His glassy essence, like an angry ape. A good deal has already been said in "N. & Q.' on this head, particularly at 10 S. v. 465, where I myself gave grounds for interpreting the crux as image, embodiment, or likeness seen in a glass. The substantive by itself is used in another somewhat enigmatic passage in 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' III. i. 182 :

She is my essence, and I leave to be, where, however, the word may be identical with essential."

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While not prepared to prefer the alteration of essence to MR. DAVEY's reading semblance, the latter word, I may observe, occurs in two other passages that show important points of contact with the present one :— Oft have I seen a timely parted ghost,

Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless, Being all descended to the labouring heart...... (2 Henry VI. III. ii.)

This is a similar instance of ellipsis to the one in Isabella's speech, bloodless being

blood, which is needed for the construing of
the line which follows; and a speech of the
Duchess of York, Richard III.,' II. ii. 54,
may be cited as throwing light on the
epithet, glassy or glassèd, as MR. DAVEY
prefers to call it :—

I have bewept a worthy husband's death,
And liv'd with looking on his images;

But now two mirrors of his princely semblance
Are crack'd in pieces by malignant death,
And I for comfort have but one false glass.*

I would merely add that I consider MR.
DAVEY'S readings signiors for oneyers
(1 Henry IV.), and contracts for cohorts
('King Lear'), well justified, and to the
point.
N. W. HILL.

'Macbeth,' I. i. and iii.-There is no obscurity to me in "Fair is foul, and foul is fair." It is the witches' motto. What is fair to ordinary mortals is foul to them, and what is foul is fair. Evil is their good. Macbeth's "So foul and fair a day I have not seen" is quite within the truth of things. It is possible for the weather of a day to be, as it were, in layers of foul and fair: thunderstorms with bright intervals, bright intervals which make the weather-wise say: Ah ! it has cleared too quick; it's too bright; we shall have another storm." The bleeding sergeant in sc. ii. seems to refer indirectly to the battle-day weather, when, in his description of the fight, he says to Duncan :

As whence the sun 'gins his reflection Ship-wrecking storms and direful thunders break, So from that spring whence comfort seemed to

come

Discomfort swells.

Perhaps the fair and foul day symbolizes the
mixture of fair and foul in the person of
Macbeth.
W. H. PINCHBECK.

78 Brierly Street, Fishpool, Bury.

'Romeo and Juliet,' III. ii. 6 :

That runaways' eyes may wink. Though runagate is a very obvious substitute, being a word that at that time was synonymous with "runaway," the smoothness of the verse is not improved thereby; and this is always a matter of first importance in dealing with Shakespeare's text. The same remark applies to other readings, such

as rude Day's," enemies',' ," "Rumour's which sat pursuant to the ordinance for erecting eyes," &c. Zachary Jackson's emendation, a High Court of Justice for his trial, which was unawares (see Furness edition, p. 369), has a plausible look, inasmuch as it is both grammatical and comprehensible; but there is much force, I think, in Dyce's objection that he did not believe Shakespeare ever wrote it.

read the first, second, and third time, and passed by Parliament on the 4th January, 1648/9. The Court met on Saturday the 20th, Monday the 22nd, Tuesday the 23rd, and on Saturday the 27th January, 1648/9, when the sentence of death was pronounced upon the King.

The trial of the King was, by order of the Court, held where the Courts of King's Bench and Chancery sat in Westminster Hall, and this Tablet marks the position of the Bar that separated those Courts from the length of the Hall."

M. Venizelos referred to these tablets in his speech after his recent return to power in Greece.

Charles II.-Lichfield Cathedral (see 11 S. ix. 278).

A sort of vagabonds, rascals, runaways. For this reason the safest course probably is to leave the passage intact. Juliet was certainly exercising her wit in an endeavour to distinguish between Cupid's undoubted William III.-College Green, Dublin. Porrights and the encroachments of sensual tion of old Dame Gate was utilized in cupidity. The only suggestion I can offer making the pedestal. A document referring in the case is " Cynthia's eyes," seeing that to one of its many mutilations is exhibited two effulgent deities, Phoebus and Phaeton, in the P.R.O., Dublin. The statue is made have been alluded to in the preceding lines, of lead, of about a quarter of an inch in so that a goddess of the night might be thickness, supported on an internal framefittingly invoked, compare the phrase work of iron, some portions being solid "glimpses of the moon in 'Hamlet.' (Gilbert's History of Dublin,' vol. iii., For the series of interminable arguments p. 40). On the south side is an inscription : on this passage see the Appendix to the Furness edition of the play.

