p>Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
NOTES
ADDRESS TO OUR FRIENDS
We this day publish our fifty-second Number. Every Saturday, for twelve months, have we presented to our subscribers our weekly budget of "Notes," "Queries," and "Replies;" and in so doing, we trust, we have accomplished some important ends. We have both amused and instructed the general reader; we have stored up much curious knowledge for the use of future writers; we have procured for scholars now engaged in works of learning and research, many valuable pieces of information which had evaded their own immediate pursuit; and, lastly, in doing all this, we have powerfully helped forward the great cause of literary truth.
In our Prospectus and opening address we made no great promise of what our paper should be. That, we knew, must depend upon how far the medium of intercommunication we had prepared should be approved and adopted by those for whose special use it had been projected. We laid down a literary railway: it remained to be seen whether the world of letters would travel by it. They have done so: we have been especially patronised by first-class passengers, and in such numbers that we were obliged last week to run an extra train.
It is obvious that the use of a paper like "Notes and Queries" bears a direct proportion to the extent of its circulation. What it aims at doing is, to reach the learning which lies scattered not only throughout every part of our own country, but all over the literary world, and to bring it all to bear upon the pursuits of the scholar; to enable, in short, men of letters all over the world to give a helping hand to one another. To a certain extent, we have accomplished this end. Our last number contains communications not only from all parts of the metropolis, and from almost every county in England, but also from Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and even from Demerara. This looks well. It seems as if we were in a fair way to accomplish our design. But much yet remains to be done. We have recently been told of whole districts in England so benighted as never to have heard of "Notes and Queries;" and after an interesting question has been discussed for weeks in our columns, we are informed of some one who could have answered it immediately if he had seen it. So long as this is the case the advantage we may confer upon literature and literary men is necessarily imperfect. We do what we can to make known our existence through the customary modes of announcement, and we gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance and encouragement we derive from our brethren of the public press; but we would respectfully solicit the assistance of our friends this particular point. Our purpose is aided, and our usefulness increased by every introduction which can be given to our paper, either to a Book Club, to a Lending Library, or to any other channel of circulation amongst persons of inquiry and intelligence. By such introductions scholars help themselves as well as us, for there is no inquirer throughout the kingdom who is not occasionally able to throw light upon some of the multifarious objects which are discussed in our pages.
At the end of our first twelvemonth we thank our subscribers for the patronage we have received. We trust we shall go on week by week improving in our work of usefulness, so that at the end of the next twelvemonth we may meet them with the same pleasure as on the present occasion. We will continue to do whatever is in our power, and we rely upon our friends to help us.
SHAKSPEARE'S USE OF THE WORDS "CAPTIOUS" AND "INTENIBLE."
In the following passage of All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. Sc. 3., where Helena is confessing to Bertram's mother, the Countess, her love for him, these two words occur in an unusual sense, if not in a sense peculiar to the great poet:—
"I love your son:—
My friends were poor, but honest, so's my love:
Be not offended, for it hurts not him,
That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit;
Nor would I have him till I do deserve him:
Yet never know how that desert may be.
I know I love in vain; strive against hope;
Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still."
Johnson was perplexed about the word captious; "which (says he) I never found in this sense, yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless carious for rotten!" Farmer supposed captious to be a contraction of capacious! Steevens believed that captious meant recipient, capable of receiving; which interpretation Malone adopts. Mr. Collier, in his recent edition of Shakspeare, after stating Johnson's and Farmer's suggestions, says, "where is the difficulty? It is true that this sense of captious may not have an exact parallel; but the intention of Shakspeare is very evident: captious means, as Malone says, capable of taking or receiving; and intenible (printed intemible in the first folio, and rightly in the second) incapable of retaining. Two more appropriate epithets could hardly be found, and a simile more happily expressive."
We no doubt all know, by intuition as it were, what Shakspeare meant; but "the great master of English," as Mr. Hickson very justly calls him, would never have used captious, as applied figuratively to a sieve, for capable of taking or receiving.
Intenible, notwithstanding the hypercriticism of Mr. Nares (that "it is incorrectly used by Shakspeare for unable to hold;" and that "it should properly mean not to be held, as we now use untenable") was undoubtedly used in the former sense, and it was most probably so accepted in the poet's time; for in the Glossagraphia Anglicana Nova, 1719, we have "Untenable, that will not or cannot hold or be holden long."
With regard to captious, it is not so much a matter of surprise that none of all these learned commentators should fail in their guesses at the meaning, as that none of them should have remarked that the sense of the Latin captiosus, and of its congeners in Italian and old French, is deceitful, fallacious; and Bacon uses the word for insidious, ensnaring. There can be no doubt that this is the sense in which Shakspeare used it. Helen speaks of her hopeless love for Bertram, and says:
"I know I love in vain, strive against hope; yet in this fallacious and unholding sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, and fail not to lose still."
When we speak of a captious person, do we mean one capable of taking or receiving? Then how much more absurd would it be to take it in that impossible sense, when figuratively applied in the passage before us! Bertram shows himself incapable of receiving Helena's love: he is truly captious in that respect.
In French the word captieux, according to the Academy, is only applied to language, though we may say un homme captieux to signify a man who has the art of deceiving or leading into error by captious language.
It is not impossible that the poet may have had in his mind the fruitless labour imposed upon the Danaïdes as a punishment, for it has been thus moralised:
"These virgins, who in the flower of their age pour water into pierced vessels which they can never fill, what is it but to be always bestowing over love and benefits upon the ungrateful."
Mickleham, Oct. 4. 1850.
ORATORIES OF THE NONJURORS
As the nooks and corners of London in olden times are now engaging the quiet musings of most of the topographical brotherhood, perhaps you can spare a nook or a corner of your valuable periodical for a few notes on the Oratories of those good men and true—the Nonjurors. "These were honourable men in their generation,"
