APPENDIX. Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Adverbs alliterating in Piers Plowman. (With respect to the lengths of the different parts, A, is 1833 lines, A, (including about B1: Pr. 178 above afore B: xiii. 347; (?alliterating on vowel) xv. 278; xx. 190 B2: xvi. 45 again(st) A: xi. 150; (?John But; alliterating on 3) xii. 60 B: xix. 356 as B1: ii. 83 By: xiii. 336; xiv. 25; xv. 409; xvii. 319; xviii. 118; xix. 238, 392 C: viii. 173 Ag: ix. 100 B1: (?) x. 309 C: xix. 68 B: xiv. 57; xviii. 342; xix. 77 C: (?) xi. 241 (or on y8) A1: iii. 179; v. 230 B: xi. 303; xiii. 65, 73; xv. 297 C: iii. 100; x. 322; xvi. 140; xviii. 31; xix. 49 B: xi. 64, 197; xii. 29; xv. 118; xviii. 252; xix. 402, 467 C: iii. 141; vi. 52; xviii. 8, 32 A: ii. 95; vii. 152 by B1: Pr. 165; v. 149; x. 250 ere for B: xi. 249, 319; xii. 201, 236; xiii. 317, 369; xx. 95, 240 C: vii. 169; x. 32, 222; xviii. 29, 57, 283; xxi. 111 Bg: xix. 146, 390 A1: ii. 175; iii. 66; iv. 25, 41; vi. 14, 48; vii. 2, 81; viii. 33, 78 (For B1: v. 496 By: xi. 63, 68, 113, 286, 346; xv. 477; xvi. 162; xviii. 430; xix. 66, 141; C: i. 7, (?) 107; iv. 88; vi. 27; vii. 46; viii. 308; x. 258; xi. 256; xii. 279; A1: v. 29; vi. 16; vii. 174 B: xiv. 15; xvi. 174 fro(m) if A1: v. 236 C: vi. 111; xi. 22; xvi. 237; xvii. 197; xx. 80 in near of on save sith 80 to A1: i. 120; v. 153 A2: x. 44 B2: xi. 327; xvi. 170, 207; xvii. 102; xx. 277 B1: (?) v. 633 (perhaps originally of the poukes ponfolde) B: xiii. 205; xv. 47, 153, 288, 489; xvii. 35, 158 C: iv. 246; xi. 38; xii. 297, 301; xiv. 203; xix. 96; xx. 33, 106 A1: vii. 197; viii. 1 Ag: x. 141; xi. 62, 162; xii. 24 By: xi. 291, 393; xiii. 96, 125, 431; xvi. 147, 148; xvii. 76; xviii. 238; C: iii. 124; x. 262; xi. 181; xiii. 187; xix. 177 with A1; ii. 30; iii. 148, 252; iv. 19; v. 25; vii. 89; viii. 84 B1: Pr. 22; ii. 90; iii. 74, 234, 238, 348; iv. 33; v. 476; ix. 113; x. 355, B: xi. 111, 163; xiv. 27, 292; xv. 125, 286, 446; xvi. 105, 120, 146, 203, C: iii. 199; ix. 9; x. 31, 135, 196, 250; xix. 261; xx. 232 In 1914 Mr Percy W. Long contributed an article on the above poem1 1 Mod. Lang. Review, vol. Ix, p. 457. ful sport of fancy is a playful account of the enslavement of his heart by Lady Carey, 'that Spenser in Muiopotmos represents his captivity to the charms of Lady Carey.' I find it more and more difficult to accept such an interpretation, and I wish to suggest another which would connect the poem with other dark allegories in Spenser. For that the poem is allegorical is clear both from its own tenor and from the closing words of the dedication to Lady Carey: 'beseeching your La: to take [it] in worth, and of all things therein according to your wonted graciousnes to make a milde construction.' Mr Long supports his interpretation by citing numerous instances of a love poet comparing his enslavement by his lady's beauty to the capture of a fly by a spider. But it is one thing merely to compare the captured lover to a fly ensnared. It is quite another to enlarge the simile and identify the lady with the spider in its unattractive features. Could Spenser really mean, in a poem dedicated to herself, to describe Lady Carey as: a wicked wight The foe of faire things, th' author of confusion, and tell us that: His heart did earne against his hated foe, No metaphysical' poet could develop the details of a conceit more inappropriately, if Spenser is describing Lady Carey as the spider who has entrapped him. It is frankly incredible. It seems to me possible to suggest a more likely interpretation. The printer's introductory note to the Complaints of 1591 suggests that all the poems which it contains were written some time before. Several, if not all of them, belong probably to the critical year 1579-80 when, as is becoming more clear, Spenser got himself into trouble by espousing too warmly and indiscreetly the cause of Leicester against Burleigh. Mother Hubberds Tale was written at this time-even if recast later —and evidently gave offence. The dedicatory sonnet to Leicester prefixed to Virgil's Gnat suggests that Leicester had been unable to protect his too ardent supporter: Wrong'd, yet not daring to expresse my paine, Is it not probable that Muiopotmos is a light, fanciful allegory on the same theme written at first with no thought of dedication to Lady Carey, a poem like