“Poor verdant foole and now green ice, thy joys,
Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,
_Bid_,” &c.
i. e. “Poor fool now frozen, the shortness of thy joys, who mad’st no
provision against winter, warns us to do otherwise.”
“The radiant gemme was brightly set
In as divine a carkanet;
Of which the clearer was not knowne
Her minde or her complexion.” (p. 101.)
The original reads rightly “for which,” &c., and, the passage being
rightly pointed, we have,--
“For which the clearer was not known,
Her mind or her complexion.”
Of course “complexion” had not its present limited meaning.
“ ... my future daring bayes
Shall bow itself.” (p. 107.)
“We should read _themselves_,” says Mr. Hazlitt’s note authoritatively.
Of course a noun ending in _s_ is plural! Not so fast. In spite of the
dictionaries, _bays_ was often used in the singular.
“Do plant a sprig of cypress, not of bays,”
says Robert Randolph in verses prefixed to his brother’s poems; and
Fe11tham in “Jonsonus Virbius,”
“A greener bays shall crown Ben Jonson’s name.”