Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853

Either this is "unintelligible," and "we must interpolate" deserved, or (the only possible alternative) all three passages are free from Mr. Singer's objection.

    C. Mansfield Ingleby.

Birmingham.

On a Passage in "Macbeth."—Macbeth (Act I. Sc. 7.) says:

"I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other."

Should not the third line be—

"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its sell!"

Sell is saddle (Latin, sella; French, selle), and is used by Spenser in this sense.

"O'erleaping itself" is manifest nonsense; whereas the whole passage has evident reference to horsemanship; and to "vault" is "to carry one's body cleverly over anything of a considerable height, resting one hand upon the thing itself,"—exactly the manner in which some persons mount a horse, resting one hand on the pommel of the saddle.

It would then be perfectly intelligible, thus—

"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its saddle (sell),
And falls on the other (side of the horse)."

Does Mr. Collier's "New Text," or any other old copy, prove this?

    S. Singleton.

Greenwich.

Minor Notes

Robert Weston.—I copy the following from a letter of R. L. Kingston to Dr. Ducarel in Nichols's Literary History, vol. iii. p. 629.:

"Robert Weston was Lord of Manor of Kilmington in Devon, and divided his estate among four daughters, reserving to the eldest son the royalties of his courts. In his will or deed of settlement is this clause:—'That the Abbot of Newnhams, near Axminster, had nothing to do in the highway any further than to his land of Studhays, and that he should stand without the court gate of his land of Studhays, and take his right ear in his left hand, and put his right arm next to his body under his left across, and so cast his reap-hook from him; and so far he shall come.'"

    Balliolensis.

Sonnet on the Rev. Joseph Blanco White.—Some years ago, I copied the following sonnet from a newspaper. Can you say where it first made its appearance? After the annexed testimony of Coleridge, it is needless to say anything in its praise.

"SONNET ON THE REV. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.

Mysterious Night! When our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,
And lo! Creation widen'd in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd
Within thy beams, O Sun! Or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect, stood reveal'd,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive—wherefore not life?"

Coleridge is said to have pronounced this "The finest and most grandly conceived in our language; at least, it is only in Milton's and in Wordsworth's sonnets that I recollect any rival."

    Balliolensis.

English and American Booksellers.—It is rather curious to note, that whilst English booksellers are emulously vying with one another to publish editions of Uncle Toms, Queechys, Wide Wide Worlds, &c., they neglect to issue English works which the superior shrewdness of Uncle Sam deems worthy of reprinting. Southey's Chronicle of the Cid, which was published by Longman in 1808, and not since printed in England, was brought out in a very handsome octavo form at Lowell, U. S., in 1846. And this, the "first American edition," as it is called on the title-page, can be readily procured from the booksellers in London; whereas the English original is not to be met with. In like manner, Macaulay's Essays were collected and published first in America; and so with Praed's Poems, and many others. Uncle Sam has lately announced collections of Dr. Maginn's and De Quincey's scattered Essays, for which we owe him our most grateful acknowledgments.

    J. M. B.

Tunbridge Wells.

Odd Mistake.—

"One of the houses on Mount Ephraim formerly belonged to Judge Jeffries, a man who has rendered his name infamous in the annals of history by the cruelty and injustice he manifested in presiding at the trial of King Charles I."—Descriptive Sketches of Tunbridge Wells, by John Britton, F.S.A., p. 59.

Voilà comment on fait l'histoire!

    J. M. B.

Tunbridge Wells.

Thomas Shakspeare.—In the year 1597 there resided in Lutterworth in Leicestershire, only distant from Stratford-upon-Avon, the birth-town of Shakspeare, a very few miles, one Thomas Shakspeare, who appears to have been employed by William Glover, of Hillendon in Northamptonshire, gentleman, as his agent to receive for him and give an acquittance for a considerable sum of money.

Having regard to the age in which this Thomas Shakspeare lived, coupled with his place of residence, is it not probable he was a relative of the great Bard?

    Charlecote.

Early Winters.—I heard it mentioned, when in St. Petersburg very lately, that they have never had so early a commencement of winter as this last year since the French were at Moscow.

I find in accounts of the war, that the winter commenced then (1812) on November 7, N. S., with deep snow. Last year (1852) it commenced at St. Petersburg on October 16, N. S., as noted in my diary, with snow, which has remained on the ground ever since, accompanied at times with very severe frost.

Query: Can November 7, N. S., be the correct date? If it is, this last winter's commencement must be unprecedented; as I have always heard it remarked, that the winter began unusually early the year the French were at Moscow.

I may mention as a note, that by the last accounts from Russia, they say the ice in the Gulf of Finland was four and a half feet thick.

    J. S. A.

Old Broad Street.

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