SCENE I

29 23— Misérable : Unhappy man. Notice. — Il faut

être bien misérable pour faire une pareille chose, he must indeed be a villain to do such a thing ; C’est un misérable, he is a knave ; Il a fait un discours misérable, he made a wretched speech.

30 6 — Mon honneur de ma main a voulu cet effort : My

honour exacted the deed from my reluc^ant hand.

30 17 — Dérobe ta présence : Conceal your presence, steal

away from here. Dérober, lit. to steal, from de and robe , Provençal rauba9 from I at. raubare (sixth century, a. d.), to spoil, to pillage ; Cf. Ital. roba9 which means merchandise, articles of food and clothing, moveable and landed property ; Cf. also Engl, to rob ; Germ. rauben9 with which the Lat. rapio9 I seize, is perhaps connected. Notice. — Il s’est dérobé à toutes les poursuites, he stole away from ail pursuits ; Deux hommes passèrent le pont à la dérobée, two men stole over the bridge.

30 18 — Premiers mouvements que poussera l’ardeur de ses

ressentiments : The first outbursts of passion excited by her spirit of revenge.

30 20 — Ce cher objet : This beloved one.

30 22 — Et j’évite cent morts ... : And I save myseîf

Irom a hundred living deaths, if I can redouble her anger so as to die sooner.

Page 30 line 25 — Ne . . . point que. Expression uâed several times by Corneille for ne . . . que, not . . . but, only, is now considered as incorrect.

30 26— Ôte-moi de souci : Deliver me from my anxiety.

30 28 — Pour comble à sa misère : To crown her misery.

30 30 — Voi, instead of vois. M. Brachet says : “ Both

in French and in Latin the letter j is characteristic of the second person singular: amas, aimes ; amabas , aimais, etc. . . . The first person singular ne ver h as an s in Latin : amo, credo , video, teneo , hence in üld French j’aime, je croi, je voi, je tien. In the fourteenth century there came in a habit (unreasonable because not based on etymology) of adding s to the first person, and of writing je vienj, je tienj, je voix. The correct form, je croi, je voi, je tien, is found in Corneille, Molière, La Fontaine, and Racine (seventeenth century) ; and Voltaire, in the eighteenth century, wrote —

La mort a respecté ces jours que je te doi.

— Akire ii. 2.

But these forms, whose historical foundation was unknown,appeared to bepoetical licences.” Certainly; but is not the name of “ poetical licence” the right one to give to a form ■winch is two or three centuries old, and which the poets above mentioned use at the end of the line where it is considered necessary to rhyme to the eye as well as to the ear, but which they abandon in the body of the line for the form then and now recognised as the correct one, je crois, etc.

C’est ce qu’à dire vrai je vois fort difficile.

— Cinna iii. 1.

Je tien* leur culte impie et je le tiens funeste.

— Polyeucte.

£t que dois-je espérer qu’un tourment éternel , .

— Cid iii. 3.

D'Olivet, the celebrated grammarian (16S2 — 1768), says: “Les poètes commencèrent par ajouter un s aux premières personnes du singulier des verbes terminés par une consonne, afin d’éviter des hiatus. N’ayant rien à craindre pour les verbes qui finissent par un e muet,

NOTES

parce que ceux-là s’élident, ils les laissèrent sans s. Insensiblement l’usage des poètes est devenu général.”