Dum. Her amber hairs for foul have amber coted.
Mr. Steevens's explanation of coted, and of the whole line, is inadmissible. Foulness or cloudiness is no criterion of the beauty of amber. Mr. Malone has partly explained coted, by marked, but has apparently missed the sense of it here when he adds written down. Mr. Mason has given the true construction of the line, but he mistakes the meaning of coted, which, after all, merely signifies to mark or note. The word is from the French coter, which, in like manner as Mr. Malone has well observed of the English term, is the old orthography of quoter. The grammatical construction is, "her amber hairs have marked or shown that [real] amber is foul in comparison of themselves."
Scene. 3. Page 291.
Long. Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the Devil.
The objection to Warburton's derivation of quillet from the French is, that there is no such term in the language: nor is it exclusively applicable to law-chicane, though generally so used by Shakspeare. It strictly means a subtilty, and seems to have originated among the schoolmen of the middle ages, by whom it was called a quidlibet. They had likewise their quodlibets and their quiddities. From the schoolmen these terms were properly enough transferred to the lawyers. Hamlet says, "Why may not that be the scull of a lawyer? where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures and his tricks?" The conjectures of Peck, and after him of Dr. Grey in a note to Hudibras, seem to merit but little attention.
Scene 3. Page 294.
Biron. Still climbing trees in the Hesperides.
An error is here laid to Shakspeare's charge, of which he is not perhaps guilty. The expression trees in the Hesperides must be regarded as elliptical, and signifies trees in the gardens of the Hesperides. Shakspeare is seldom wrong in his mythology, and, if he had doubted on the present occasion, the dictionaries of Eliot or Cooper would have supplied him with the necessary information. The first quotation in the note from Greene, is equally elliptical; for this writer was too good a scholar to have committed the mistake ascribed to Shakspeare: so that the passage, instead of convicting the latter, does in reality support him. As to the other quotation from Orpheus and Eurydice, the learned critic himself lays but little stress on it; or indeed might, on reconsideration, be disposed to think the expression correct. It would not be difficult to trace instances in modern authors of the use of Hesperides for gardens of the Hesperides. See Lempriere's excellent classical dictionary, edit. 1792, 8vo.
ACT V.
Scene 1. Page 302.