And damnable ingrateful.”
Theobald reads “soul.”
I think the original word is Shakespeare's. 1. My ear feels it to be Shakespearian; 2. The involved grammar is Shakespearian—“show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by inconstancy;” 3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shakespearian. As to the grossness of the abuse—she calls him “gross and foolish” a few lines below.
Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Autolycus:—
“For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.”
Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who had lived and been reared in the best society, and had been precipitated from it by dice and drabbing; yet still it strikes against my feelings as a note out of tune, and as not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the “snapper up of unconsidered trifles.”
Ib. sc. 4. Perdita's speech:—
“From Dis's waggon! daffodils.”
An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for the balance, for the æsthetic [pg 246] logic. Perhaps “golden” was the word which would set off the “violets dim.”
Ib.—