Earth-treading stars that make dark EVEN light.
—Warburton.
But why nonsense? Is anything more commonly said, than that beauties eclipse the sun? Has not Pope the thought and the word?
Sol through white curtains shot a tim'rous ray,
And ope'd those eyes that must eclipse the day.
Both the old and the new reading are philosophical nonsense, but they are both, and both equally poetical sense.
ACT I. SCENE iii. (I. ii. 26-8.)
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel,
When well-apparel'd April on the heel
Of limping winter treads.
To say, and to say in pompous words, that a "young man shall feel" as much in an assembly of beauties, "as young men feel in the month of April," is surely to waste sound upon a very poor sentiment. I read, Such comfort as do lusty YEOMEN feel. You shall feel from the sight and conversation of these ladies such hopes of happiness and such pleasure, as the farmer receives from the spring, when the plenty of the year begins, and the prospect of the harvest fills him with delight.
ACT I. SCENE iv. (l. iii. 92.)
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
The "golden story" is perhaps the "golden legend", a book in the darker ages of popery much read, and doubtless often exquisitely embellished, but of which Canus, one of the popish doctors, proclaims the author to have been homo ferrei oris, plumbei cordis.