ar._ In every article.’”

Neither the proposed etymology nor the illustration requires any remark from us. We will only say that _point-device_ is excellently explained and illustrated by Wedgwood.

We will give a few more examples out of many to show Mr. Hazlitt’s utter unfitness for the task he has undertaken. In the “Kyng and the Hermyt” are the following verses,

“A wyld wey, I hold, it were The wey to wend, I you swere, Bot ye the dey may se,”

meaning simply, “I think it would he a wild thing (in you) to go on your way unless you wait for daylight.” Mr. Hazlitt punctuates and amends thus:--

“A wyld wey I hold it were, The wey to wend, I you swere, Ye bot [by] the dey may se.” (Vol. I. p. 19.)

The word _bot_ seems a stumbling-block to Mr. Hazlitt. On page 54 of the same volume we have,

“Herd i neuere bi no leuedi _Hote_ hendinesse and curteysi.”

The use of the word _by_ as in this passage would seem familiar enough, and yet in the “Hye Way to the Spittel Hous” Mr. Hazlitt explains it as meaning _be_. Any boy knows that _without_ sometimes means _unless_ (Fielding uses it often in that sense), but Mr. Hazlitt seems unaware of the fact. In his first volume (p. 224) he gravely prints:--

“They trowed verelye that she shoulde dye; _With that_ our ladye wold her helpe and spede.”

The semicolon after _dye_ shows that this is not a misprint, but that the editor saw no connection between the first verse and the second. In the same volume (p. 133) we have the verse,

“He was a grete tenement man, and ryche of londe and lede,”

and to _lede_ Mr. Hazlitt appends this note: “_Lede_, in early English, is found in various significations, but here stands as the plural of _lad_, a servant.” In what conceivable sense is it the plural of _lad_? And does _lad_ necessarily mean a servant? The _Promptorium_ has _ladde_ glossed by _garcio_, but the meaning _servant_, as in the parallel cases of παις, _puer_, _garçon_, and _boy_, was a derivative one, and of later origin. The word means simply _man_ (in the generic sense) and in the plural _people_. So in the “Squyr of Low Degre,”

“I will forsake both land and _lede_,”

and in the “Smyth and his Dame,”

“That hath both land and _lyth_.”

The word was _not_ “used in various significations.” Even so lately as “Flodden Ffeild” we find,

“He was a noble _leed_ of high degree.”

Connected with _land_ it was a commonplace in German as well as in English. So in the _Tristan_ of Godfrey of Strasburg,

“Er Bevalch sin liut und fin lant An sines marschalkes hant.”

Mr. Hazlitt is more nearly right than usual when he says that in the particular case cited above _lede_ means _servants_. But were these of only one sex? Does he not know that even in the middle of the last century when an English nobleman spoke of “my people,” he meant simply his domestics?

Encountering the familiar phrase _No do!_ (Vol. IV. p. 64), Mr. Hazlitt changes it to _Not do!_ He informs us that _Goddes are_ (Vol. I. p. 197) means “God’s heir”! He says (Vol. II. p. 146): “_To borrow_, in the sense of _to take_, _to guard_, or _to protect_, is so common in early English that it is unnecessary to bring forward any illustration of its use in this way.” But he relents, and presently gives us two from _Ralph Roister Doister_, each containing the phrase “Saint George to borrow!” That _borrow_ means _take_ no owner of books need be told, and Mr. Hazlitt has shown great skill in _borrowing_ other people’s illustrations for his notes, but the phrase he quotes has no such meaning as he gives it. Mr. Dyce in a note on Skelton explains it rightly, “St. George being my pledge or surety.”

We gather a few more of these flowers of exposition and etymology:--

“The while thou sittest in chirche, thi bedys schalt thou bidde.” (Vol. I. p. 181.)

i. e. thou shalt offer thy prayers. Mr. Hazlitt’s note on _bidde_ is, “i. e. _bead_. So in _The Kyng and the Hermit_, line 111:--

‘That herd an hermyte there within Unto the gate he gan to wyn Bedying his prayer.’”

