Kitabı oku: «Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850», sayfa 4
MEANING OF "GRADELY."
(Vol. ii., p. 133.)
For the origin of this word, A.W.H. may refer to Brocket's Glossary of North Country Words, where he will find—
"Gradely, decently, orderly. Sax. grad, grade, ordo. Rather, Mr. Turner says, from Sax. gradlie upright; gradely in Lanc., he observes, is an adjective simplifying everything respectable. The Lancashire people say, our canny is nothing to it."
The word itself is very familiar to me, as I have often received a scolding for some boyish, and therefore not very wise or orderly prank, in these terns:—"One would think you were not altogether gradely," or, as it was sometimes varied into, "You would make one believe you were not right in your head;" meaning, "One would think you had not common sense."
H. EASTWOOD.
Ecclesfield.
Gradely.—This word is not only used in Yorkshire, but also very much in Lancashire, and the rest of the north of England. I have always understood it to mean "good," "jolly," "out and out." Its primary meaning is "orderly, decently." (See Richardson's Dictionary.) The French have grade; It. and Sp., grado; Lat. gradus.
AREDJID KOOEZ.
Gradely.—This word, in use in Lancashire and Yorkshire, means grey-headedly, and denotes such wisdom as should belong to old age. A child is admonished to do a thing gradely, i.e. with the care and caution of a person of experience.
E.H.
Gradely.—In Webster's and also in Richardson's Dictionaries it is defined, "orderly, decently." It is a word in common use in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and also Cheshire. A farmer will tell his men to do a thing gradely, that is, "properly, well."
G.W.N.
Gradely.—In Carr's Craven Dialect appears "Gradely, decently." It is also used as an adjective, "decent, worthy, respectable."
2. Tolerably well, "How isto?" "Gradely." Fr. Gré, "satisfaction"; à mon gré.
S.N.
Gradely.—Holloway3 derives gradely from the Anglo-Saxon Grade, a step, order, and defines its meaning, "decently." He, however, fixes its paternity in the neighbouring county of York.
In Collier's edition of Tim Bobbin it is spelt greadly, and means "well, right, handsomely."
"I connaw tell the greadly, boh I think its to tell fok by."—p. 42.
"So I seete on restut meh, on drank meh pint o ele; boh as I'r naw greadly sleekt, I cawd for another," &c.—p. 45.
"For if sitch things must be done greadly on os teh aught to bee," &c.—p. 59.
Mr. Halliwell4 defined it, "decently, orderly, moderately," and gives a recent illustration of its use in a letter addressed to Lord John Russell, and distributed in the Manchester Free Trade Procession. It is dated from Bury, and the writer says to his lordship,—
"Dunnot be fyert, mon, but rapt eawt wi awt uts reef, un us Berry foke'll elp yo as ard as we kon. Wayn helps Robdin, un wayn elp yo, if yoan set obeawt yur work gradely."
Gradely.—I think this word is very nearly confined to Lancashire. It is used both as an adjective and adverb. As an adjective, it expresses only a moderate degree of approbation or satisfaction; as an adverb, its general force is much greater. Thus, used adjectively in such phrases as "a gradely man," "a gradely crop," &c., it is synonymous with "decent." In answer to the question, "How d'ye do?" it means, "Pretty well," "Tolerable, thank you."
Adverbially it is (1.) sometimes used in sense closely akin to that of the adjective. Thus in "Behave yourself gradely," it means "properly, decently." But (2.) most frequently it is precisely equivalent to "very;" as in the expressions "A gradely fine day," "a gradely good man"—which last is a term of praise by no means applicable to the mere gradely man, or, as such a one is most commonly described, a "gradely sort of man."
Though one might have preferred a Saxon origin for it, yet in default of such it seems most natural to connect it with the Latin gradus, especially as the word grade, from which it is immediately formed, has a handy English look about it, that would soon naturalise it amongst us. Gradely then would mean "orderly, regular, according to degree."
