having discerned the allusion to Herod. ii. 133.
It is very curious that the word substituted is often the very opposite of the right word. I myself once wrote—and so it is printed—diameter for circumference. In Mrs. C. Clarke's most valuable Concordance we have "humorous plebeian" for "humorous patrician." I have met with next for last and none for some; so in The Mer. of Ven., ii. 2, where the folio has "Is sum of nothing," the 4tos read "Is sum of something." In Lear v. 3, the folio reads
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us;
while the 4tos have "pleasant virtues."
In All's Well, iii. 2, and Taming of the Shrew, iii. 1, we have old for new. In a proof-sheet which I lately saw there was a quotation of
The paths of glory lead but to the grave;
and the printer had substituted life for "grave," though, as the entire stanza was given, he had the rime to guide him. Many instances of this practice will be found in Love's Labour's Lost. In La Giovanezza, a poem of the Italian poet Pindemonte, I have just met with brutte where the rime and the sense require belle.
It does not seem to have been observed that printers will actually insert words, for the sake of sense or metre, when they have made a mistake. In my Life of Milton, I had occasion to quote a passage from his prose works containing "with a conscience that would retch;" and of this the printer made "with a conscience that he would relish;" and so, I am sorry to say, it is printed. See on Mer. of Ven. iv. 1.
And stones did cast, yet he for nought would swerve.