Shakspeare's Works with a Digest of all the Readings (Vol. viii., pp. 74, 170.).—I fully concur with your correspondent's suggestion, and beg to suggest to Mr. Halliwell that his splendid monograph edition would be greatly improved if he would undertake the task. As his first volume contains but one play (Tempest), it may not be too late to adopt the suggestion, so that every variation of the text (in the briefest possible form) might be seen at a glance.
DEATH ON THE FINGERS
"Isaac saith, I am old, and I know not the day of my death (Gen. xxvii. 2.); no more doth any, though never so young. As soon (saith the proverb) goes the lamb's skin to the market as that of the old sheep; and the Hebrew saying is, There be as many young skulls in Golgotha as old; young men may die (for none have or can make any agreement with the grave, or any covenant with death, Isa. xxviii. 15. 18.), but old men must die. 'Tis the grant statute of heaven (Heb. ix. 27.). Senex quasi seminex, an old man is half dead; yea, now, at fifty years old, we are accounted three parts dead; this lesson we may learn from our fingers' ends, the dimensions whereof demonstrate this to us, beginning at the end of the little finger, representing our childhood, rising up to a little higher at the end of the ring-finger, which betokens our youth; from it to the top of the middle finger, which is the highest point of our elevated hand, and so most aptly represents our middle age, when we come to our ακμὴ, or height of stature and strength; then begins our declining age, from thence to the end of our forefinger which amounts to a little fall, but from thence to the end of the thumb there is a great fall, to show, when man goes down (in his old age) he falls fast and far, and breaks (as we say) with a witness. Now, if our very fingers' end do read us such a divine lecture of mortality, oh, that we could take it out, and have it perfect (as we say) on our fingers' end, &c.
"To old men death is præ januis, stands before their door, &c. Old men have (pedem in cymbâ Charonis) one foot in the grave already; and the Greek word γήρων (an old man) is derived from παρὰ το εἰς γὴν ορᾶν, which signifies a looking towards the ground; decrepit age goes stooping and grovelling, as groaning to the grave. It doth not only expect death, but oft solicits it."—Christ. Ness's Compleat History and Mystery of the Old and New Test., fol. Lond. 1690, chap. xii. p. 227.
From The Barren Tree, a sermon on Luke xiii. 7., preached at Paul's Cross, Oct. 26, 1623, by Thos. Adams:
"Our bells ring, our chimneis smoake, our fields rejoice, our children dance, ourselues sing and play, Jovis omnia plena. But when righteousnesse hath sowne and comes to reape, here is no haruest; οὐκ εὐρίσκω, I finde none. And as there was neuer lesse wisdome in Greece then in time of the Seven Wise Men, so neuer lesse pietie among vs, then now, when vpon good cause most is expected. When the sunne is brightest the stars be darkest: so the cleerer our light, the more gloomy our life with the deeds of darkness. The Cimerians, that live in a perpetuall mist, though they deny a sunne, are not condemned of impietie; but Anaxogoras, that saw the sunne and yet denied it, is not condemned of ignorance, but of impietie. Former times were like Leah, bleare-eyed, but fruitful; the present, like Rachel, faire, but barren. We give such acclamation to the Gospell, that we quite forget to observe the law. As vpon some solenne festivall, the bells are rung in all steeples, but then the clocks are tyed vp: there is a great vntun'd confusion and clangor, but no man knowes how the time passeth. So in this vniuersall allowance of libertie by the Gospell (which indeed rejoyceth our hearts, had we the grace of sober vsage), the clocks that tel vs how the time passes, Truth and Conscience, that show the bounded vse and decent forme of things, are tyed vp, and cannot be heard. Still Fructum non invenio, I finde no fruits. I am sorry to passe the fig-tree in this plight: but as I finde it, so I must leave it, till the Lord mend it."—Pp. 39, 40., 4to. Lond. 1623.
Minor Notes
On a "Custom of ye Englyshe."—When a more than ordinarily doubtful matter is offered us for credence, we are apt to inquire of the teller if he "sees any green" in our optics, accompanying the query by an elevation of the right eyelid with the forefinger. Now, regarding this merely as a "fast" custom, I marvelled greatly at finding a similar action noted by worthy Master Blunt, as conveying to his mind an analogous meaning. I can scarcely credit its antiquity; but what other meaning can I understand from the episode he relates? He had been trying to pass himself off as a native, but—
"The third day, in the morning, I, prying up and down alone, met a Turke, who, in Italian, told me—Ah! are you an Englishman, and with a kind of malicious posture laying his forefinger under his eye, methought he had the lookes of a designe."—Voyage in the Levant, performed by Mr. Henry Blunt, p. 60.: Lond. 1650.
—a silent, but expressive, "posture," tending to eradicate any previously formed opinion of the verdantness of Mussulmans!
Kidderminster.
Epitaph at Crayford.—I send the following lines, if you think them worthy an insertion in your Epitaphiana: a friend saw them in the churchyard of Crayford, Kent.
"To the Memory of Peter Izod, who was thirty-five years clerk of this parish, and always proved himself a pious and mirthful man.
"The life of this clerk was just three score and ten,
During half of which time he had sung out Amen.
He married when young, like other young men;
His wife died one day, so he chaunted Amen.
A second he took, she departed,—what then?
He married, and buried a third with Amen.
Thus his joys and his sorrows were treble, but then
His voice was deep bass, as he chaunted Amen.
On the horn he could blow as well as most men,
But his horn was exalted in blowing Amen.
He lost all his wind after threescore and ten,
And here with three wives he waits till again
The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen."
Tradition reports these verses to have been composed by some curate of the parish.
The Font at Islip.—
"In the garden is placed a relic of some interest—the font in which it is said King Edward the Confessor was baptised at Islip. The block of stone in which the basin of immersion is excavated, is unusually massy. It is of an octangular shape, and the outside is adorned by tracery work. The interior diameter of the basin is thirty inches, and the depth twenty. The whole, with the pedestal, which is of a piece with the rest, is five feet high, and bears the following imperfect inscription:
'This sacred Font Saint Edward first receavd,
From Womb to Grace, from Grace to Glory went,
His virtuous life. To this fayre Isle beqveth'd,
Prase … and to vs but lent.
Let this remaine, the Trophies of his Fame,
A King baptizd from hence a Saint became.'
"Then is inscribed:
'This Fonte came from the Kings Chapell in Islip.'"
In the gardens at Kiddington there—
"was an old font wherein it is said Edward the Confessor was baptized, being brought thither from an old decayed chapel at Islip (the birth-place of that religious prince), where it had been put up to an indecent use, as well as the chapel."—Extracted from The English Baronets, being a Historical and