The difference in intensity of meaning between the adjective and the adverb seems analogous to that between the adjectives proper, regular, &c., and the same words when used in the vulgar way as adverbs.
G.P.
PASCAL AND HIS EDITOR BOSSUT
(Vol. ii., p. 278.)
Although I am not afraid of the fate with which that unfortunate monk met, of whom it is said,—
"Pro solo puncto caruit Martinus Asello,"
yet a blunder is a sad thing, especially when the person who is supposed to commit it attempts to correct others.
Now the printer of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" has introduced, in my short remark on Pascal, the very error which has led the author of the article in the British Quarterly Review, as well as many others, to mistake the Bishop of Meaux for the editor of Pascal's works. Once more, that unfortunate editor is BOSSUT, not BOSSUET; and if it may appear to some that the difference of one letter in a name is not of much consequence, yet it is from an error as trifling as this that people of my acquaintance confound Madame de Staël with Madame de Staal-Delauney, in spite of chronology and common sense. Again, by the leave of the Christian Remembrancer (vol. xiii. no. 55.), the elegant and accomplished scholar to whom we owe the only complete text of Pascal's thoughts, is M. Faugère, not Fougère. All these are minutiæ; but the chapter of minutiæ is an important one in literary history.
Another remarkable question which I feel a wish to touch upon before closing this communication, is that of impromptus. Your correspondent MR. SINGER (p. 105.) supposes Malherbe the poet to have been "ready at an impromptu." But, to say the least, this is rather doubtful, unless the extemporaneous effusions of Malherbe were of that class which Voiture indulged in with so much success at the Hôtel de Rambouillet—sonnets and epigrams leisurely prepared for the purpose of being fired off in some fashionable "ruelle" of Paris. Malherbe is known to have been a very slow composer; he used to say to Balzac that ten years' rest was necessary after the production of a hundred lines: and the author of the Christian Socrates, himself rather too fond of the file, after quoting this fact, adds in a letter to Consart:
"Je n'ai pas besoin d'un si long repos après un si petit travail. Mais aussi d'attendre de moi cette heureuse facilité qui fait produire des volumes à M. de Scudéry, ce serait me connaître mal, et me faire une honneur que je ne mérite pas."
Malherbe certainly had a most happy influence on French poetry; he checked the ultra-classical school of Ronsard, and began that work of reformation afterwards accomplished by Boileau.
As I have mentioned Voiture's name, I shall add a very droll "soi-disant" impromptu of his, composed to ridicule Mademoiselle Chapelain, the sister of the poet. Like her brother, she was most miserly in her habits, and not distinguished by that virtue which some say is next to godliness.
"Vous qui tenez incessamment
Cent amans dedans votre manche,
Tenez-les au moins proprement,
Et faites qu'elle soit plus blanche.
"Vous pouvez avecque raison,
Usant des droits de la victoire,
Mettre vos galants en prison;
Mais qu'elle ne soit pas si noire.
"Mon cœur, qui vous est bien dévot,
Et que vous réduisez en cendre,
Vous le tenez dans un cachot
Comme un prisonnier qu'on va pendre.
"Est-ce que, brûlant nuit et jour,
Je remplis ce lieu de fumée,
Et que le feu de mon amour
En a fait une cheminée?"
GUSTAVE MASSON.
Hadley, near Barnet.
KONGS-SKUGG-SIO
(Vol. ii., p. 298.)
