"So common hackney'd in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap."
To obviate the repetition, Warburton altered paleness to plainness, but paleness was the appropriate epithet for lead. Thus, Baret has, "Palenesse or wannesse like lead. Ternissure."
And in Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 5., we have:
"Unwieldly, slow, heavy and pale as lead."
With these simple and, most of them, obvious corrections, I submit the passage to the impartial consideration of those who with me think that our immortal poet, so consummate a master of English, has been here, as elsewhere, rendered obscure, if not absurd, by the blunders of the printer. It will then run thus:
"Thus ornament is but the gilded shore
To a most dangerous sea: the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian gipsy; in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on