and, moreover, destroys all the poetry of the thought. Nor can I see the slightest difficulty in the sense of the original passage. The king means to say that Wolsey cannot steal from the little leisure afforded him by his spiritual labours "a brief span, to keep his earthly audit:" and surely this is much more poetical than the substituted passage.
In p. 323., from the same play, we have—
"to the sharp'st kind of justice,"
transformed to "sharp'st knife of justice:" but I cannot assent to this change. The obvious meaning of the poet is, that the contempt of the world, "shutting all doors" against the accused, is a sharper kind of justice than any which the law could inflict: but, to be given up to "the sharp'st knife of justice" could only mean, being consigned to the public executioner,—which was just what Katherine was deprecating.
In p. 325. the lines relating to Wolsey's foundations at Ipswich and Oxford are printed thus in the folio—
"one of which fell with him,
Unwilling to outlive the good that did it:"
that is, unwilling to outlive the virtues which prompted it,—a passage teeming with poetical feeling: but the commentator has ruthlessly altered it to—
"Unwilling to outlive the good man did it;"
which, I submit, not only destroys all the poetry, but is decidedly not English!