TWELFTH NIGHT.
Act I.
Sc. 1.
"Oh! it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets."
As a sound breathing is pure nonsense, Pope read south for 'sound'; and, with the exception of Mr. Knight and Mr. Staunton, all the editors, I believe, have followed him. Yet even this correction does not remove the difficulty, for south alone, no more than north, east, or west, is never used of the wind. It seems to me then that the poet wrote south wind, and as the th was usually suppressed in south, north, etc., as sou'-west, sou'-east, the printer pronounced sou wind or, it may be, sou 'ind, which easily became 'sound' in his mind, and so he printed it. (See Introd. p. [67].) It is rather remarkable that this very correction is made by an Anon. in the Cambridge Shakespeare. The same idea, I may observe, occurs in the Antonio and Mellida of Shakespeare's contemporary, Marston (Act I.):
"Smile heaven and softest southern wind
Kiss her cheek gently with perfumed breath."
Both were probably indebted to "Her breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind, that comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters" in Sidney's Arcadia. For a similar omission of wind, see on Temp. i. 2.