NOTE VIII.
[V. 1. 44.] This conjecture of Warburton’s, which as he does not mention it in his edition we have marked ‘withdrawn,’ is found in a series of unpublished letters from Theobald to Warburton recently added to the treasures of the British Museum. The first of these letters is dated Feb. 10, 1729, and the last Sep. 4, 1736. That in which allusion is made to the passage in question is dated March 10, 1732. Theobald rejects Warburton’s suggestion, for, he says, ‘Deck’ is ‘a county dialect,’ meaning the same thing. Among the MSS. recently acquired by the Museum is a series of letters from Hanmer to Warburton beginning Dec. 24, 1735, and ending May 25, 1739. In a letter dated July 27, 1737, Hanmer mentions his conjectural reading ‘truss’ for ‘cost’ which he afterwards inserted in the text of his edition. He defends it thus: ‘when a hawk raiseth a fowl aloft and soaring upwards with it at length seizeth it in the air, she is said to truss the fowl, which I imagine is the word which the poor desponding king was made here to apply to his crown.’