To hurt by being just: it is as lawful as
(For we would give much) to commit violent thefts
And rob in the behalf of charity."
"To count violent thefts" here would be sheer nonsense; and when we recollect how easy it is to mistake comit for count, the former word being almost always thus written and often thus printed, we must, I think, be convinced that in copying an interlineated MS., the printer misplaced and misprinted that word, and transposed as, if the repetition of it be not also an error.—"For," commencing the parenthesis, "we would give much" stands for cause. The emphasis should, I think, be
laid on for; and commit be accented on the first syllable. Thus the line, though of twelve syllables, is not unmetrical; indeed much less prosaic than with the old reading of count.
This correction, upon the principle which governs Messrs. Collier and Knight, and which indeed should govern all of us,
"To lose no drop of that immortal man,"
ought to be satisfactory; for it is effected without taking away a letter. The transposition of two evidently misplaced words, and the correction of a letter or two palpably misprinted in one of them, is the whole gentle violence that has been used in a passage which has been, as we see, considered desperate. But, as Pope sings:
"Our sacred Shakspeare,—comprehensive mind!
Who for all ages writ, and all mankind,