e witnesses, viz. one with a knot
in it, and another which was piered with strips of wood,"
&c.--_Saunders's Newsletter_, April 9th, 3rd page, 1st col.

_The Passage in "King Henry VIII.," Act III. Sc. 2._ (Vol. vii., pp. 5.
111. 183.).--Is an old Shakspearian to talk rashly in "N. & Q." without
being called to account? "If 'we can,'" says MR. SINGER, "'by no means
part with _have_,' we must interpolate _been_ after it, to make it any
way intelligible, to the marring of the verse." Now, besides the passage
in the same scene--

----"my loyalty,
Which ever has, and ever shall be growing,"

pointed out by your Leeds correspondent, there is another equally in
point in _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act II. Sc. 5., which, being in
prose, settles the question as to whether the omission of the past
participle after the auxiliary was customary in Shakspeare's time. It is
Lafeu's farewell to Parolles:

"Farewell, Monsieur: I have spoken better of you, than you have or
will deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil."

Either this is "unintelligible," and "we must interpolate" _deserved_,
or (the only possible alternative) all three passages are free from MR.
SINGER'S objection.

C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.

Birmingham.

_On a Passage in "Macbeth."_--Macbeth (Act I. Sc. 7.) says:

"I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other."

Should not the third line be--

"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps _its sell_!"

_Sell_ is saddle (Latin, _sella_; French, _selle_), and
is used by Spenser in this sense.

"O'erleaping _itself_" is manifest nonsense; whereas the whole passage
has evident reference to horsemanship; and to "vault" is "to carry one's
body cleverly over anything of a considerable height, resting one hand
upon the thing itself,"--exactly the manner in which some persons mount
a horse, resting one hand on the pommel of the saddle.

It would then be perfectly intelligible, thus--

"Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps its saddle (sell),
And falls on the other (side of the horse)."

Does MR. COLLIER'S "New Text," or any other old copy, prove this?

S. SINGLETON.

Greenwich.

* * * * *

MINOR NOTES.

_Robert Weston._--I copy the following from a letter of R. L. Kingston
to Dr. Ducarel in Ni