"Cestuy guidon et triomphante enseigne,
Nous devons suyvre: Amour le nous enseigne."
The change of a sea of troubles to assay of troubles in Hamlet is very plausible, and ought perhaps to be received. So also is Sir F. Madden's of face for case (which last is downright nonsense) in Twelfth Night, Act V. Sc. 1. But I would just hint that as all the rest of the Duke's speech is in rhyme, it is not impossible that the poet may have written—
"O thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be
When time hath sow'd a grizzle upon thee?"
Allow me now to put a question to the critics. In the two concluding lines of the Merchant of Venice (the speaker, observe, is the jesting Gratiano):
"Well, while I live, I'll fear no other thing
So sore, as keeping safe Nerissa's ring."
May there not be a covert allusion to the story first told by Poggio in his Facetiæ, then by Ariosto, then by Rabelais, then by La Fontaine, and, finally, by Prior, in his Hans Carvel? Rabelais was greatly read at the time.