Precisely what Mr. Hazlitt understands by _beading_ (or indeed by anything else) we shall not presume to divine, but we _should_ like to hear him translate “if any man bidde the worshyp,” which comes a few lines further on. Now let us turn to page 191 of the same volume. “Maydenys ben loneliche and no thing sekir.” Mr. Hazlitt tells us in a note that “sekir or sicker” is a very common form of _secure_, and quotes in illustration from the prose _Morte Arthure_, “A! said Sir Launcelot, comfort yourselfe, for it shall bee unto us as a great honour, and much more then if we died in any other places: for of death wee be _sicker_.” Now in the text the word means _safe_, and in the note it means _sure_. Indeed _sure_, which is only a shorter form of _secure_, is its ordinary meaning. “I mak sicker,” said Kirkpatrick, a not unfitting motto for certain editors, if they explained it in their usual phonetic way.

In the “Frere and the Boye,” when the old man has given the boy a bow, he says:--

“Shote therin, whan thou good thynke; For yf thou shote and wynke, The prycke thow shalte hytte.”

Mr. Hazlitt’s explanation of _wynke_ is “to close one eye in taking aim,” and he quotes a passage from Gascoigne in support of it. Whatever Gascoigne meant by the word (which is very doubtful), it means nothing of the kind here, and is another proof that Mr. Hazlitt does not think it so important to understand what he reads as St. Philip did. What the old man said was, “even if you shut both your eyes, you can’t help hitting the mark.” So in “Piers Ploughman” (Whitaker’s text),

“Wynkyng, as it were, wytterly ich saw hyt.”

Again, for our editor’s blunders are as endless as the heads of an old-fashioned sermon, in the “Schole-House of Women” (Vol. IV. p. 130), Mr. Hazlitt has a note on the phrase “make it nice,”

(“And yet alwaies they bible bable Of euery matter and make it nice,”)

which reads thus: “To make it pleasant or _snug_. I do not remember to have seen the word used in this sense very frequently. But Gascoigne has it in a precisely similar way:--

‘The glosse of gorgeous Courtes by thee did please mine eye, A stately sight me thought it was to see the braue go by, To see their feathers flaunte, to make [marke!] their straunge deuise, To lie along in ladies lappes, to lispe, and make it nice.’”

To _make it nice_ means nothing more nor less than to _play the fool_, or rather, to _make a fool of yourself, faire le niais_. In old English the French _niais_ and _nice_, from similarity of form and analogy of meaning, naturally fused together in the word _nice_, which, by an unusual luck, has been promoted from a derogatory to a respectful sense. Gascoigne’s _lispe_ might have put Mr. Hazlitt on his guard, if he ever considered the sense of what he quotes. But he never does, nor of what he edits either. For example, in the “Smyth and his Dame” we find the following note: “_Prowe_, or _proffe_, is not at all uncommon as a form of _profit_. In the ‘Seven Names of a Prison,’ a poem printed in _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, we have,--

‘Quintum nomen istius foveæ ita probatum, A place of _proff_ for man to know bothe frend and foo.’”

Now _proff_ and _prow_ are radically different words. _Proff_ here means _proof_, and if Mr. Hazlitt had read the stanza which he quotes, he would have found (as in all the others of the same poem) the meaning repeated in Latin in the last line, _probacio amicorum_.

But we wish to leave our readers (if not Mr. Hazlitt) in good humor, and accordingly we have reserved two of his notes as _bonnes bouches_. In “Adam Bel,” when the outlaws ask pardon of the king,

“They kneled downe without lettyng And each helde vp his hande.”

To this passage (tolerably plain to those not _too_ familiar with “our early literature”) Mr. Hazlitt appends this solemn note: ‘_To hold up the hand_ was formerly a sign of respect or concurrence, or a mode of taking an oath; and thirdly as a signal for mercy. In all these senses it has been employed from the most ancient times; nor is it yet out of practice, as many savage nations still testify their respect to a superior by holding their hand [either _their hands_ or _the hand_, Mr. Hazlitt!] over their head. _Touching the hat_ appears to be a vestige of the same custom. In the present passage the three outlaws may be understood to kneel on approaching the throne, and to hold up each a hand as a token that they desire to ask the royal clemency or favour. In the lines which are subjoined it [what?] implies a solemn assent to an oath:

‘This swore the duke and all his men, And all the lordes that with him lend, And tharto to[33] held they up thaire hand.’” Minot’s Poems, ed. 1825, p. 9.

