[Tongues I'll hang on every tree,
That shall civil sayings show]
_Civil_ is here used in the same sense as when we say _civil_ wisdom
or _civil life_, in opposition to a solitary state, or to the state
of nature. This desert shall not appear _unpeopled_, for every tree
shall teach the maxims or incidents of social life.
III.ii.149 (283,2) [Therefore heaven nature charg'd] From the picture
of Apelles, or the accomplishments of Pandora.
[Greek: Aeanertu, oti pautei dlumpia
Dorou xdorau.-----------]
So before,
-------------------_But thou
So perfect, and no peerless art created
Of ev'ry creature's beat._ Tempest.
Perhaps from this passage Swift had his hint of Biddy Floyd.
III.ii.155 (283,3) [Atalanta's better part] I know not well what
could be the better part of Atalanta here ascribed to Rosalind.
Of the Atalanta most celebrated, and who therefore must be intended
here where she has no epithet of discrimination, the better
part seems to have been her heels, and the worse part was so bad
that Rosalind would not thank her lover for the comparison. There
is a more obscure Atalanta, a huntress and a heroine, but of her
nothing bad is recorded, and therefore I know not which was the
better part. Shakespeare was no despicable mythologist, yet he
seems here to have mistaken some other character for that of Atalanta.
III.ii.156 (283,4) [Sad] is _grave, sober_, not _light_.