the Witch of Atlas in which the poet relieves his feelings by giving wings to his fancy? Burleigh then would be the spider, for note the history of the spider. An interpretation of the allegory must account for this. He is the child of a mother who challenged Pallas the goddess of Wisdom. Who is this mother? Is it not 'policy,' Machiavellian craft and policy setting itself up against divine wisdom? A sub-title to Spenser's Muiopotmos might thus be The Poet and the Politician-that word of evil-odour in Elizabethan English-an allegory of the fate awaiting that 'light and winged and holy thing' the poet and idealist if he comes bustling into the web of schemes and 'subtil gins' and 'lymie snares' which the politician is ever weaving. EDINBURGH. H. J. C. GRIERSON. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE COSTELIE WHORE.' If Mr W. J. Lawrence (p. 167 supra) had personally inspected the tract from which he quotes a sentence at second hand, he would have seen that it threw no light on the authorship of his play. Free-Parliament Quæres is a Royalist pamphlet of 6 pages, issued in 1660, before the Restoration, and consisting of 38 numbered 'queries,' in each of which the writer gibes at the men of 'the late Rump.' It will suffice to quote these three consecutive paragraphs: 23. Whether that Comedie, called The Costly Whore, was not intended for the life of the Lady Sands, and was written by Henry Martin? 24. Whether the Bastard, a Tragedie, was compiled by Mr Goff, or written by J. Ireton? 25. Whether Orlando Furioso that antient Italian Poem, was not meant for a Propheticall Relation of the life of Sir Arthur Haslerigg? The sequence of names, Martin, Ireton, Haslerigg, leaves no doubt that the first of the three is Henry Martin (or Marten) the regicide. 'He was a great lover of pretty girles, to whom he was so liberall that he spent the greatest part of his estate' (Aubrey). Who 'Lady Sands' was, I have no notion: and for our present purpose we may be content to leave her and her misbehaviours in a decent obscurity. WALTER WORRALL. OXFORD. MACKENZIE'S TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN. In the article on Henry Mackenzie in the Dictionary of National Biography some doubt is thrown on the statement, quoted from Allibone's Dictionary (and appearing also in Chambers' Eminent Scotsmen), that Mackenzie published, in 1791, 'Translations from the German of Lessing's Set of Horses and some other dramatic pieces.' The writer of the article found no trace of the work in the Catalogue of the British Museum Library or in that of the Edinburgh Advocates' Library.' The book is, however, in the Library of the British Museum, appearing in the catalogue under the title Dramatic Pieces from the German. The catalogue gives the date 1892; but this, as the title-page shows, is in error for 1792. The Set of Horses is the last of the three pieces contained in Mackenzie's little volume. It is a translation of Der Postzug by C. H. von Ayrenhoff (Scherer, transl. Mrs Conybeare, II, p. 311), whose name Mackenzie here, as in his Account of the German Theatre (Roy. Soc. Edinb. Trans., II, 1790), converts to Emdorff. The other two pieces in the volume are versions of Goethe's Geschwister and Gessner's Unterhaltungen eines Vaters mit seinen Kindern. How the mistake came to be made of ascribing this little comedy to Lessing is not clear. Several of Lessing's works, both comedies and tragedies, are mentioned in Mackenzie's Account of the German Theatre, where Der Postzug appears under the name of its French translation, L'Attelage de Poste; but there is in this fact no adequate reason for confusion. ENGLEFIELD GREEN. HELEN M. RICHMOND. 'SNAPE-GUEST.' The reviewer of Professor Mawer's Place-Names of Northumberland and Durham (M.L.R., vol. XVII, p. 85) regards as 'somewhat fanciful and even picturesque' the author's explanation of the word < from the dialect snape, to be hard on, rebuke, or snub, and guest. Picturesque perhaps, but certainly not fanciful to anyone who is familiar with M.E. nomenclature. In my Surnames (ch. XII) I give about 130 existing English surnames of what I have called the Shake-spear type and about 350 more which are presumably extinct. My former pupil, Miss Dorothy Pilkington, who has done some valuable research in this type of name, enumerates many |