No. 31, 1. 6, wenn should be wann. Letters have been dropped in No. 31, 1. 1 and No. 40, 1. 1. No. 125 should have been printed as two stanzas, not one. At the end of the first line of p. 17 there should be a comma instead of a period.

Indiana University.

B. J. Vos.

Écrivains français en Hollande dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. By GUSTAVE COHEN. Paris: Champion, 1920. Pp. 756.

This dissertation makes an important contribution to the study of French influence abroad. M. Cohen has carried on most extensive researches in Holland, utilizing particularly the recently published sources for the history of the University of Leyden, and has brought out clearly that long before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes French ideas were entering Holland through the presence there of French writers belonging to various professions and by no means exclusively calvinistic. He first discusses Jean de Schelandre, a soldier-poet, known as the author of Tyr et Sidon. The documents he has discovered concern rather his older brother Robert, captain in the service of the United Provinces, but it is reasonable to accept the statement of Colletet that Jean also took part in the war. This gives M. Cohen an opportunity not only to study in detail the poems of Schelandre that have to do with the conflict between the Dutch and the Spaniards, but also to describe the life of French mercenaries in the Low Countries during the early part of the century.

The second division of the work is devoted to scholars and students who went from France to the University of Leyden. From its foundation this institution was a center of propagation of French ideas. Two of its original faculty of eight were Frenchmen. Among its distinguished professors were, in theology, Daneau, Du Jon, Rivet; in law, Doneau; in philology, J. J. Scaliger and Claude Saumaize.1 The direction of its garden was confided to a French botanist. Among its many French students were

The two last were under no obligation to teach. A similar arrangement has been recently made at the University of Michigan and called an experiment in education.

J. L. Guez de Balzac and Théophile de Viau.2 It is in this part of the book that M. Cohen makes his chief contribution to the subject he treats. The sketches he gives of various personalities, of Clusius and Saumaize, for instance, are thoroughly interesting, as are his descriptions of university manners.

The third and largest division concerns Descartes. Here there is little that is new apart from the publication of the contract for printing the Discours de la méthode and a power of attorney signed by Descartes in 1641. M. Cohen frankly admits that he has not added much to the monumental Euvres de Descartes of MM. Adam and Tannery, but he makes the plea that the latter work, on account of its size, is largely inaccessible to the general public and to many scholars. This explanation would justify a brief résumé of the older treatise, but not the 329 pages which M. Cohen devotes to the task, unless his readers, unlike Descartes, suffer from "la superstition du volume dans tous les sens du mot" (p. 311).

3

But while a shorter book would have been more effective, even more scholarly, one must not disregard it because one-half of it contains much that is not new. It gives the only general account in existence of the subject treated and must be consulted for information about many individual authors. An extensive index of proper names, so often unfortunately lacking in dissertations, adds much to its usefulness. As pièces justificatives two long. poems by Schelandre and the plan of his epic, the Stuartide, have been reproduced, also the Discours politique of J. L. G. de Balzac. The book is well printed and handsomely illustrated. Among the portraits are five of Descartes, one of them a first draft of Frans Hals's famous painting. A sequel, which brings the study of French writers in Holland down to the end of the seventeenth century, is now in preparation and will be awaited with interest.

H. CARRINGTON LANCASTER.

M. Cohen thinks it possible that both of them may have gone to Holland two or three years before their matriculation in 1615.

The only omission I note is that of Jean d'Espagne, who once lived in Holland and who published theological treatises there in 1639 and 1640. On pages 302, 303 M. Cohen makes a startling excursion into American geography. The Pilgrim Fathers, it seems, débarquent dans la baie d'Hudson (!), au cap Cod et y (!) bâtissent New-Plymouth."

CORRESPONDENCE

TWO EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EMENDATIONS TO Chevy Chase

In the Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street (London, 1737), which is an incomplete reprint of the Grub-Street Journal, are two notes on the text of Chevy Chase. The first is headed " From the Pegasus in Grub-Street," and is printed in the number for Wednesday, 17 November, 1731.1 The lines quoted from the ballad follow the C, D, and E versions in Child. It should be noted that the emended line, "when they were cold as clay," is the reading of the Child F version, the one printed by Maidment. In earlier pages of the Memoirs appear emendations to Paradise Lost, signed with the same name, "Zoilus," that is used for the signature for the ballad note. The entire communication reads:

Mr. Bavius.

I beg leave to offer to your consideration an emendation on the old Song called Chevy Chace.-When the widows are described bewailing their deceased husbands, 'tis said

they kiss'd them dead a thousand times,
when they were clad in clay.

If we interpret clad in clay, literally and truly, it must signifie buried; which would be nonsense. Some perhaps will say, it only signifies dead; that will make it tautology: They kiss'd them dead, when they were dead. Besides, a man may be more properly said to be clad in clay, when he is alive, than when he is dead; for when he is dead, he is altogether clay, and not properly clad in clay.-I do not question but you will agree with me, that the author wrote

When they were cold as clay.

