"And my pure soot is hang'd!"
Poor, he adds, might be easily mistaken for pure; while the s in soot (sweet) was scarcely discernible from the f, or the t from the l.—p. 176.
We are happy to find that so much can be offered in favour of the old printers. And yet—were it not that the genuine text is always to be preferred—we could almost wish that the critic had left their blunder as it stood.
"Wolsey.—that his bones May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on them."
A tomb of tears is ridiculous. I read—a coomb of tears—a coomb is a liquid measure containing forty gallons. Thus the expression, which was before absurd, becomes forcible and just.—vol. ii, p. 134.
It does indeed!
"Sir Andrew. I sent thee six-pence for thy leman (mistress): had'st it?" Read as Shakespeare wrote: "I sent thee sixpence for thy lemma"—lemma is properly an argument, or proposition assumed, and is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a story.—p. 335.
"Viola. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy."—Correct it thus:
"She pined in thought
And with agrein and hollow melancholy."—p. 339.
"Iago. I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense,
And he grows angry"—