1. Because we have the _primâ facie_ evidence of the text itself, that
_checks_ was Shakspeare's word.
2. Because we have internal evidence, in the significance and excellence of
the phrase, that it was Shakspeare's word.
_Ethics_ was the patent title by which Aristotle's moral philosophy was
universally known; therefore any ignoramus, who never dipped beyond the
title, might, _and would_, have used it. But no person, except one well
read in the philosophy itself, would think of giving it such a designation
as _checks_; which word, nevertheless, is most happily characteristic of
it.
3. Because, as before stated, Aristotle's _checks_, being the restrictive
and regulating portion of Aristotle's _Ethics_, is necessarily a more
diametrical antithesis to Ovid (and his _laxities_).
4. Because I look upon the use of this phrase as one of those nice and
scarcely perceptible touches by which Shakspeare was content rather to hint
at, than to disclose his knowledge,--one of those effects whereby he makes
a single word supply the place of a treatise.
With these opinions, I cannot but look upon this threatened change of
_checks_ into _ethics_, as wholly unwarrantable, and I now protest against
it as earnestly as, upon a former occasion, I did against the alteration of
_sickles_ into _shekels_, or, still worse, into _cycles_ or into _circles_.
It is with great satisfaction I compare four different views taken of this
word by MR. COLLIER, viz.--in the note to the text of his octavo edition of
Shakspeare;--in an additional note in vol. i., page cclxxxiv. of that
edition;--in the first announcement of his annotated folio in the
_Athenæum_ newspaper, Jan. 31st, 1852,--and finally (after my remarks upon
the word in "N. & Q."), his virtual reinstatement of the original _sickle_
(till then supposed a palpable and undeniable misprint) at page 46. of
_Notes and Emendations_, together with the production, _suo motu_, of an
independent reference in support of my position.
To return to this present substitution of _ethics_ for _checks_, a very
singular circumstance connected with it is the ignoring, by both MR.
COLLIER and by the critic in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, of Sir William
Blackstone's original claim to the suggestion, by prior publication of
upwards of half a century. At that time, notwithstanding the great learning
and acuteness of the proposer, the alteration was rejected! And shall we
now be less wise than our fathers? Shall we--misled by the prestige of a
few drops of rusty ink fashioned into letters of formal cut--place implicit
credence in emendations whose only claim to faith, like that of the Mormon
scriptures, is that nobody knows whence they came? {498}
In the passage I have quoted from Philemon Holland, there may be observed
two peculiarities which are generally supposed to be exclusively
Shakspearian: one is the beautiful application of the word "touch"--the
other the phrase "discourse of reason." Where this last expression occurs
in _Hamlet_, it narrowly escaped _emendation_ at the hands of Gifford! (See
Mr. Knight's note, in his illustrated edition of _Shakspeare_.) It is the
true Aristotelian [Greek: dianoia].
There is also a third peculiarity of expression in the same quotation, in
the use of the word _delay_ in the sense of _diluere_, to dilute, temper,
allay. There are at least two passages in Shakspeare's plays where the word
is used in this sense, but which appear to have been overlooked by his
glossarists. The first is in _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act IV. Sc. 3.,
where the French locals are moralising upon Bertram's profligate pursuit of
Diana:
"Now God _delay_ our rebellion--as we are ourselves, what are we?"
The second is in _Cymbeline_, Act V. Sc. 4., where Jupiter tempers his love
with crosses, in order to make his gifts--
"The more _delayed_, delighted."