“And, where he took _it_ up, resigns the _bays_.”
“But we (defend us!) are divine,
[Not] female, but madam born, and come
From a right-honorable wombe.” (p. 115.)
Here Mr. Hazlitt has ruined both sense and metre by his unhappy “not.”
We should read “Female, but madam-born,” meaning clearly enough “we are
women, it is true, but of another race.”
“In every hand [let] a cup be found
That from all hearts a health may sound.” (p. 121.)
Wrong again, and the inserted “let” ruinous to the measure. Is it
possible that Mr. Hazlitt does not understand so common an English
construction as this?
“First told thee into th’ ayre, then to the ground.” (p. 141.)
Mr. Hazlitt inserts the “to,” which is not in the original, from another
version. Lovelace wrote “ayër.” We have noted two other cases (pp. 203
and 248) where he makes the word a dissyllable. On the same page we have
“shewe’s” changed to “shew” because Mr. Hazlitt did not know it meant
“show us” and not “shows.” On page 170, “their” is substituted for
“her,” which refers to Lucasta, and could refer to nothing else.
Mr. Hazlitt changes “quarrels _the_ student Mercury” to “quarrels
_with_,” not knowing that _quarrels_ was once used as a transitive verb.
(p. 189.)
Wherever he chances to notice it, Mr. Hazlitt changes the verb following
two or more nouns connected by an “and” from singular to plural. For
instance:--
“You, sir, alone, fame, and all conquering rhyme
File the set teeth,” &c. (p. 224.)
for “files.” Lovelace commonly writes so;--on p. 181, where it escaped
Mr. Hazlitt’s grammatical eye, we find,--
“But broken faith, and th’ cause of it,
All damning gold, _was_ damned to the pit.”
Indeed, it was usual with writers of that day. Milton in one of his
sonnets has,--
“Thy worth and skill _exempts_ thee from the throng,”--
and Leigh Hunt, for the sake of the archaism, in one of his, “Patience
and Gentleness _is_ power.”
Weariness, and not want of matter, compels us to desist from further
examples of Mr. Hazlitt’s emendations. But we must also give a few
specimens of his notes, and of the care with which he has corrected the
punctuation.
In a note on “flutes of canary” (p. 76) too long to quote, Mr. Hazlitt,
after citing the glossary of Nares (edition of 1859, by Wright and
Halliwell, a very careless book, to speak mildly), in which _flute_ is
conjectured to mean _cask_, says that he is not satisfied, but adds, “I
suspect that a flute _of canary_ was so called from the cask having
several vent-holes.” But flute means simply a tall glass. Lassel,
describing the glass-making at Murano, says, “For the High Dutch they
have high glasses called _Flutes_, a full yard long.” So in Dryden’s
_Sir Martin Mar-all_, “bring two flute-_glasses_ and some stools, ho!
We’ll have the ladies’ health.” The origin of the word, though doubtful,
is probably nearer to _flood_ than _flute_. But conceive of two
gentlemen, members of one knows not how many learned societies, like
Messrs. Wright and Halliwell, pretending to edit Nares, when they query
a word which they could have found in any French or German dictionary!