The author of the Kongs-skugg-sio is unknown, but the date of it has been pretty clearly made out by Bishop Finsen and others. (V. Finsen, Dissertatio Historica de Speculo Regali, 1766.) There is only one complete edition of this remarkable work, viz. that published at Soröe in 1768, in 4to. Bishop Finsen maintains the Kongs-skugg-sio to have been written from 1154 to 1164. Ericksen believes it not to be older than 1184; while Suhm and Eggert Olafsen do not allow it to be older than the thirteenth century. Rafn, and the modern editors of the Grönlands Historiske Mindesmærker, p. 266., vol. iii., accept the date given by Finsen as the true one. From the text of the work we learn that it was written in Norway, by a young man, a son of one of the leading and richest men there, who had been on terms of friendship with several kings, and had lived much, or at least had travelled much, in Helgeland. Rafn and others believe the work to have been written by Nicolas, the son of Sigurd Hranesön, who was slain by the Birkebeiners on the 8th of September, 1176. Their reasons for coming to this conclusion are given at full length in the work above quoted.
The whole of the Kongs-skugg-sio is well worthy of being translated into English. It may, indeed, in many respects, be considered as the most remarkable work of the old northerns.
EDWARD CHARLTON.
Newcastle-on-Tyne, Oct 7. 1850.
If F.Q. will look into Halfdan Einersen's edition of Kongs-skugg-sio, Soröe, 1768, the first time it was printed, he will find in the editor's preliminary remarks all that is known of the date and origin of the work. The author is unknown, but that he was a Northman and lived in Nummedal, in Norway, and wrote somewhere between 1140 and 1270, or, according to Finsen, about 1154; and that he had in his youth been a courtier, and afterwards a royal councillor, we infer from the internal evidence the work itself affords us. Kongs-skugg-sio, or the royal mirror, deserves to be better known, on account of the lively picture it gives us of the manners and customs of the North in the twelfth century; the state of the arts and the amount of science known to the educated. It abounds in sound morals, and its author might have sate at the feet of Adam Smith for the orthodoxy of his political economy. He is not entirely free from the credulity of his age and his account of Ireland will match anything to be found in Sir John Mandeville. Here we are told of an island on which nothing rots, of another on which nothing dies, of another on one-half of which devils alone reside, of wonderful monsters and animals, and of miracles the strangest ever wrought. He invents nothing. What he relates of Ireland he states to have found in books, or to have derived from hearsay. The following extract must therefore be taken as a specimen of Irish Folk-lore in the twelfth century:—
"There is also one thing, he says, that will seem wonderful, and it happened in the town which is called Kloena [Cloyne]. In that town there is a church which is dedicated to the memory of a holy man called Kiranus. And there it happened one Sunday, as the people were at prayers and heard mass, that there descended gently from the air an anchor, as if it had been cast from a ship, for there was a cable to it, and the fluke of the anchor caught in the arch of the church-door, and all the people went out of church, and wondered, and looked up into the air after the cable. There they saw a ship floating above the cable, and men on board; and next they saw a man leap overboard, and dive down to the anchor to free it. He appeared, from the motions he made with both hands and feet, like a man swimming in the sea. And when he reached the anchor, he endeavoured to loosen it, when the people ran forwards to seize the man. But the church in which the anchor stuck fast had a bishop's chair in it. The bishop was present on this occasion, and forbade the people to hold the man, and said that he might be drowned just as if in water. And immediately he was set free he hastened up to the ship, and when he was on board, they hauled up the cable and disappeared from men's sight; but the anchor has since laid in the church as a testimony of this."
CORKSCREW.
GOLD IN CALIFORNIA
(Vol. ii., p. 132.)
E.N.W. refers to Shelvocke's voyage of 1719, in which reference is made to the abundance of gold in the soil of California. In Hakluyt's Voyages, printed in 1599-1600, will be found much earlier notices on this subject. California was first discovered in the time of the Great Marquis, as Cortes was usually called. There are accounts of these early expeditions by Francisco Vasquez Coronada, Ferdinando Alarchon, Father Marco de Niça, and Francisco de Ulloa, who visited the country in 1539 and 1540. It is stated by Hakluyt that they were as far to the north as the 37th degree of latitude, which would be about one degree south of St. Francisco. I am inclined, however, to believe from the narrations themselves that the Spanish early discoveries did not extend much beyond the 34th degree of latitude, being little higher than the Peninsular or Lower California. In all these accounts, however, distinct mention is made of abundance of gold. In one of them it is stated that the natives used plates of gold to scrape the perspiration off their bodies!
