I doubt if the editors have perfectly understood this passage. I cannot, for example, see that they have been aware that the 'tongue' and the 'hand' both belong to the metaphorical 'clock'—the former being the bell which sounds, when the latter gives the signal by arriving at the point of twelve, that is, when 'Exception,' i.e. contradiction, 'bids it speak.'
"In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man."
I would read whose for 'their,' evidently suggested by 'them' in the preceding line; and as the verb 'humble' rarely, if ever, occurs without its object, we should perhaps read, as I have done, 'humbled him.'
"Whose judgements are
Mere fathers of their garments."
I incline to suspect that 'fathers' should be children—not an unusual error. (See Introd. p. [66].) "A parcel of conceited feather-caps, whose fathers were their garments."—Old Play quoted by Steevens. "Whose mother was her painting."—Cymb. iii. 4.
"Believe it, sir,
That clothes do much upon the wit, as weather