This species of corruption 5 is not altogether unprecedented. "Twice saying pardon doth not pardon twain, "God 2 King Henry IV. v. 3,-Pistol says on entering,save you, sir John;" ita vulg.; from the quarto?6 Fol.,"Sir John, 'saue you sir." 1 King Henry VI. iv. 1,— "My lord, how say you? are you not content ?" The folio has, p. 110, col. 2,— "How say you (my Lord) are you not content?" 5 A remarkable instance occurs in Middleton, Five Gallants, v. 2, Dyce, vol. ii. p. 229,— "Vouchsafe, unequall'd virgin, [to] accept This worthless favour from your servant's arm, The true and perfect number of my sighs." The accomplished editor has most ingeniously disentangled the above from the following jumble, which he gives, in a note, as it appears in the old quarto,— "Vouchsafe vnequalld Virgin whereon I justly kept, Accept this worthlesse fauor from your seruants arme, the hallowed beades, The true and perfect number of my sighs." Ed. 6 The quarto reads, "Sir John, God save you;" and so the recent editors. The earlier follow the folio. I know not how the Vulgate reading originated. It appears in Var. 1821.-Ed. "And bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's taste." Ib., "And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath Out of the bloody fingers' ends of John." I know not whether the following from Gammer Gurton's Needle, v. 2, Dodsley, vol. ii. p. 74, throws any light on this passage, "I picke not this geare (hear'st thou) out of my fingers endes; But he that hard it told it me, who thou of late didst name, Ib., near the end, Or,7 as a little snow, tumbled about, Anon becomes a mountain. O noble dauphin, Go with me to the king;" &c. I believe that the O (sæpius interpolatum) ought to be expunged. So, too, King Richard II. iii. 4,— and Bolingbroke Hath seiz'd the wasteful king.-O! what pity is it," &c. I suspect the 0; though here I am more doubtful. 7 Hanmer reads Ev'n for Or, perhaps rightly. At any rate, something is wrong, as the syntax is out of joint.-Ed. iv. 1, "An if an angel should have come to me, And told me, Hubert should put out mine eyes, I would not have believ'd him; no tongue but Hubert's." Perhaps [and so Mr. Knight.-Ed.],— "And is 't not pity, O my grieved friends!" &c. i.e., aggrieved. So we still use grievance. Note, too, that grief, in Elizabethan English, is not properly sorrow, but suffering; e.g., Fairfax's Tasso, B. xi. St. lv.,— more he strove, his grief increas'd the more;" the pain of his wound. So understand Twelfth Night, ii. 4, "She sat like Patience on a monument, Like Patience, gazing on kings' graves, and smiling Compare Tarquin and Lucrece, St. ccxv. of Sinon,— Ib.,-I think we should arrange,— "Wherein we step after a stranger march Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up Her enemies' ranks. ... I must withdraw and weep. . . To grace" &c. 8 8 As Walker makes no observation on spur, his memory may have deceived him, and induced him to take it for the usual read 4, t the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun." Compare Sonnet vii., Ib., when from high-most pitch, with weary car, Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day," &c. "In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence From forth the noise and rumour of the field," &c. Hum, loud murmur; the Latin sense. Julius Cæsar, ii. 3, Pr'ythee, listen well: I hear a bustling rumour like a fray, Daniel, Philotas, iv. 1, p. 226, Of clattering weapons, or our rushing in With rude and trampling rumour, could dissolve Fairfax, B. vii. St. cvi., "Of breaking spears, of ringing helm and shield, p. 164, So rumorous. Drayton, Moses, B. iii. ed. 1630, describing the Red Sea after the submersion of the Egyptians, Clashing of armours, and the rumorous sound Of the stern billows in contention stood," &c. Cary, more suo, has adopted this ancient usage; Dante, Paradise, xi. 1. 63,— "Nor aught avail'd, that, with Amyclas, she Was found unmoved at rumour of his voice, ing. However that may be, spur would be well worth attention, even if it had not been also conjectured by Mr. Dyce. The latter, however, points the passage differently.-Ed. 7,-I think we should write, Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, 9 Leaves them insensible; and 's siege is now Against the mind," &c. This speech is grossly misprinted in the folio: winde for minde, counfound for confound, Symet for Synnet or cygnet (p. 21, col. 2). i. 1, KING RICHARD II. "Such neighbour-nearness to our sacred blood Till my frail flesh did weigh me down to sin; 3. Of course,― "The fly-slow hours shall not determinate" &c. Eques post alios, "the sly-slow hours"! Ib.. "Then thus I turn me from my country's light To live in solemn shades of endless night." Solemn is here, in fact, sullen; as e.g. in Coriolanus, i. 3, near the end," Prithee, Virgilia, turn thy solemnness out 9 Insensible is Hanmer's emendation, and, whether Shakespeare's word or not, it is the best reading yet produced. The folio has invisible.-Ed. |