tion of his “ Principles,” to which a reference is made from the word. Further, as if the confusion were not bad enough without such mechanical carelessness and blundering, in the stereotyped 8vo. edition of Walker, 1819 (called the 21st edition), in a list given at page 36 (the same page in which the strange word Estipile occurs) the i is printed with the long, instead of the short mark in Gentile, Virile, Subtile, 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, 1.4, 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 army; but the Dictionaries which I have consulted exhibit no such word.”

44. That gentleness ... as I was, etc.—We should now say "that gentleness that I was wont to have.” But that and as are by origin words of the same signification; that, or thaet, being the neuter form of the AngloSaxon article or demonstrative, and as being in all probability (as remarked by Horne Tooke, Diversions of Purley, p. 147) identical with the German es (still in continual use in that language for our that or it). “The word as," observes Dr. Latham (English Language, p. 423),“ properly a conjunction, is occasionally used as a relative—the man as rides to market. This expression is not to be imitated.” Clearly not. Such syntax is no longer, if it ever was, a part of the language. But in many other expressions which everybody uses, and the propriety of which nobody has ever questioned, as is manifestly not a conjunction, but a relative pronoun. For example, in Pope's “ All such reading as was never read,” as is the nominative to the verb. It

acts in the same capacity in the common phrases, “ as is said,” “ as regards,” “as appears,” and others similarly constructed. It is not very long since the conjunction as was used at least in one case in which we now always employ that. "S0-as,” says Bishop Lowth (Introd. to Eng. Gram.), "was used by the writers of the last [17th] century to express a consequence, instead of so-that. Swift [who died 1745], I believe, is the last of our good writers who has frequently used this manner of expression. It seems improper, and is deservedly grown obsolete.” That it is obsolete cannot be disputed, and it would therefore be an impropriety in modern writing; but Horne Tooke is right in objecting to Lowth that there is nothing naturally or essentially wrong in it; it is wrong, if at all, only conventionally. Exactly corresponding to this formerly common use of the conjunctions so and as is Shakespeare's 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), the Earl of Surrey charges Wolsey with having sent large supplies of substance to Rome “ to the mere undoing of all the kingdom,” he means to the complete undoing of all the kingdom, to nothing less than such undoing ; but in our modern English the words would sound as if the speaker's meaning were, to nothing more than the undoing of the kingdom. The merely would lead us to think of something else, some possible aggravation of the undoing (such, for instance, as the disgrace or infamy), from which that was to be conceived as separated.

G

Attention to such changes of import or effect, slight as they may seem, which many words have undergone, is indispensable for the correct understanding of our old writers. Their ignorance of the old sense of this "same word merely has obscured a passage in Bacon to his modern editors. It is in his 58th Essay, entitled “ Of Vicissitudes of Things,” where he says; “ As for conflagrations and great droughts, they do not merely dispeople and destroy"--meaning, as the train of the reasoning clearly requires, that they do not altogether . do so. Most of the editors (Mr. Montague included) have changed "and destroy" into "but destroy"; others leave out the “not” before merely; either change being destructive of the meaning of the passage and inconsistent with the context. The reading of the old copies is confirmed by the Latin translation, done under Bacon's own superintendence :-“ Illæ populum penitus non absorbent aut destruunt.”

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. 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,