article. And upon the authority of this passage Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, actually gives it as an adjective with the meaning 'frequent.' In like manner King Lear speaks of Cordelia as my sometime daughter,' Act i. Sc. 1. And in King Richard III. the same construction enables us to understand a difficult line where the Queen Elizabeth, widow of King Edward IV., says to Richard :

But that still use of grief makes wild grief tame,

My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys. Act iv. Sc. 4. Still use,' i.e., as Steevens explains it, constant use. In the same way Shakspeare uses the expression 'seldom pleasure' in his 52nd Sonnet :

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key

Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure :—

i.e., for fear of blunting, &c.

The use of the preposition 'for' prefixed to verbs of the infinitive mood would strike us now as a vulgarism; but we meet with it in our Bible as well as in Shakspeare. See, for example, Deut. iv. 1, 'for to do them; Matt. xxvii. 6, 'It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury;' Ps. lxxi. 16, P. B. version, 'all them that are yet for to come.' In like manner we read in Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 1, 'which for to prevent," &c.

*So also 'good sometime Queen,' K. Rich. II., Act v. Sc. 1; and 'in now the king's quarrel,' K. Henr. V., Act iv. Sc. 1.

'To.' 'I have a king here to my flatterer,' K. Rich. II., Act iv. Sc. 1. 'We have Abraham to our father,' Matt. iii. 9.

The separation of the two parts of which the preposition 'toward' is composed, by placing between them the noun which the preposition governs, is a peculiarity with which we are familiar from more than one passage in the English Bible. Thus in 1 Sam. xix. 4, Jonathan, speaking to his father Saul respecting David, says, 'His works have been to thee-ward very good.' And 'to God-ward' for 'toward God' occurs three times, viz., Exod. xviii. 19, 2 Cor. iii. 4, I Thess. i. 8; and in Exod. xxxvii. 9, we find 'to the mercy-seatward.' The counterparts to this usage in Shakspeare are the following:

In King Henry VI., 1st Part, Act iii. Sc. 3:

Hark! by the sound of drum you may perceive

Their powers are marching unto Paris-ward.

In Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 6:

As merry as when our nuptial day was done,
And tapers burned to bed-ward.

Compare also 'I go wool-ward,' in Love's Labour's
Lost, Act v. Sc. 2.

The use of the preposition' against' with reference to time is now become almost obsolete, yet I am not aware that we have any other word which supplies its place, and the notion which it expressed is one of frequent recurrence. Thus we read in Gen. xliii. 25,

concerning the sons of Jacob, 'They made ready the present against Joseph came at noon.' And in Exod. vii. 15, The Lord said unto Moses, Get thee unto Pharaoh, in the morning; lo! he goeth out unto the water, and thou shalt stand by the river's brink against he come.'

In Hamlet it occurs three times :

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes,
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long.

But as we often see against some storm,

Act i. Sc. 1.

A silence in the heavens-[i.e., just previous to.] Act ii. Sc. 2.

Yea, this solidity and compound mass
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.

Act iii. Sc. 4.

But so far as I have noted, it is not to be found more than thrice in all the rest of Shakspeare, viz., in Romeo and Juliet, Act iv. Sc. 1, 'against thou shalt awake;' Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1, ' against your nuptial;' and in King Richard II. :— They'll talk of state, for every one doth so, Against a change.

Act iii. Sc. 4.

In the phraseology of Shakspeare's time, the preposition or adverb was often repeated in a manner which we should now think slovenly. Thus we read in As you like it, Act ii. Sc. 7, 'The scene, wherein we play in ;' and in Romeo and Juliet, Act i. Sc. 5, 'That fair, for which love groaned for. So too, in Job xli. 19, Out of his mouth sparks of fire leap

out.

Deut. iv. 37; Ps. lxxiv. 16, P. B. version. Matt. vii. 5, Cast out the beam out of thine own eye.' Exod. iii. 5, 'Put off thy shoes from off thy feet.'

The conjunction 'because' is used in a remarkable manner, now quite obsolete, in Matt. xx. 31, 'The multitude rebuked them because they should hold their peace,' where the original means in order that.' There is an instance of the same quoted by Bp. Lowth from Bacon's 25th Essay; but I have not discovered any parallel to it in Shakspeare.

10. I conclude this chapter by producing a few forms of speech which either from their peculiarity, or because they have now ceased to be used in the same manner, appear to deserve remark.

The letter 'a' prefixed to nouns, to adjectives, and to participles, as in the phrases to 'run a-foot,' to 'flee a-pace,' to 'be a-hungered,'' a-thirst,' 'a-preparing,' to go a-fishing,' to 'lie a-dying," all which are to be found in our English Bible, has given rise to much discussion and difference of opinion among our grammarians. Some of the same, and others like to these, we meet with also in Shakspeare, as 'approach a-pace;' 'they were an-hungry; ''looked a-squint.' Bp. Lowth thinks that the 'a' in all such cases is the preposition 'on' a little disguised by familiar use and quick pronunciation. This is confirmed by the phrase in Acts xiii. 36, 'fell on sleep,' which comes down to us from Cranmer's translation, 1539, and instead of which in Acts vii. 60, that translation, as well as our Authorized

Version, reads 'fell asleep.' Conversely, Shakspeare has in the Tempest, all a-fire,' for 'all on fire,' as we should now more commonly say. Forms like 'ahungered' may be considered as derived from verbs, after the same manner as to 'set at one' gave rise to the verb to 'atone."'* Thus, to set on hunger would become to on-hunger, and thence in the passive participle to be on hungered, an hungered, a hungered, and thence by corruption, a hungry.

II,

'At unawares' is a remarkable phrase which both Shakspeare and our translators of the Bible have used more than once. See Numbers xxxv. 'The slayer. which killeth any person at unawares,' but in verse 15 of the same chapter we read 'that killeth any person unawares,' without the 'at.' See also Ps. xxxv. 8, 'Let destruction come upon him at unawares,' and in the Apocrypha, 2 Macc. viii. 6. The examples in Shakspeare are three: two in King Henry VI., 3rd Part:—

So we, well covered with the night's black mantle,
At unawares may beat down Edward's guard.

Either betrayed by falsehood of his guard,
Or by his foe surprised at unawares.

Act iv. Sc. 2.

Ibid. Sc. 4.

And one in Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. Sc. 2.

The phrase and if,' in which and is redundant, occurs in 1 Cor. vii. 13, 'And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to

* See below, ch. ii. p. 30. Compare 'fall at strife,' Acts xv. title.