“Jupiter e cœlo perjuria ridet amantum.”
We dare say Mr. Hazlitt, if he ever read the passage, took it for granted that “to foryn” meant too foreign, and gave it up in despair. But surely Shakespeare’s
“At lovers’ perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs,”
is not too foreign to have put him on the right scent.
Mr. Hazlitt is so particular in giving us v for u and vice versa, that such oversights are a little annoying. Every man his own editor seems to be his theory of the way in which old poetry should be reprinted. On this plan, the more riddles you leave (or make) for the reader to solve, the more pleasure you give him. To correct the blunders in any book edited by Mr. Hazlitt would give the young student a pretty thorough training in archaic English. In this sense the volumes before us might be safely recommended to colleges and schools. When Mr. Hazlitt undertakes to correct, he is pretty sure to go wrong. For example, in “Doctour Doubble Ale” (Vol. III. p. 309) he amends thus:—
“And sometyme mikle strife is
Among the ale wyfes, [y-wis];
where the original is right as it stands. Just before, in the same poem, we have a parallel instance:—
“And doctours dulpatis
That falsely to them pratis,
And bring them to the gates.”
The original probably reads (or should read) wyfis and gatis. But it is too much to expect of Mr. Hazlitt that he should remember the very poems he is editing from one page to another, nay, as we shall presently show, that he should even read them. He will change be into ben where he should have let it alone (though his own volumes might have furnished him with such examples as “were go,” “have se,” “is do,” and fifty more), but he will sternly retain bene where the rhyme requires be, and Ritson had so printed. In “Adam Bel” the word pryme occurs (Vol. II. p. 140), and he vouchsafes us the following note: “i. e. noon. It is commonly used by early writers in this sense. In the Four P. P., by John Heywood, circa 1540, the apothecary says
‘If he taste this boxe nye aboute the pryme
By the masse, he is in heven or even songe tyme.’”