Ne me ferez jamais prononcer que je l'aime."
Racine, Bajazet, iv. 1.
Act II.
Sc. 1.
"Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The season's difference," etc.
As the Duke proceeds to show that he did feel this difference, the text cannot be right. Critics, therefore, for 'not' read but, as these words were frequently confounded by the printers. But then a question arises, was 'the season's difference' any part of 'the penalty of Adam.' In Scripture that penalty was "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread;" and this was the very penalty that the Duke and his friends did not feel; for we have just been told of them (i. 1) that "they fleet away the time carelessly, as they did in the Golden World." Further, it does not appear that any writer anterior to Milton made the Ovidian change of seasons a part of Adam's penalty. The text may therefore be right, and a line, something like this, have been lost,
"Here is no toil; we have only to endure"