by the usual Errour of the Transcribers, who probably omitted a Cypher, and had not Taste enough to know that the Word
Thousand
was ten Times a greater Compliment to the Poet's Mistress than an
Hundred
.
Verse the Fourth.
And finds Variety in one
] Most of the Ancient Manuscripts have it
in two
. Indeed so many of them concur in this last reading, that I am very much in doubt whether it ought not to take place. There are but two Reasons which incline me to the Reading as I have published it; First, because the Rhime, and, Secondly, because the Sense is preserved by it. It might likewise proceed from the Oscitancy of Transcribers, who, to dispatch their Work the sooner, use to write all Numbers in Cypher, and seeing the Figure 1 following by a little Dash of the Pen, as is customary in old Manuscripts, they perhaps mistook the Dash for a second Figure, and by casting up both together composed out of them the Figure 2. But this I shall leave to the Learned, without determining any thing in a Matter of so great Uncertainty.