“An idle meteor, which, drawn forth the earth,
Would,” &c.
“_For_wardness” for _fro_wardness,” (Vol. II. p. 87,) “tennis-balls
struck and ban_ded_” for “ban_died_,” (Ib. p. 275,) may be errors of the
press; but
“Come, I’ll love you wisely:
That’s jealousy,”
has crept in by editorial oversight for “wisely, that ’s jealously.” So
have
“Ay, the great emperor of [_or_] the mighty Cham”;
and
“This wit [_with_] taking long journeys”;
and
“Virginius, thou dost but supply my place,
I thine: Fortune hath lift me [_thee_] to my chair,
And thrown me headlong to thy pleading bar”;
and
“I’ll pour my soul into my daughter’s belly, [_body_,]
And with my soldier’s tears embalm her wounds.”
We suggest that the change of an _a_ to an _r_ would make sense of the
following: “Come, my little punk, with thy two compositors, to this
unlawful painting-house,” [printing-house,] which Mr. Hazlitt awkwardly
endeavors to explain by this note on the word _compositors_,--“i. e.
(conjecturally), making up the composition of the picture “! Our readers
can decide for themselves;--the passage occurs Vol. I. p. 214.
We think Mr. Hazlitt’s notes are, in the main, good; but we should like
to know his authority for saying that _pench_ means “the hole in a bench
by which it was taken up,”--that “descant” means “look askant on,”--and
that “I wis” is equivalent to “I surmise, imagine,” which it surely is
not in the passage to which his note is appended. On page 9, Vol. I., we
read in the text,
“To whom, my lord, bends thus your awe,”
and in the note, “i. e. submission. The original has _aue_, which, if it
mean _ave_, is unmeaning here.” Did Mr. Hazlitt never see a picture of
the Annunciation with _ave_ written on the scroll proceeding from the
bending angel’s mouth? We find the same word in Vol. III. p. 217:--
“Whose station’s built on avees and applause.”