Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853, page 9 by Various Authors
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t, undiscerning. This word I have never met with but twice,--in Shakspeare's Cymbeline, with the sense above given; and in Bishop Andrewes' Sermon preached before Queen Elizabeth at Hampton Court, A.D. 1594, in the sense of unenduring:
"For the Sodomites are an example of impenitent wilful sinners; and Lot's wife of imperseverant and relapsing righteous persons."--Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology, vol. ii. p. 62.
Perseverant, discerning, and persevers, discerns, occur respectively at pp. 43. and 92. of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure (Percy Society's edition). The noun substantive perseverance=discernment is as common a word as any of the like length in the English language. To omit the examples that might be cited out of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure, I will adduce a dozen other instances; and if those should not be enough to justify my assertion, I will undertake to heap together two dozen more. Mr. Dyce, in his Critique of Knight and Collier's Shakspeare, rightly explains the meaning of the word in Cymbeline; and quotes an example of perseverance from The Widow, to which the reader is referred. Mr. Dyce had, however, previously corrupted a passage in his edition of Rob. Greene's Dramatic Works, by substituting, "perceivance" for perseverance, the word in the original quarto of the Pinner of Wakefield, vol. ii. p. 184.:
"Why this is wondrous being blind of sight, His deep perseuerance should be such to know us."
I subjoin the promised dozen:
"For his dyet he was verie temperate, and a great enemie of excesse and surfetting; and so carelesse of delicates, as though he had had no perseuerance in the tast of meates," &c.--"The Life of Ariosto," Sir John Harington's Translation of Orlando Furioso, p. 418.
"In regarde whereof they are tyed vnto these duties: First by a prudent, diligent, and fa