The admirable Tupper could not have done better than this, even so far as the mere English of it is concerned. Where all is so fine, we hesitate to declare a preference, but, on the whole, must give in to the passage about _touching the hat_, which is as good as “mobbled queen.” The Americans are still among the “savage nations” who “imply a solemn assent to an oath” by holding up the hand. Mr. Hazlitt does not seem to know that the question whether to kiss the book or hold up the hand was once a serious one in English politics.

But Mr. Hazlitt can do better even than this! Our readers may be incredulous; but we shall proceed to show that he can. In the “Schole-House of Women,” among much other equally delicate satire of the other sex (if we may venture still to call them so), the satirist undertakes to prove that woman was made, not of the rib of a man, but of a dog:--

‘And yet the rib, as I suppose, That God did take out of the man A dog vp caught, and a way gose Eat it clene; so that as than The woork to finish that God began Could not be, as we haue said, Because the dog the rib connaid. A remedy God found as yet; Out of the dog he took a rib.”

Mr. Hazlitt has a long note on _way gose_, of which the first sentence shall suffice us: “The origin of the term way-goose is involved in some obscurity.” We should think so, to be sure! Let us modernize the spelling and grammar, and correct the punctuation, and then see how it looks:--

“A dog up caught and away goes, Eats it up.”

We will ask Mr. Hazlitt to compare the text, as he prints it, with

“Into the hall he gose.” (Vol. III. p. 67.)

We should have expected a note here on the “hall he-goose.” Not to speak of the point of the joke, such as it is, a goose that could eat up a man’s rib could only be matched by one that could swallow such a note,--or write it!

We have made but a small florilegium from Mr. Hazlitt’s remarkable volumes. His editorial method seems to have been to print as the Lord would, till his eye was caught by some word he did not understand, and then to make the reader comfortable by a note showing that the editor is as much in the dark as he. We are profoundly thankful for the omission of a glossary. It would have been a nursery and seminary of blunder. To expose pretentious charlatanry is sometimes the unpleasant duty of a reviewer. It is a duty we never seek, and should not have assumed in this case but for the impertinence with which Mr. Hazlitt has treated dead and living scholars, the latchets of whose shoes he is not worthy to unloose, and to express their gratitude to whom is, or ought to be, a pleasure to all honest lovers of their mother-tongue. If he who has most to learn be the happiest man, Mr. Hazlitt is indeed to be envied; but we hope he will learn a great deal before he lays his prentice hands on Warton’s “History of English Poetry,” a classic in its own way. If he does not learn before, he will be likely to learn after, and in no agreeable fashion.

EMERSON THE LECTURER.

It is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily attractive lecturer in America. Into that somewhat cold-waterish region adventurers of the sensational kind come down now and then with a splash, to become disregarded King Logs before the next season. But Mr. Emerson always draws. A lecturer now for something like a third of a century, one of the pioneers of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier hearers, and continually winds new ones in its enchanting meshes. What they do not fully understand they take on trust, and listen, saying to themselves, as the old poet of Sir Philip Sidney,--

“A sweet, attractive, kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of gospel books.”

We call it a singular fact, because we Yankees are thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, and nothing can be more remote from that than his. We are reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about Plato; yet our favorite teacher’s practicality is not in the least of the Poor Richard variety. If he have any Buncombe constituency, it is that unrealized commonwealth of philosophers which Plotinus proposed to establish; and if he were to make an almanac, his directions to farmers would be something like this: “OCTOBER: _Indian Summer_; now is the time to get in your early Vedas.” What, then, is his secret? Is it not that he out-Yankees us all? that his range includes us all? that he is equally at home with the potato-disease and original sin, with pegging shoes and the Over-soul? that, as we try all trades, so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his mysticism gives us a counterpoise to our super-practicality?