tile, Coctile, Quintile, Hostile, Servile, and Sextile, in direct contradiction both to the Dictionary and to the very statement with which the list is headed and introduced. The present tendency of our pronunciation seems to be to extend the dominion of the long i both in these forms and even in the termination ite. In reading, at least, the-ile is now perhaps more usually pronounced long than short in Hostile, Servile, and some other similar instances; and we sometimes hear even infinite pronounced with the ite long (as in finite), though such a pronunciation is still only that of the uneducated populace in Opposite or Favourite.

32. The Ides of March.-In the Roman Kalendar the Ides (Idus) fell on the 15th of March, May, July, and October, and on the 13th of the eight remaining months. 34. A soothsayer, bids.-That is, It is a soothsayer, who bids. It would not otherwise be an answer to Cæsar's question. The omission of the relative in such a construction is still common.

39. The old stage direction here is ;-" Sennet. Exeunt. Manet Brut. et Cass." The word Sennet is also variously written Sennit, Senet, Synnet, Cynet, Signet, and Signate. Nares explains it as "a word chiefly occurring in the stage directions of the old plays, and seeming to indicate a particular set of notes on the trumpet, or cornet, different from a flourish.' In Shakespeare it occurs again in the present Play at 67, in the heading to Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 7, in King Henry VIII, ii. 4, and in Coriolanus, i. 1 and 2, where in the first scene we have "A Sennet. Trumpets sound." In the heading of the second scene of the fifth act of Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of Malta we have "Synnet, i. e. Flourish of Trumpets." But in Dekker's Satiromastix (1602) we have " Trumpets sound a flourish, and then a sennet." Steevens says;

"I have been informed that sennet is derived from senneste, an antiquated French tune formerly used in the

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army; but the Dictionaries which I have exhibit no such word."

44. That gentleness as I was, etc.-We say "that gentleness that I was wont to have." and as are by origin words of the same signific or thaet, being the neuter form of the Origin article or demonstrative, and as being in all (as remarked by Horne Tooke, Diversions of 147) identical with the German es (still in co in that language for our that or it). "The observes Dr Latham (English Language, p. 4 perly a conjunction, is occasionally used as a the man as rides to market. This expression is imitated." Clearly not. Such syntax is no lo ever was, a part of the language. But in m expressions which everybody uses, and the pr which nobody has ever questioned, as is manife conjunction, but a relative pronoun. For ex Pope's "All such reading as was never read," nominative to the verb. It acts in the same ca the common phrases, "as is said," "as regards, pears," and others similarly constructed. It is long since the conjunction as was used at leas case in which we now always employ that. says Bishop Lowth (Introd. to Eng. Gram.), by the writers of the last [17th] century to e consequence, instead of so- -that. Swift [who die I believe, is the last of our good writers who quently used this manner of expression. I improper, and is deservedly grown obsolete." T obsolete cannot be disputed, and it would therefo impropriety in modern writing; but Horne Tooke in objecting to Lowth that there is nothing natu essentially wrong in it; it is wrong, if at all, on ventionally. Exactly corresponding to this f common use of the conjunctions so and as is Shakes

66

use in the present passage, and many others, of the pronouns that and as. In as I was wont to have," as is the accusative of the relative pronoun governed by have, "that gentleness, and show of love," being the antecedent. The practice, common in most or all languages, of employing the same word as demonstrative and relative, is familiarized to us in English by our habitual use of that in both capacities.

44. Over your friend that loves you.-It is friends in the Second Folio.

45. Merely upon myself.-Merely (from the Latin merus and mere) means purely, only. It separates that which it designates or qualifies from everything else. But in so doing the chief or most emphatic reference may be made either to that which is included, or to that which is excluded. In modern English it is always to the latter; by "merely upon myself" we should now mean upon nothing else except myself; the nothing else is that which the merely makes prominent. In Shakespeare's day the other reference was the more common, that namely to what was included; and "merely upon myself" meant upon myself altogether, or without regard to anything else. Myself was that which the merely made prominent. So when Hamlet, speaking of the world, says (i. 2) "Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely," he by the merely brings the possession before the mind, and characterizes it as complete and absolute; but by the same term now the prominence would be given to something else from which the possession might be conceived to be separable; "possess it merely" would mean have nothing beyond simply the possession of it (have, it might be, no right to it, or no enjoyment of it). It is not necessary that that which is included, though thus emphasized, should therefore be more definitely conceived than that with which it is contrasted. So, again, when in Henry VIII., iii. 2 (whoever may have written that Play, or this passage),

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the Earl of Surrey charges Wolsey with havi supplies of substance to Rome "to the mer all the kingdom," he means to the complet all the kingdom, to nothing less than such u in our modern English the words would sour speaker's meaning were, to nothing more than of the kingdom. The mere would lead us something else, some possible aggravation of (such, for instance, as the disgrace or infamy), that was to be conceived as separated.

The use of merely here is in exact accordand of mere in Othello, ii. 2, where the Herald pr tidings of what he calls "the mere perdition o ish fleet" (that is, the entire perdition or de In Helena's "Ay, surely, mere the truth," in that Ends Well, iii. 5, mere would seem to hav of merely (that is, simply, exactly), if there be n

Attention to such changes of import or effec they may seem, which many words have und indispensable for the correct understanding writers. Their ignorance of the old sense of word merely has obscured a passage in Bac modern editors. In his 58th Essay, entitled " situdes of Things," he says; "As for conflagra great droughts, they do not merely dispeople and -meaning, as the train of the reasoning clearly that they do not altogether do so. Most of t (Mr Montague included) have changed "and into "but destroy;" others leave out the "no merely; either change being subversive of the of the passage and inconsistent with the conte reading of the old copies is confirmed by the La lation, done under Bacon's own superintendence populum penitus non absorbent aut destruunt."

So in the 3rd Essay, "Of Unity in Religion," are told that extremes would be avoided "if th

fundamental and of substance in religion were truly discerned and distinguished from points not merely of faith, but of opinion, order, or good intention," the meaning is, from points not altogether of faith,-not, were distinguished not only from points of faith, as a modern reader would be apt to understand it.

45. Passions of some difference.-The meaning seems to be, of some discordance, somewhat conflicting passions. So we have a few lines after, "poor Brutus, with himself at war."

45. Conceptions only proper to myself.—Thoughts and feelings relating exclusively to myself.

45. To

my behaviours.-We have lost this plural. But we still say, though with some difference of meaning, both My manner and "My manners.”

45. Be you one.-There are various kinds of being, or of existing. What is here meant is, Be in your belief and assurance; equivalent to Rest assured that you are.

45. Nor construe any further my neglect. Further is the word in the old copies; but Mr Collier, I observe, in his one volume edition prints farther. Is this one of the corrections of his MS. annotator? It is sometimes supposed that, as farther answers to far, so further answers to forth. But far and forth, or fore, are really only different forms of the same word, different corruptions or modernizations of the old Original English feor or forth.

46. I have much mistook your passion.-That is, the feeling under which you are suffering. Patience and passion (both from the Latin patior) equally mean suffering; the notions of quiet and of agitation which they have severally acquired, and which have made the common signification of the one almost the opposite of that of the other, are merely accidental adjuncts. It may be seen, however, from the use of the word passion here and in the preceding speech, that its proper meaning was not so completely obscured and lost sight of in Shakespeare's