If this correction be allowed, every thing is perfectly right. It is properly the breathing, the cold breath of the North, that shuts up the Buds when they are on the point of blowing. Whence the epithet tyrannous will be understood not as implying the idea of blust’ring (an idea indeed necessary if we retain the word shakes) but simply of cruel, the tyranny of this wind consisting in imprisoning the flower in its Bud and denying it the liberty of coming out into Blossom. The application too of this comparison, which required the change of growing into blowing, seems also to require the present alteration of shakes. For there was no manner of violence in the father’s coming in upon the lovers. All the effect was, that his presence restrained them from that interchange of tender words, which was going to take place between them.
Thus far I had written in the last edition of these notes, and I, now, see no cause to doubt the general truth and propriety of this emendation. Only it occurs to me that, instead of SHUTS, the poet’s own word might, perhaps, be CHECKS; as not only being more like in sound to the word shakes, but as coming nearer to the traces of the Letters. Besides, CHECKS gives the precise idea we should naturally look for, whether we regard the integrity of the figure—tyrannous—checks—, or the thing illustrated by it, viz. the abrupt coming in of the father, which was properly a check upon the lovers. Lastly, the expression is mended by this reading; for though we may be allowed to say shuts from blowing, yet checks from blowing, is easier and better English.
But to return to other Instances of the Poet’s artifice in the management of known words. An apparent Novelty is sometimes effected
7. By turning Participles into Adverbs—
——tremblingly she stood
And on the sudden dropt—
A. C. A. V. S. 5.
(One remembers the fine use Mr. Pope has made of this word in,
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er—)
——But his flaw’d heart,
Alack, too weak the conflict to support,
’Twixt two extremes of Passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly—
Lear, A. V. S. 8.
8. By figurative terms; i. e. by such terms as though common in the plain, are unusual in the figurative application.
——This common Body
Like to a vagabond flag, upon the stream,
Goes to, and back, lacquying the varying tide.
A. C. A. I. S. 5.