_Aristotle's Checks v. Aristotle's Ethics._--
"Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue, and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoicks, nor no stocks, I pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle's _checks_,
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjur'd."
_Taming of the Shrew_, Act I. Sc. 1.
The following are instances of the use of the substantive _check_ by
Shakspeare:
"_Orlando._ A man that had a wife with such a wit, might say,--'Wit
whither wilt?'
"_Rosalind._ Nay, you might keep that _check_ for it, till you met your
wife's wit going to your neighbour's bed."
"_Falstaff._ I never knew yet, but rebuke and _check_ was the reward of
valour."
"_Antony._ This is a soldier's kiss; rebukable,
And worthy shameful _check_ it were to stand
On more mechanic compliment."
"_Belarius._ . . . O, this life
Is nobler, than attending for a _check_."
"_Iago._ However, this may gall him with some _check_.
"_Desdemona._ And yet his trespass, in our common reason
. . . . is not almost a fault
To incur a private _check_."
These instances may show that the word in question was a favourite
expression of the poet. It is true there was a translation of the Ethics of
Aristotle in his time, _The _Ethiques_ of Aristotle_. If he spelt it
_ethiques_, no printer would have blundered and substituted _checks_.
Judge Blackstone suggested _ethicks_, but Johnson and Steevens kept to
_checks_. And Johnson, in his _Dictionary_, _sub voce_ Devote, quotes the
passage, but which, by a strange printer's misreading, is referred to
"_Tim._ of Ath." instead of _Tam. of Sh._ in Todd's edit. of _Johnson's
Dictionary_ (1818).