pare Midsummer Night's Dream, v. 1,-" The very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er I saw." So pronounce, Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2,—“ Veal, quoth the Dutchman;" see context. 1 King Henry VI. i. 2, "Shall we disturb him, since he keeps no mean. Alen. He may mean more than we poor men do know." I hardly know whether Browne meant a play on the two words, Britannia's Pastorals, B. i. Song iii., Clarke, p. 95,"The lofty treble sung the little wren; Robin the mean, that best of all loves men." Hamlet of 1603, C 3. "And as he dreames, his draughts of renish downe," for draines (or perhaps dreines, as the folio spells it, p. 157, col. 1, 1. 4). Perhaps, however, the corruption arose from drumme in the next line. Chapman, Tragedy of the Duke of Byron, Retrospective, vol. iv. p. 378; see context,— like low strains With torrents crown'd are men with diadems." Streams, loco ipso clamante. Besides, rhyme is evidently intended. Cymbeline, iv. 4, folio, p. 391, col. 2,-" The certainty of this heard life," for hard. Ib., not far from the end, "And then I'll presently attend you." Surely "attend on you," metri gratia. [So Capell.-Ed.] And so Beaumont and Fletcher, Mad Lover, v. i, ad fin.,— "When your devotions ended be, Qu., Ib., To the oracle I will attend ye." "So the remembrance of my former love Is by another object quite forgotten.” Is this a corruption? 1 v. 4, near the beginning, "Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain!" (The folio here writes it for-lorne.) Fórlorn is frequent in the old 'poets. So pronounce, i. 2, of this play,— "Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus." Cymbeline, v. 1,— "The forlorn soldier, that so nobly fought." Sonnet xxxiii.,— "And from the forlorn world his visage hide." 1 K. H. VI. i. 2; 2 K. H. VI. ii. 4, iii. 2. Massinger, New Way &c., i. 1, Moxon, p. 291, col. 1,— "Late master Francis, but now forlorn Wellborn,—" Emperor of the East, i. 2, p. 245, col. 2, "What is thy name? Ath. The forlorn Athenais." Beaumont and Fletcher, Mad Lover, i. 1,— Fury at this hand waiting, Death at my right, Fortune my forlorn hope.” 1 Perhaps forgotten here simply means lost. We even now say, a man has forgotten or lost himself." The particle for implies loss, injury, damage, &c.-Ed. Spenser, F. Q., B. i. C. vi. St. xxii., "The forlorne maid did with loves longing burne." It occurs in Hudibras, the last refuge of so many archaisms, "The vanguard could no longer bear 16.,— Sil. Pro. "I'll woo you like a soldier, at arms' end, And love you 'gainst the nature of love, force you. I'll force thee yield to my desire." One of these forces must be wrong; and the metre of 1. 2 is evidently out of joint. Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins." If the article is retained, write th' (and so the folio), and pronounce perhaps, for euphony's sake, t'sins,-as the Yorkshire folk pronounce in certain combinations. At least some elisions of th' in Shakespeare, which seemed demanded by the metre, are so harsh, that an ear like his could not have tolerated them without the help of some such softening. But I suspect that in the present passage he wrote all sins. 2 2 So Pope, and the earlier editors.-Ed. 13 i. 3, Pistol. MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. "Then did the sun on dunghill shine. Two asides surely. Ib., near the end,—"for the revolt of mien1 is dangerous." Mind, I think. Mind is often used by the old poets in the sense of heart or affections. Mind may easily have been corrupted into mine (see Art. lxii.), and afterwards altered into mien by the printer, who saw that mine must be wrong, and was perhaps misled by the words immediately preceding," I will possess him with yellowness." ii. 1, near the beginning, though love use reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor." Bah! Physician, I suppose; or, ut sæpe, physitian. Ib. We should point perhaps,-"I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names; sure more, and these are of the second edition :". supposing the first edition to consist of a thousand. Ib., Hope is a curtail dog in some affairs." Was the name Hope ever given to a dog in those days? 1 Pope has the plausible conjecture, "this revolt of mine."Ed. 2 So Johnson and Farmer, the Old Corrector, and most of the recent editors.-Ed. Compare Tempest, ii. 1,-“Temperance was a delicate wench." Ib., -"Go in with us and see; we have an hour's talk with you." Surely "we would have." 2,-"—your bold-beating oaths." Note Hanmer's certain conjecture, bull-baiting. See Dyce's "Remarks," p. 14. The confusion of the two epithets arose from the broad pronunciation of ea. Ib., near the end,- - but cuckold! wittol-cuckold! the devil himself hath not such a name." Surely, but cuckold! wittol! cuckold!" &c. iii. 4, "Besides these, other bars he lays before me, My riots past, my wild societies;" &c. (See Art. xxxviii.) Point," Besides, these other bars iv. 6, near the beginning; possibly, &c. "That neither singly can be manifested Much more probably, however, ' Hath" &c. of both therein 3 fat Falstaff For some such word seems indispensable to the sense. 3 The corrupt and perhaps surreptitious quartos have wherein in the corresponding speech, but therein suits the context better. -Ed. |