P. 527. (1) "From the besiegèd Ardea all in post," &c. This line is usually printed, "From the besieg'd Ardea all in post,” &c. But Shakespeare was acquainted with the proper quantity of the name,— Ardea :-afterwards, p. 565, we find, "At Ardea to my lord with more than haste." P. 528. () "Virtue would stain that o'er with silver white." Mr. Knight prints, "Virtue would stain that or with silver white;" and observes, "The original has ore [the later old eds. "o're," i.e. o'er"]. Malone has suggested, but he does not act upon the suggestion, that 'the word intended was perhaps or, i.e. gold, to which the poet compares the deep colour of a blush.' We have no doubt whatever of the matter."-For my own part, I have the greatest doubt of it. Malone's remark that, with the old reading, "the passage is not reducible to grammar,-Virtue would stain that, i. e. blushes, o'er with silver white," goes for nothing. P. 543. (3) "But when a black-fac'd cloud," &c. Malone substitutes “Look, when a black-fac'd cloud," &c. P. 549. (4) 66 'thy misty vapours," &c. "The quarto, by an evident error of the press, reads-musty. The subsequent copies have-misty. So, before: Again: 'Muster thy mists to meet the eastern light.' misty night Covers the shame that follows such delight." MALONE, who might have cited from Venus and Adonis, see p. 485, “Like misty vapours when they blot the sky,❞— a line which had escaped Mr. Collier's recollection, when, defending the earliest reading here, he observed, “Misty vapours' is mere tautology, since vapours are necessarily misty. Of all authors, perhaps, Shakespeare is least guilty of this fault." P. 563. (5) "O, let it not be hild," &c. Here Shakespeare uses "hild" (i.e. held) for the sake of the rhyme, as other early writers sometimes do: e. g., "But now (made free from them) next her, before, Chapman's Euthymia Raptus, or The Teares of But we not unfrequently find “hild" employed when no rhyme is in question: e.g, 66 I hild such valiantnes but vaine." Warner's Albions England, p. 83, ed. 1596. "Some hild with Phoebus, some with her," &c. Id. p. 151. Malone's alteration; which the context seems to confirm.-The old eds. have "to beguild," &c. |