SEVERAL-SEVERITY.

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Several. Formerly used more distinctly as 'separate' than now.

Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave.-MILTON.

Let not thy common rooms be several, nor thy several rooms be common. Chambers and closets are to be private and retired.-FULLER.

Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as his second, over the Constitutional Formula, 'How came he there?' 'Why did he not give it up, retire into obscurity again, as the law would not acknowledge him?' cry several. That is where they mistake. For him there was no giving it up. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him, to kill the cause and him. This Prime Minister could retire no whither except into his tomb. One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days: his complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence had laid on him-heavy, which he must bear till death. Let the hero rest.-CARLYLE.

Severity. 'Discipline' is an old meaning of this word.

While they dress and comb out their opportunities of their morning devotion and half the day's severity, and sleep out the care and provision of their souls.-FULLER.

There are a few characters which have stood the closest tests and the severest scrutiny, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize, and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are refreshing to us. They are powerful not only to delight, but to elevate and purify; nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or writings of the great Poet and Patriot without aspiring to imitate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he has laboured for the public good.MACAULAY.

Shame. Now a consciousness of guilt, but once modesty, virtue.

And shame hindereth every wight.-CHAUCER.

Being cast from heaven by want of shame

In my proud mother.-CHAPMAN.

Sheer. Often means in Shakspeare 'pure,' 'clear'; now 'unmingled.'

Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain,

From whence this stream thro' muddy passages

Hath held his current.-SHAKSPEARE, Richard III, v. 3. Satire consists in the exaggeration of some alleged vice or folly to the ignoring of other components in the moral being of the individual satirised, until the individual is reduced almost to an abstraction of the idea which the satirist wishes to hold up to scorn; and a Tartuffe becomes less a hypocritical man than an allegorical personification of sheer hypocrisy. So, on the contrary, with Shakspeare the one dominant passion is softened and shaded off into various other tints, and it is through the complicated functions of the living man that the dominating idea winds and undulates.-Caxtoniana.

Shrew. Applied by Gower and other early writers to both sexes alike, in the sense of one who annoys or molests.

The old shrewe Sir Launcelot smote me downe.

History of Prince Arthur, Pt. ii. c. 133.

Jacob was a good man, Esau a shrewe.

Dives and Pauper, c. 20.

But Vulcanus, of whom I spake,

He was a shrewe in all his youth.—GOWER, Bk. v.

As our Saviour said by the wicked baily, which, though he played the false shrewe for his master, provided yet wilily somewhat for himselfe.-Sir T. MORE, Confutation of Tyndale.

Shrewd. Used by Wiclif for crooked,' and by

Shakspeare as having the qualities of a shrew.' The meaning is now confined to the more favourable sense of wary, sagacious.

And the prophete saith; Flee shrewednesse and do goodnesse; seke pees and folwe it, in as muchel as in thee is.'CHAUCER, Tale of Melibeus.

And shrewed things schulen be dressed things, and sharp thinges [rough places] unto pleyn wayes. - WICLIF's Bible, Luke iii.

Who in his pore prayers forgetteth none of you all, nor your babes, nor your nurses, nor your good husbands, nor your good husbands' shrewde wyves, nor your father's shrewde wyfe, nor our other friends.-Sir T. MORE, Letter from the Tower.

sorrow,

Her elder sister is so curst and shrewd.

SHAKSPEARE, Taming of the Shrew, i. I.

Of all the plots the king hath laid for me

This was the shrewdest, 'tis my life they seek,

And they shall have it.

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, The Noble Gentleman.

Whom he [Byron] had long known and accompanied far, whom he had found watchful over his sickness and kind in his glad in his prosperity and firm in his adversity, true in council and trusty in peril, a friend often tried and never found wanting, a man of learning, of talent, of shrewdness, and of honour.-BYRON (of Hobhouse).

Shrill. Applied by old writers, in the sense of 'clear,' to rivers and fountains.

Not underneath sweet shades and fountains shrill,
Among the nymphs, the fairies, leaves, and flowers,
But on the steep, the rough and craggy hill
Of virtue stands this bliss.-FAIRFAX, Tasso.

And thence she fled

Ambling along the meads and rivers shrill,

And yet she thought, she knew, she did no ill.-Id.

Our hare took a large field under us, followed by the full cry in view. I must confess the brightness of the weather, the cheerfulness of everything around me, the chiding of the hounds which was returned upon us by a double echo from the neighbouring hills, with the hallooing of the sportsmen and the shrill sounding of the horn, lifted my spirits into a most lively pleasure, which I freely indulged because I was sure it was innocent. I was under any concern, it was on account of the poor hare that was now quite spent and almost within reach of her enemies, when the huntsman getting forward threw down his pole before the dogs.-ADDISON.

If

Singular. Except in grammar, no longer used in the sense of 'single.'

Whereunto every man shall singularly say his advice, and then it may be subscribed by the Lords there.—Order of Council, Edward VI.

Byron's Death. Never shall I forget the singular, the stunning sensation which the intelligence produced. We could not believe that the bright race was run when he went down to dust. It was as the abrupt close of some history of deep passion in our actual lives-the interest, the excitement, of years came to a gloomy pause.-LYTTON.

Skill. It skills' means in old writers 'makes a difference,'' signifies.'

I am to get a man,-whate'er he be,

It skills not much, we'll fit him to our turn.

SHAKSPEARE, Taming of the Shrew, iii. 2.

Shall she work stories or poetry?

It skilleth not which.-LILLY.

Is

I warrant Love

very like this that folks talk of so

I skill not what it is.-BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.

Skip. Would not now be used in connection with

a tragic event, as in the following instance.

SLICK-SLIGHT.

For when she saw that Romans won the town,

She took her children all and skipt adown

Into the fyre, and chose rather to deye.-CHAUCER.

269

An Opera Dancer. I will describe you her performance: she will curtsey to her middle, and then rise in a pirouette two yards high; this is her preliminary step. She will then set off and skip over the whole area of the stage, lighting on it only occasionally, trying her limbs, and as it were provoking the dance from afar, and then will present herself to the spectators in all the variety of human shapes. One while you may see her many twinkling feet' suspended in the air-at last, she will poise herself upon the extremity of the left toe, and bring the right gradually up to the level of the eye-(the house will hold its breath),—and then she will give herself a rotatory motion, continuing it till she becomes invisible. You can no more count her legs than the spokes of a rail-waggon carrying the President's message.-The American in Paris.

Slick. An old form of 'sleek.'

Both of one hair did shine,

Both of an age, both of a height as measured by a line,
Whom silver-bowed Apollo bred in the Pierian mead,
Both slick and dainty.-CHAPMAN, Iliad.

Slight.

Now rather passively 'to neglect,' than actively to overthrow.'

A wonderful and sudden change in the face of the public; the new Protector Richard slighted; several pretenders and parties strive for the Government; all anarchy and confusion. Lord have mercy upon us!-J. EVELYN.

He who writes otherwise than for money, says Dr. Johnson, is a fool. So thought Mr. Burke, so said Darwin, and so think most others whose works are in request by the world, or who know the solitary toil by which alone a good work can be produced. No man in any station in life, no statesman, no lawyer, no physician, no clergyman, no soldier gives his labours mental or bodily without hire. Why then should not the author have his hire without let or without slight?-JAMES PRIOR.