"The dram of base
Doth, all the noble substance o'er, a doubt,
To his own scandal:"
i.e. doth cast a doubt over all the noble substance, bring into suspect all the noble qualities by the leaven of one dram of baseness. This, according to your correspondent's own showing, is the very sense required by the context, "the base doth doubt to the noble, i.e. imparts doubt to it, or renders it doubtful." And when we recollect the frequent use of the elision o'er for over by the poet, and the ease with which of might be substituted for it by the compositor, I cannot but think it conclusive. To me the proposed reading, "offer doubt," does not convey a meaning quite so clear and unequivocal.
Conjectural emendation of the text of our great poet is always to be made with extreme caution, and that reading which will afford a clear sense, with the slightest deviation from the first editions, is always to be preferred. The errors are chiefly typographical, and often clearly perceptible, but but they are also not unfrequently perplexing.
That MR. COLLIER and MR. KNIGHT, who do not often sin in this way, should on the present occasion have countenanced such a wide departure from the old copies as to read ill and doubt, may well have surprised A. E. B., as it certainly did
PERIERGUS BIBLIOPHILUS.
"THE MAN IN THE ALMANACK."
(Vol. v., p. 320.)
Nat Lee's Man i' th' Almanack stuck with Pins has no reference to "pricking for fortunes;" but to the figure of a man surrounded by the signs of the zodiac found in old almanacks, and intended to indicate the favourable, adverse, or indifferent periods for bloodletting. From the various signs are lines drawn to various parts of the naked figure; and these lines give it very much the appearance of being stuck with pins.
I have not ready access to any old English almanacks; but a German one of the early part of the sixteenth century contained the figure as above described, with this inscription: