—slack her duty,
which is no better. May we not change it thus:
You less know bow to value her desert,
Than she to scan her duty.
To scan may be to measure or proportion. Yet our author uses his negatives with such licentiousness, that it is hardly safe to make any alteration.—Scant may mean to adapt, to fit, to proportion; which sense seems still to be retained in the mechanical term scantling. (see 1765, VI, 67, 4)
II.iv.155 (385,1) Do you but mark how this becomes the house?] [T: the use?] [Warburton called "becomes the house" "a most expressive phrase">[ with this most expressive phrase I believe no reader is satisfied. I suspect that it has been written originally,
Ask her forgiveness?
Do you but mark how this becometh—thus.
Dear daughter, I confess, &c.
Becomes the house, and becometh thus, might be easily confounded by readers so unskilful as the original printers.