“_Bast._ James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?
_Gur._ Good leave, good Philip.
_Bast._ Philip? _sparrow!_ James,” &c.
Theobald adopts Warburton’s conjecture of “_spare me_.”
O true Warburton! and the _sancta simplicitas_ of honest dull Theobald’s
faith in him! Nothing can be more lively or characteristic than “Philip?
Sparrow!” Had Warburton read old Skelton’s _Philip Sparrow_, an exquisite
and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in Shakespeare’s time, even
Warburton would scarcely have made so deep a plunge into the _bathetic_ as
to have deathified “_sparrow_” into “_spare me_!”