[13] [Serious.]
[14] The original copy reads—
"With strange guises invented now long agoe."
But the sense seems to require the negative, which former editors substituted for now.—C.
[15] So in Hamlet: "The king is a thing of nothing." See the Notes of Dr Johnson, Dr Farmer, and Mr Steevens on that passage, edition of Shakspeare, 1778, vol. 10, p. 336. This play on the words was very common.
Again, in "The Humorous Lieutenant," A. iv. S. 6—
"Shall, then, that thing that honours thee
How miserable a thing soever, yet a thing still,
And, tho' a thing of nothing, thy thing ever."
[Dyce's edit. vi. 516.]