"This _outward-sainted_ deputy is yet a devil:"
and the Duke afterwards says:
"Oh, what may man within him hide,
Though angel _on the outward side_."
In _Much Ado about Nothing_ (Act I. Sc. 1.), Benedick says:
"The body of your discourse is sometimes _guarded_ with
fragments, and the _guards_ are but slightly basted on neither."
That the epithet "precise" is peculiarly applicable to the assumed
sanctity of Angelo, the poet has decided in Act I. Sc. 4., where the
Duke describes him thus:
"Lord Angelo is _precise_,
Stands at a guard with envy, scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that appetite
Is more to bread than stone. Hence we shall see,
If power change purpose, what our _seemers_ be."
"The 'pensive' Angelo" might be admissible, though not so appropriate as
"the precise;" but "pensive" is inapplicable to the word "guards," in
the sense which the poet everywhere attaches to it. In the second Scene
of this Act the Clown says:
"Craft being richer than innocency, stands for the _facing_."
Your correspondent may be assured that the word he would substitute was
never written or printed "penzive" in Shakspeare's time.
Mr. Collier's objection, that "precise" "sounds ill as regards the
metre, the accent falling on the wrong syllable," has no weight with me,
for it is doubtful whether the accent was not placed on the first
syllable of "prècise" by the poet and his cotemporaries; but were this
not the case, I should still very much prefer the reading proposed by
Tieck, and adopted by Mr. Knight, to any other that has been proposed,
and have little doubt that it is the true one.