Austria has on him the "skin-coat" of Coeur-de-Lion, and Blanch cries,--

"O! well did he become that lion's robe,
That did disrobe the lion of that robe."

"It lies," observes the Bastard,

"It lies as sightly on the back of him (_Austria_)
As great Alcides' (_robe_) shows upon an ass:--
But, ass, I'll take that burden from your back," &c.

Were it not that _doth_ is the usual word in this play, I might be tempted
to read _does_. In reading or acting, then, the _caesura_ should be made at
_Alcides'_, with a slight pause to give the hearer time to supply _robe_. I
need not say that the robe is the lion's skin, and that there is an
allusion to the fable of the ass.

Now to justify this reading. Our ancestors knew nothing of our mode of
making genitives by turned commas. They formed the gen. sing., and nom. and
gen. pl., by simply adding _s_ to the nom. sing.; thus king made _kings_,
_kings_, _kings_ (not _king's_, _kings_, _kings'_), and the context gave
the case. If the noun ended in _se_, _ce_, _she_, or _che_, the addition of
_s_ added a syllable, as _horses_, _princes_, &c., but it was not always
added. Shakspeare, for example, uses _Lucrece_ and _cockatrice_ as
genitives. I find the first instances of such words as _James's_, &c.,
about the middle of the seventeenth century, but I am not deeply read in
old books, so it may have been used earlier.

In foreign words like _Alcides_, no change ever took place; it was the same
for all numbers and cases, and the explanation was left to the context.
Here are a couple of examples from Shakspeare himself:

"My fortunes every way as fairly ranked--
If not with vantage--as Demetrius."--_Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act I.
Sc. 1.

"To Brutus, to Cassius. Burn all. Some to Decius house, and some to
Cascas; some to Ligarius. Away! go!"--_Julius Caesar_, Act III. Sc. 3.

All here are genitives, as well as _Cascas_. If any doubt, Brutus and
Cassius, we have just been told, "Are rid like madmen through the gates of
Rome," so _they_ could not be burned. I say now, _judicet lector_!

I must not neglect to add that there was another mode of forming the
genitive, namely, by the possessive pronoun, as _the king his palace_. "A
fly that flew into my _mistress_ her eye," is the title of one of Carew's
poems.

THOS. KEIGHTLEY.

* * * * *

Minor Notes.

_Longfellow's Poetical Works._--One of the best printed editions of