N. W. HILL.

The god of day traversing the heavens in a chariot drawn by fiery-footed steeds is a concrete description of the sun personified.

66

Gulielmo Tertio ;

Magnæ Britanniæ, Franciæ et Hiberniæ

regi

ob Religionem conservatam
Restitutas leges

libertatem assertam

cives Dublinienses hanc statuam

posuere.

Runaways' eyes," meaning the same On the west side:

thing, is abstract. The sense makes it clear.
Juliet urges the horses to put on more speed
and end the day at once. She wants the
night to come immediately. As an alter-
native she impatiently calls upon night to
darken the sky that the sun god may close
his eyes, and end the day. Runaway
is an abstract noun of motion. The flight of
time is termed a runaway." So, relatively,
it can be said of the sun in his flight across the
sky.

66

66

TOM JONES.

In front of the Tontine Buildings, Glasgow, STATUES AND MEMORIALS IN THE equestrian statue, presented to the city in

BRITISH ISLES.

1736 by James Macrae. There are busts of William and Mary at The Hague by Ver

(See 10 S. xi., xii.; 11 S. i.-xii.; 12 S. hulst and Blommendael, and a statue of i.-iv. passim; v. 89, 145, 259.)

Tablets

ROYAL PERSONAGES (continued).
Charles I. Westminster Hall.
upon flight of steps leading to St. Stephen's
Porch, with inscriptions :—

"This Tablet marks the spot where Charles

Mary on the exterior of the Hotel Russell,
London. National Museum Dublin, white
marble bust on pedestal of coloured marble,
with inscriptions :-

The Gift of Governor John
Peree, to the Aldermen of
Skinner's Alley 4th of Sept.

66

the Umbellifera or hemlock order; but he misses the point of Falstaff's mention of eringoes" in a list of incentives to amativeness. Whether Shakespeare referred to the Virginian potato (Battata Virginianorum) or the Spanish potato (Convolvulus battatas), both were believed to possess aphrodisiac properties; and for several centuries the eryngo, whereof Our native sea holly (Eryngium maritimum) is a familiar species, has borne the same reputation. But it seems certain that it acquired its reputation through being confounded with a cruciferous plant bearing the somewhat similar name of Eruca.

TheN.E.D.' gives Falstaff's speech above quoted as the earliest occurrence of "eringo in English literature, the date of the 'Merry Wives' being 1598. Pliny, in discoursing of erynge siue eryngion ('Nat. Hist.,' lib. xxii. cap. 7), mentions it as an effective remedy against the venom of snakes and other poisons, but has not a word to say about it as an aphrodisiac, nor do I know of any Latin or Greek writer who attributes such properties to this herb. Pliny, however, in the next chapter (xxii. 8) describes a plant called Centum capita with white flowers, which he seems to regard as a species of Eryngion, and repeats what he has heard reported about it as "portentous," namely, that if a man find the root it acts as a powerful charm in his favour with 'women, though Pliny recommends a decoction of the root, not as an aphrodisiac, but as a remedy for a variety of maladies. On the other hand he writes confidently of Eruca as concitatrix veneris (lib. xix. cap. 8), and allusions to that plant (now known to botanists as Eruca sativa) occur in many authors. Ovid mentions it in his 'Remedium amoris to be avoided :

as food

Nec minus erucas aptum est vitare salaces.
Martial recommends its use :-

Concitat ad Venerem tardos eruca maritos.

Columella says it should be sown near the effigy of Priapus in gardens.

In his Plant-Lore of Shakespeare,' Canon Ellacombe, after noting that Gerard explained "eringoes" as the candied roots of the sea holly (Eryngium maritimum), pro-ing Falstaff call for it to "snow eringoes," It seems to me that Shakespeare, in makceeds :

"I am inclined to think that the vegetable Falstaff wished for was the globe artichoke, which is a near relative of the eryngium, was a favourite diet in Shakespeare's time, and was reputed to have certain special virtues which are not attributed to the sea holly, but which would more accord with Falstaff's character." Now, herein the learned Canon not only makes a slip in botany, for the globe artichoke and the sea holly are far from being nearly akin, the first belonging to the

referred only to the root as a charm, not as Eryngo with Eruca certainly had taken place an aphrodisiac decoction; but a confusion of before the close of the sixteenth century, and the reputed properties of Eruca came, through mistaking the name, to be assigned to Eryngo. Nor is there any cause for supposing that this made the slightest difference in the effect of the drug, the prescription being in each case empirical or quack.

HERBERT MAXWELL.