The northern way of pronouncing, cold, is, cald, which is nearer the Saxon ceald; and, perhaps, the Ms. might be so written, and then a mistake might be easily made by a southern printer. This reading is very agreeable to the whole passage.

Next day did many widows come,

Their husbands to bewail;

They wash'd their wounds in brinish tears,

But all would not prevail.

Their bodies bath'd in purple blood

They bore with them away;

They kiss'd them dead a thousand times,

When they were cold as clay.

In the last place, I observe this reading conveys a fine idea of the warm affections of the wives, who so lovingly embraced and kissed their husbands,

When they cold as clay.

I am Sir, your most humble servant,

1

1 Memoirs of the Society of Grub-Street, II, 180-181.

Zoilus.

Possibly with this emendation in mind, and certainly inspired by Bentley's edition of Paradise Lost, which had just appeared, another commentator wrote to the editor, in no. 137, for 17 August, 1732 (Memoirs, II, 323),

Give me leave to propose an emendation in the Bentleian manner to the famous song called Chevy Chace. In the common Editions we read,

A bow he had bent in his hand,

Made of a trusty tree;

An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Full to the head drew he.

This corrupt reading leaves us to seek of what wood the bow was made, only informing us it was of a tree; and it makes the rime not bold enough. Read therefore on my authority,

Made of a trusty yew;

An arrow of a cloth-yard long

Full to the head he drew.

What an easy alteration is this? None but a dull wooden-headed blunderbuss of an Editor could suppose the Poet wrote otherwise. The bows were generally, if not always, made of yew; for which see Robin Hood's Songs, and The life of Johnny Armstrong.

I am your humble servant,

Denison University.

Philo-Bent.

ROGER P. MCCUTCHEON.

A SONG AND A PUN IN SHAKSPERE

Though word quibbling in serious writing is more or less out of favor now, the Elizabethans idolized a pun. In the dramas of that day plays on words spring up in most unexpected places, which not infrequently are offensive to the modern ear. Shakspere himself, as is well known, is no exception to that rule: his magic too was by no means pun-proof. An untiring search for these quibbles in him (as well as in his contemporaries) has revealed the most of them, and Dr. Wurth's collection 1 bears eloquent testimony to the relish which writers of that day found in word-catching.

1

The Shrew seemingly contains a pun which, I believe, has not been noted. In the scene at the hero's country-house Grumio, it will be remembered, has come in advance of the bridal couple to see that the house is in readiness when the master with his bride arrives. In the course of some foolery between Grumio and Curtis (another servant residing at the country-house) the former inquires

1

2 This reading varies slightly from all of the versions given in Child. 'Wurth, "Das Wortspiel bei Shakspere," Wiener Beiträge zur Engl. Phil., 1 (1895), pp. 1 ff.

if there is a fire for his master. Curtis assures him, adding: "and therefore, good Grumio, the news" (IV, i, 41 f.). To this Grumio replies: "Why, Jack, boy! ho! boy!' and as much news as thou wilt" (ibid., 42 f.). A casual glance fails to see any connection between this snatch of song2 and the situation; but since Shakspere ordinarily did not introduce bits of song gratuitously, there must be some reason. The explanation, apparently, is to be found in the next line (omitted by the dramatist) of the stanza,—

The cat is in the well.'

The connection now seems clear, for there is a pun on Kate's name. The audience was on the alert for quibbles in that corner, for hers was a pun-provoking name. Already there had been "wild-cat" (I, ii, 197); "Petruchio is Kated" (III, ii, 247); "Kate of Kate Hall" (II, i, 189); “super-dainty Kate" (ibid.); "dainties are all cates" (ibid., 190); "the wild Kate" (ibid., 279); "household Kates" (ibid., 280). In view of these repeated attacks on her name as well as the significant fact that Grumio had just remarked that she was tamed, it seems probable that Shakspere expected his hearers to get the pun in Grumio's song. If this suggestion be correct, light is also thrown on the extent to which an Elizabethan dramatist could assume a ready knowledge of popular songs; evidently it was not inconsiderable."

Old French dictionaries do not mention the use of the word aigre in the sense of vinegar. It is found in the glosses of Raschi' and also in other texts of Jewish origin. In the Oxford Glossary

3

2 The first line of the song is "Jack, boy, ho, boy, Newes!

* Cf. Dr. John R. Moore's article in Shakespeare Studies. Madison, Wis., 1916, pp. 78 ff. Moore (pp. 93 f.) states that songs were frequently used to incite characters to or against action," and notes among others this particular song.

The words of the song are to be found in the Henry Irving Shakespeare and in Anders, Shakespeare's Books, Berlin, 1904, p. 182. Cf. Bond's note in his excellent (Arden) edition of the play (p. 95).

Curtis was ignorant of the heroine's name.

Shakspere in other plays puns on cat (cf. chap. IV of my forthcoming study on The Authorship of The Shrew).

'Cf. Moore, op. cit.; also Anders, op. cit., pp. 168 ff. Hamlet (II, ii; III, ii) also assumes a knowledge of them. The dramatist elsewhere (Anders, 176, 182) makes a song an occasion for a pun.