Difcandy'd therefore feems our poet's own word.

WE have several inftances of whole words omitted. As, in Milton, B. VI. 681.

"Son! in whofe face invisible is beheld
"Vifibly, what by deity I am."

It should be th' invisible: TO AOPAŢON, xat' oxv. Coloff. i. 15. "Who is the image of "the invifible God. So in B. III. 385.

"In whose conspicuous count'nance, with66 out cloud

"Made visible, th' almighty father shines.” A negative particle has flipt out of a paffage in Shakespeare, which might be as well owing to the ignorance of the metre, as to hafty tranfcribing. In Othello. Act III.

66

Iago. Let him command,

"And to obey fhall be in me remorse,
"What bloody business ever."

4 Son, in whofe face invifible is bebeld.] This diftich is ftrangely inverted. What contradiction is that, is bebeld invifible? He must have defigned it thus; but blots and interlines confounded it;

Son, in whofe Face is vifible beheld,

What I invifible by Deity am. Dr. Bentley.

The

The fenfe plainly requires,

"And to obey shall be' in me No remorse.”

In King Lear, A&I,

Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, "More hideous when thou fhew'ft thee in a "child,

"Than the fea-monster."

Read, "Than 'th' fea-monfter." Meaning the river-horse, Hippopotamus; the hieroglyphical fymbol of impiety and ingratitude.

5 And to obey, &c.] Mr. Theobald reads with greater variation,

"Nor, to obey, fhall be in me remorfe."

How came the tranfcriber to change nor into and? but to omit a particle in hafty writing, or to overlook it in printing, is no unusual mistake. A later editor has thus printed the paffage,

"And to obey, fhall be in me. Remord
"What bloody business ever."

To endeavour gravely to set aside such a correction as this, is paying it too great a complement.

6" The River-horfe fignified, Murder, impudence, "violence and injuftice; for they fay that he killeth his "fire, and ravisheth his own dam." Sandys Travels, p. 105:

In Macbeth. A&t I.

Lady Macbeth reading a letter, "And re"ferred me to the coming on of time, with, "Hail King that shalt be! 'Tis very plain it should be," Hail King that shalt be bereafter! for this word the ufes emphatically, when the greets Macbeth at first meeting him,

"Greater than both by the ALL-HAIL HERE"AFTER!"

Being the words of the Witch,

"ALL HAIL, Macbeth, that fhalt he King "HEREAFTER."

In Cymbeline. Act. I.

"Cym. O difloyal thing

"That shouldft repair my youth, thou heapest

7 The alteration of other editors is quite oppofite to the author's fenfe,

For the word, yare, ab Anglo-S, Gearme: always fignifies ready, brifk, eager. gearwian, parare, præparare. So in the Tempeft. A&t V." Our fhip is tight and yare." In

205 The word which I have placed between two hooks was very judiciously reftored by the Oxford Editor.

In a Midfummer's Night's Dream. A& V.

"Merry and tragical? tedious and brief? "That is hot ice, and wondrous ftrange fnow.

The verfe, as well as the fenfe, leads us to the true reading,

"That is hot ice, and wondrous ftrange black "fnow."

In K. Henry VIII. A& H.

"Anne. In God's will, better

"She ne'er had known pomp; though't be "temporal,

"Yet

the Twelfth Night. A&t III. Be yare in thy preperation." The very measure too points out the excellency of this correction, for a word is plainly wanting,

"That shouldft repair my youth, thou heapft."

8 Wondrous is here ufed as an intentive particle, for very, &c. So Spencer in the defcription of ENVY,

"And wept that cause of weeping none he had, "But when he heard of harm, he wexed wondrous glad.'

19

Ovid went before Spencer, and has expreffed the fame thought elegantly. Met. II. 796.

"Vixque

"Yet if? that quarrel, fortune do divorce It from the bearer, 'tis a fuff'rance panging "As foul and body's fev'ring."

A word omitted and another corrupted has occafion'd this place to be misunderstood. It seems to me the allufion is to matrimony. The Queen was married, as it were to POMP; and if

"Vixque tenet lacrymas, quia nil lacrymabile cernit."

"Rifus abeft, nifi quem vifi movere dolores."

9 Yet if that quarrel.] The sense is somewhat obscure, and uncertain here. Either quarrel must be understood metaphorically to fignify a fhaft, a dart; as it is used by Chaucer; and as, among the French they fay, un quarreau d'arbalefte, an arrow peculiar for the cross bow or we must read, as Mr. Warburton has conjectured ;

"Yet if that quarr'lous Fortune

And Shakespeare, I remember, fomewhere uses this expreffionas quarr'lous as a Weazel. Mr. Theobald.

Yet if that quarrel.]

"Yet if that quarr'ler Fortune.' Ox. Editor.

Yet if that quarrel, Fortune,] He calls Fortune a quarrel or arrow, from her striking fo deep and fuddenly. Quarrel was a large arrow fo called. Thus Fairfax -Twang'd the ftring, outflew the quarrel long. Mr. W.

fhe