Belmont.

* * * * *

NOTES ON SEVERAL MISUNDERSTOOD WORDS.

(_Continued from_ p. 544.)

Let no one say that a tithe of these instances would have sufficed. Whoever
thinks so, little understands the vitality of error. Most things die when
the brains are out: error has no brains, though it has more heads than the
hydra. Who could have believed it possible that after Steevens's heaped-up
proofs in support of the authentic reading, "_carded_ his state" (_King
Henry IV._, Act III. Scene 2.), Warburton's corruption, _'scarded_, i. e.
_discarded_, was again to be foisted into the text on the authority of some
nameless and apocryphal commentator? Let me be pardoned if I prefer
Shakspeare's genuine text, backed by the masterly illustrations of his
ablest glossarist, before the wishy-washy adulterations of Nobody: and as a
small contribution to his abundant avouchment of the original reading, the
underwritten passage may be flung in, by way of make-weight:

"_Carded_ his state (says King Henry),
_Mingled_ his royaltie with carping fooles."

"Since which it hath been and is his daily practice, either to broach
doctrinas novas et peregrinas, new imaginations never heard of before,
or to revive the old and new dress them. And these--for that by
themselves they will not utter--_to mingle and to card_ with the
Apostles' doctrine, &c., that at the least yet he may so vent
them."--One of the Sermons upon the Second Commandment, preached in the
Parish Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on the Ninth of January, A.D.
MDXCII.: Andrewes' Sermons, vol. v. p. 55. _Lib. Ang.-Cath. Theol._

* * * * *

_Trash_, to shred or lop.--So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with
it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of
{567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man
of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist
Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously
small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a
horizontal course. _Overrun_, _overshoot_, _overslip_, are terms in
hunting, _overtop_ never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild
huntsman of the Alps. _Trash_ occurs as a verb in the sense above given,
Act I. Sc. 2. of the _Tempest_: "Who t'aduance, and who to _trash_ for
over-topping."