ACT III.
Scene 4. Page 107.
Const. And buss thee as thy wife.
In former times there was no vulgarity in this word, as the two first quotations by Mr Steevens demonstrate; but he is peculiarly unfortunate in his last example, which may without detriment be omitted in future editions. The singular vulgarity of Stanihurst's language cannot with propriety be used to exemplify the undegraded use of any word whatever.
No further proof of the justice of this remark is necessary than the mention of his "dandiprat cockney Cupido," or the "blubbering Andromache," whom he describes as "stuttering and stammering to fumble out an answer to her sweeting delicat Hector;" and numerous expressions of a similar nature occur in his eccentric translation of the pure and elegant Virgil. To buss is either from the French baiser, or from some radical word common to both languages, and was formerly written bass. Thus Stanihurst, whom it may be allowable to quote on this occasion;
"That when Queen Dido shall col thee and smacklye bebasse thee:"
And the duke of Orleans, in one of his love poems written in the time of King Henry the Fifth;
"Lend me your praty mouth madame
I wis dere hart to basse it swete."
Scene 4. Page 115.
Pand. No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scape of nature, no distempered day,
No common wind, no customed event,
But they will pluck away his natural cause,
And call them meteors, prodigies and signs,
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.
The old copy reads scope of nature. The alteration was made by Pope, and plausibly commented on by Warburton, who seems to have influenced Mr. Malone to adopt it. The speaker's design is to show that all the common effects of nature which he mentions would be perverted by the people; but an escape of nature would be very properly deemed an abortive. The original reading is therefore correct; nor could an apter word have been selected. Thus in King Henry the Fourth, Part I.:
"And curbs himself even of his natural scope."