Those uncles which you want, were dangerous.
Act iii. Sc. I.

On the other hand we find in Shakspeare, though not, so far as I have noted, in our translation of the Bible, the use of who' for which:' as in the Tempest, Act i. Sc. 2 :—

A brave vessel,

Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her.

And again in the same play, Act iii. Sc. 3:

The elements

Of whom your swords are tempered.

There are two other peculiarities in the use of the relative pronoun, both of which may derive illustration from the comparison upon which we are engaged. I mean the redundant insertion before the relative, of the definite article, and also of the personal pronoun. Thus, the which,' Matt. xiii. 14, and in the which,' Acts xxvi. 6, may be compared with Coriolanus, Acti. Sc. 1, Fame, at the which he aims;' and with Antony and Cleopatra, Act ii. Sc. 1 :—

To lend me arms and aid, when I required them,
The which you both denied.

And as examples of the other construction which I just now named, we have in Luke iv. 34, I know thee who thou art,' and in King Lear, Act i. Sc. 1, 'I know you what you are,' and again in King Henry VI. 3rd Part, Act ii. Sc. 6 :—

And he nor sees, nor hears us what we say.

C 2

The idiom is one supposed to be borrowed from the Greek. It is certainly frequent in the ancient Greek authors, especially the tragedians.

8. There is nothing which occurs to me as calling for remark in connexion with the grammar of Adjectives except the use of double comparatives and superlatives. Of the former Shakspeare would seem to have been specially fond. I have noted down more than thirty examples, and among them 'more better,' also 'worser' and 'more worse,' repeated several times. More richer,' 'more worthier,' more corrupter,' and 'more worse' are all to be found in King Lear, one of our poet's later and more finished compositions. Double superlatives, such as most best,' most unkindest,' he has used much less frequently, i. e. in not more, I believe, than eight instances. Both these anomalies also may be considered as of Greek extraction, or at least they both occur not unfrequently in the Greek drama.* But it is somewhat remarkable that our translators of the New Testament, from Tyndale downwards, have chosen to introduce the double superlative in Acts xxvi. 5, after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee,' though the original Greek is content with a single one. This is the only example of a double superlative which I have observed in the English Bible;† but the older

* See Bishop Monk's note on the Hippolytus of Euripides, v. 487. † The word 'chiefest,' however, which is in principle equally anomalous, occurs several times in both the Old and New Testament.

version of the Psalms in the Prayer Book still retains the expression 'most highest' in more than a dozen places; where, Bp. Lowth has well remarked, 'it acquires a singular propriety from the subject to which it is applied, viz. the Supreme Being, who is higher than the highest. Of the double comparative no scriptural example occurs to me except in the use of the word 'lesser,' in Gen. i. 16; The lesser light to rule the night,' and in three other texts. Dr. Johnson tells us that the adjective 'little' has two comparatives, 'less' and 'lesser;' but I am rather inclined to agree with Bp. Lowth that it is a barbarism, and that worser sounds much more barbarous only because it has not been so frequently used. And may not this have arisen from the fact that our translators of the Bible have accepted the one, but rejected the other? It is Lord Macaulay who speaks of our noble translation of the Bible' as a book from the authority of which there is no appeal, where the question is about the force of an English word.'

9.

The grammar of the Verb presents to us little or no occasion for remark, without descending to minutia which would be felt by the general reader to be irksome, if not out of place. The remaining parts of speech, Adverbs, Prepositions, and Conjunctions, I shall also dismiss without much notice. The adverb 'when' was formerly often used

* History of England, ii. 486,

with the addition of 'as' or 'that.' Thus in Matt. i. 18, we find, when as His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph,' &c. And in King Henry IV. 2nd Part, When that your flock, assembled by the bell,' &c. Act iv. Sc. 2.

In 1 Tim. v. 23, Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thy often infirmities,' the adverb ' often' is employed to represent an adjective; as adverbs, we know, constantly are in Greek, with the help of the 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. I. 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.

* On the sentiments, see below, Part II. ch. ii.

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. The counterparts to this usage in Shakspeare, are the following:

1

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

Hark! by the sound of drum you may perceive
Their powers are inarching 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;