The most curious and distinct account, however, is that given in "The famous voyage of Sir Francis Drake into the South Sea, &c. in 1577", which will be found in the third volume of Hakluyt, page 730., et seq. I am tempted to make some extracts from this, and the more so because a very feasible claim might be based upon the transaction in favour of our Sovereign Lady the Queen. At page 737. I find:
"The 5th day of June (1579) being in 43 degrees wards the pole Arctike, we found the ayre so colde, that our men being grievously pinched with the same, complained of the extremitie thereof, and the further we went, the more the colde increased upon us. Whereupon we thought it best for that time to seeke the land, and did so, finding it not mountainous, but low plaine land, till we came within thirty degrees toward the line. In which height it pleased God to send us into a faire and good baye, with a good winde to enter the same. In this baye wee anchored."
A glance at the map will show that "in this baye" is now situated the famous city of San Francisco.
Their doings in the bay are then narrated, and from page 738. I extract the following:—
"When they [the natives with their king] had satisfied themselves [with dancing, &c.] they made signes to our General [Drake] to sit downe, to whom the king and divers others made several orations, or rather supplications, that hee would take their province or kingdom into his hand, and become their king, making signes that they would resigne unto him their right and title of the whole land, and become his subjects. In which, to persuade us the better, the king and the rest with our consent, and with great reverence, joyfully singing a song, did set the crowne upon his head, inriched his necke with all their chaines, and offred unto him many other things, honouring him by the name of Hioh, adding thereulto, as it seemed, a sign of triumph; which thing our Generall thought not meet to reject, because he knew not what honour and profit it might be to our countrey. Whereupon, in the name and to the use of Her Majestie, he took the scepter, crowne, and dignitie of the said country into his hands, wishing that the riches and treasure thereof might so conveniently be transported to the inriching of her kingdom at home, as it aboundeth in ye same.
"Our Generall called this countrey Nova Albion, and that for two causes; the one in respect of the white bankes and cliffes, which lie towards the sea, and the other, because it might have some affinities with our countrey in name, which sometime was so called."
Then comes the curious statement:
"There is no part of earth heere to be taken up, wherein there is not some probable show of gold or silver."
The narrative then goes on to state that formal possession was taken of the country by putting up a "monument" with "a piece of sixpence of current English money under the plate," &c.
Drake and the bold cavaliers of that day probably found that it paid better to rob the Spaniard of the gold and silver ready made in the shape of "the Acapulco galleon," or such like, than to sift the soil of the Sacramento for its precious grains. At all events, the wonderful richness of the "earth" seems to have been completely overlooked or forgotten. So little was it suspected, until the Americans acquired the country at the peace with Mexico, that in the fourth volume of Knight's National Cyclopædia, published early in 1848, in speaking of Upper California, it is said, "very little mineral wealth has been met with"! A few months after, intelligence reached Europe how much the reverse was the case.
T.N.
THE DISPUTED PASSAGE PROM THE TEMPEST
(Vol. ii., pp. 259. 299.)
When the learning and experience of such gentlemen as MR. SINGER and MR. COLLIER fail to conclude a question, there is no higher appeal than to plain common sense, aided by the able arguments advanced on each side. Under these circumstances, perhaps you will allow one who is neither learned nor experienced to offer a word or two by way of vote on the meaning of the passage in the Tempest cited by MR. SINGER. It appears to me that to do full justice to the question the passage should be quoted entire, which, with your permission, I will do.
"Fer. There be some sports are painful; and their labour
Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters
Point to rich ends. This, my mean task
Would be as heavy to me as odious, but
The mistress, which I serve, quickens what's dead
And makes my labours pleasures: O, she is
Ten times more gentle than her father's crabbed,
And he's compos'd of harshness. I must remove
Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up
Upon a sore injunction: my sweet mistress
Weeps when she sees me work, and says, such baseness
Had ne'er like executor. I forget;
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labour(s),
Most busy(l)est when I do it."
