Replies.
REPLY TO MR. HICKSON'S OBJECTIONS.
Vol. v., pp. 554. 573.)
That Mr. Hickson should have discovered no graver objections to certain suggestions of mine respecting the text of Shakspeare than those he has brought forward, is of itself no slight testimonial in their favour.
In one instance I have already (Vol. v., p. 210.) shown Mr. Hickson (I trust satisfactorily) that his then somewhat similar objection had no weight; nor do these now advanced appear much more formidable.
As to the passage from As You Like It, which Mr. Hickson remarks is capable of a moral as well as a physical interpretation—undoubtedly it is! But, in the first place, it must still remain a matter of opinion which sense best accords with the context: and, secondly, even admitting the moral sense to be the true one, still it does not necessarily disturb the analogy between it and
Imogen's allusion to the jay of Italy. In that case, also, the moral sense may be understood as implying the absence of all principle other than that derived from her own gaudy vanity.
Were I disposed to cavil, I might, in my turn, question Mr. Hickson's estimate of Phebe's beauty. Surely Rosalind's depreciation of it is not real, but only assumed, for the purpose of humbling, Phebe! Inky brows, black silk hair, bugle eye-balls, cheek of cream—these are not items in a catalogue of ugliness!
Mr. Hickson's second objection (p. 573.) is to my explanation of the demonstrative that in the Duke's opening speech in Measure for Measure. He thinks that, according to "the language we in England use," the Duke would have used the word this instead of that.
Does Mr. Hickson seriously mean to say that Shakspeare's language is to be scanned by our present ideas of correctness? Is the bold sweep of the Master's hand to be measured by the graduation of modern convention? Are there no instances in Shakspeare of the indiscriminate substitution of personal and impersonal pronouns—of active and passive participles—of words and phrases waiting upon the magician's wind, like familiar spirits, to be moulded to his will, and acknowledging no rule but of his creation?