Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride,
Could I, with boot, change for an idle plume
Which the air beats for vain."
And, lastly, the passage immediately under consideration:
"This outward-sainted deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word,
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew."—Isabella, Act III. Sc. 1.
Thus much as to the propriety of the word "pensive," in relation to the reputed character of Angelo.
The next question is, whether the word "pensive" is an appropriate epithet to the word "guards." If Messrs. Knight and Collier are correct in construing "guards" to mean the "trimmings or border of robe," this question must be answered in the negative. But it appears to me that they are in error, and that the true meaning of the word "guards," in this particular passage, is "outward appearances," as suggested by Monck Mason; and, consequently, that the expression "pensive guards" means a grave or sanctified countenance or demeanour—"the settled visage and deliberate word" which "nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew."
It requires no argument to establish that the word "pensive" is suitable to the metre in both places in which the misprint occurred and it is equally clear that "prenzie" and "pensive" in manuscript are so similar, both in the number, form, and character of the letters, that the one might easily be printed for the other. The two words also have a certain resemblance, in point of sound; and if the word "pensive" be not very distinctly pronounced, the mistake might be made by a scribe writing from dictation.