but overtop is evermore the appropriate term in arboriculture. To quote examples of that is needless. Of it metaphorically applied, just as in Shakspeare, take the following example:
"Of those three estates, which swayeth most, that in a manner doth overtop the rest, and like a foregrown member depriveth the other of their proportion of growth."—Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 177., Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol.
Have we not the substantive trash in the sense of shreddings, at p. 542. book iii. of a Discourse of Forest Trees, by John Evelyn? The extract that contains the word is this:
"Faggots to be every stick of three feet in length, excepting only one stick of one foot long, to harden and wedge the binding of it; this to prevent the abuse, too much practised, of filling the middle part and ends with trash and short sticks, which had been omitted in the former statute."
Possibly some of the statutes referred to by Evelyn may contain examples of the verb. In the meantime it will not be impertinent to remark, that what appears to be nothing more than a dialectic variety of the word, namely trouse, is of every-day use in this county of Hereford for trimmings of hedges; that it is given by Grose as a verb in use in Warwickshire for trimming off the superfluous branches; and lastly, that it is employed as a substantive to signify shreddings by Philemon Holland, who, if I rightly remember, was many years head master of Coventry Grammar School:
"Prouided alwaies, that they be paued beneath with stone; and for want thereof, laid with green willow bastons, and for default of them, with vine cuttings, or such trousse, so that they lie halfe a foot thicke."—The Seuenteenth Booke of Plinie's Naturall History, chap. xi. p. 513.: London, 1634.
Trash no one denies to be a kennel term for hampering a dog, but it does not presently follow that the word bore no other signification; indeed, there is no more fruitful mother of confusion than homonomy.
Clamor, to curb, restrain (the tongue):
"Clamor your tongues, and not a word more."
Most judiciously does Nares reject Gifford's corruption of this word into charm, nor will the suffrage of the "clever" old commentator one jot contribute to dispel their diffidence of this change, whom the severe discipline of many years' study, and the daily access of accumulating knowledge, have schooled into a wholesome sense of their extreme fallibility in such matters. Without adding any comment, I now quote, for the inspection of learned and unlearned, the two ensuing extracts:
"For Critias manaced and thretened hym, that onelesse he chaumbreed his tongue in season, ther should ere lōg bee one oxe the fewer for hym."—Apoptheymis of Erasmus, translated by Nicolas Vdall, mcccccxlii, the First Booke, p. 10.
"From no sorte of menne in the worlde did he refrein or chaumbre the tauntying of his tongue."—Id., p. 76.
After so many Notes, one Query. In the second folio edition of Shakspeare (my first folio wants the whole play), I find in Cymbeline, Act V. Sc. 3., the next beautiful passage:
"Post. Still going? This is a lord: Oh noble misery
To be ith' field, and aske what newes of me:
To-day how many would have given their honors
To have sav'd their carkasses? Tooke heele to doo't,
And yet dyed too. I in mine owne woe charm'd,
Could not find death, where I did heare him groane,
Nor feele him where he strooke. Being an ugly monster,
'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds,
Sweet words; or hath moe ministers then we
That draw his knives ith' war. Well I will finde him:
For being now a favourer to the Britaine,
No more a Britaine, I have resum'd againe
The part I came in."
In the antepenultimate line, Britaine was more than a century ago changed by Hanmer into Roman, therefore retained by Warburton, again rejected by Steevens and Johnson, once more replaced by Knight and Collier, with one of his usual happy notes by the former of the two, without comment by the latter, finally left unnoticed by Dyce. My Query then is this. What amount of obtuseness will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tinkering and cobbling the noblest passages of thought that ever issued from mortal brain, while at the same time he stumbles and bungles in sentences of that simplicity and grammatical clearness, as not to tax the powers of a third-form schoolboy to explain?1 If editors, commentators, critics, and all the countless throng who are ambitious to daub with their un-tempered mortar, or scribble their names upon the most majestic edifice of genius that the world ever saw, lack the little discernment necessary to interpret aright the above extract from Cymbeline, for the last hundred years racked and tortured in vain, let them at length learn henceforth to distrust their judgment altogether.
P.S.—In article of No. 180. p. 353., a rather important misprint occurs, viz. date of 4to. King Richard II. with unusual title-page, which should be 1608, not 1605. Other little errors the reader may silently amend for himself.
VERNEY PAPERS—THE CAPUCHIN FRIARS, ETC
In the appendix to Notes of Proceedings in the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, edited by Mr. Bruce for the Camden Society in 1845, are "Notes written in a Cipher," which Mr. Bruce gives in the hope that the ingenuity of some reader will discover their meaning. I venture thus to decypher the same:
"The Capuchin's house to be dissolued.
No extracts of letters to be aloued in this house.
The prince is now come to Greenhich three lette.
Three greate ships staied in France.
Gersea a letter from Lord St Albones.
£11 per diem Hull.
The king's answert to our petition about the militia.
If a king offer to kil himselfe, wee must not only advise but wrest the weapon from.
A similitude of a depilat.
Consciences corrupted."
I ought to state that in one or two instances the wrong cypher has evidently been used by mistake, and this has of course increased the difficulty of decyphering the notes.
With reference to the note "The Capuchins' House to be dissolued," may I be allowed to refer to the following votes in the House of Commons, of the date 26th February, 1641-2:
"Ordered, That Mr. Peard, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Reynolds, Mr. Pideaux, Mr. Selden, Mr. Young, Mr. Hill, do presently withdraw, to peruse the statutes now in force against priests and Jesuits.
"Ordered, That Mr. Whittacre, Mr. Morley, do presently go to Denmarke House.
"Resolved, That the Capuchines shall be forthwith apprehended and taken into safe custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms attending on this house; and there kept till this house take farther order."
The Capuchins were under the protection of the Queen Henrietta Maria; Denmark House was the name by which Somerset House was at the period known.
Under date 2nd March, 1641-2, are the following entries in the Commons' Journal:
"Mr. Holles brings this answer from the French Ambassador, That the Capuchins being sent hither
In a passage from L. L. L., lately winnowed in the pages of "N. & Q.," divers attempts at elucidation (whereof not one, in my judgment, was successful) having been made, it was gravely, almost magisterially proposed by one of the disputants, to corrupt the concluding lines (Mr. Collier having already once before corrupted the preceding ones by substituting a plural for a singular verb, in which lay the true key to the right construction) by altering "their" the pronoun into "there" the adverb, because (shade of Murray!) the commentator could not discover of what noun "their" could possibly be the pronoun in these lines following:
"When great things labouring perish in their birth,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth."
And it was left to Mr. Keightley to bless the world with the information that it was "things."
