"Baited like eagles having lately bath'd."
I know no sense of the verb bait that will give any tolerable meaning here. To read 'Bated,' as is usually done, from bate, to flap the wings, gives merely a ridiculous sense. I have a strong persuasion that the poet's word was Beated, a term which he also uses in Son. lxii., where, by the way, the critics seem not to have understood it. Bete, beat, beath, is to kindle, heat, dry; and the idea in the poet's mind seems to have been that of eagles, after refreshing themselves by bathing, sitting on rocks for the sun to dry their plumage. To these he likens the young knights, fresh and vigorous, sitting on their war-steeds, under the beams of the sun. Hence he goes on to say "Glittering," etc.
Sc. 2.
"There's not a shirt and a half in all my company."
For 'not,' Rowe, who is usually followed, read but. In my Edition I have given here and in v. 3 'not but' as more forceable. See Index, [But].
Sc. 3.
"Into his title, which we find to be
Too indirect for long continuance."