"Than the soft yielding myrtle; but man, proud man!"
"That soft and yielding mind should not be in him."
Lyly, Campaspe, ii. 2.
"Most ignorant of what he's most assured of."
"Not with fond sickles of the tested gold."
In all the English versions of the Scriptures anterior to the Authorized one, sicle is the word, from siclus of the Vulgate, by which the Hebrew shekel is rendered. Shakespeare therefore knew nothing of this last, and must of course have written sickle. Yet all editors, the Cambridge and myself included, have adopted Pope's correction, shekel, for which all are highly to blame. The word 'tested' proves that Gen. xxiii. 16 was in the poet's mind.
"Would all themselves laugh mortal."