The question appears to be whether "most busy" applies to "sweet thoughts" or to Ferdinand, and whether the pronoun "it" refers to the act of forgetting or to "labour(s);" and I must confess that, to me, the whole significancy of the passage depends upon the idea conveyed of the mind being "most busy" while the body is being exerted. Every man with a spark of imagination must many a time have felt this. In the most essential particular, therefore, I think MR. SINGER is right in his correction but at the same time agreeing with MR. COLLIER, that it is desirable not to interfere with the original text further than is absolutely necessary, I think the substitution of "labour" for "labours" is of questionable expediency. What is the use of the conjunction "but" if not to connect the excuse for the act of forgetting with the act itself?
Without intending to follow MR. COLLIER through the course of his argument, I should like to notice one or two points. The usage of Shakspeare's day admitted many variations from the stricter grammatical rules of our own; but no usage ever admitted such a sentence as this,—for though elliptically expressed, MR. COLLIER treats it as a sentence,—
"Most busy, least when I do it."
This is neither grammar nor sense: and I persist in believing that Shakspeare was able to construct an intelligible sentence according to rules as much recognised by custom then as now.
But, indeed, does not MR. COLLIER virtually admit that the text is inexplicable in his very attempt to explain it? He sums up by saying "that in fact, his toil is no toil, and that when he is 'most busy' he 'least does it,'" which is precisely the reverse of what the text says, if it express any meaning at all. I will agree with him in preferring the old text to any other text where it gives a perfect meaning; but to prefer it here, when the omission of a single letter produces an image at once noble and complete, would, to my mind, savour more of superstition than true worship.
P.S. It should be observed that MR. COLLIER'S "least" is as much of an alteration of the original text as MR. SINGER'S "busyest", the one adding and the other omittng a letter. The folio of 1632, where it differs front the first folio, will hardly add to the authority of MR. COLLIER himself.
SAMUEL HICKSON.
Oct. 10. 1850.
If one, who is but a charmed listener to Shakspeare, may presume to offer an opinion to practised interpreters, I should suggest to MR. SINGER and MR. COLLIER, another and a totally different reading of the passage in discussion by them from the exquisite opening scene of the 3d Act of the Tempest.
There can be little doubt that "most busy" applies more poetically to thoughts than to labours; and, in so much, MR. SINGER'S reading is to be commended. But it is equally true that, by adhering to the early text, MR. COLLIER'S school of editing has restored force and beauty to many passages which had previously been outraged by fancied improvements, so that his unflinching support of the original word in this instance is also to be respected. But may not both be combined? I think they may, by understanding the passage in question as though a transposition had taken place between the words "least" and "when".
"Most busy when least I do it,"
or,—
"Most busy when least employed."
forming just the sort of verbal antithesis of which the poet was so fond.
An actual transposition of the words may have taken place through the fault of the early printers; but even if the present order be preserved, still the transposed sense is, I think, much less difficult than the forced and rather contradictory meaning contended for by MR. COLLIER. Has not the pause in Ferdinand's labour been hitherto too much overlooked? What is it that has induced him to forget his task? Is it not those delicious thoughts, most busy in the pauses of labour, making those pauses still more refreshing and renovating?
Ferdinand says—
"I forget,"—
and then he adds, by way of excuse,—
"But the sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busy when least I do it."
More busy in thought when idle, than in labour when employed. The cessation from labour was favourable to the thoughts that made it endurable.
Malone quarrelled with the word "but", for which he would have substituted "and" or "for". But in the apologetic sense which I would confer upon the last two lines of Ferdinand's speech, the word "but", at their commencement, becomes not only appropriate but necessary.
A.E.B.
Leeds, October 8. 1850.
