In that edition the following passage from The Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. 2., is pointed in this way:—
"Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian; beauty's, in a word,
The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest."
To which the anonymous editor appends the following note:—
"I have deviated slightly from the folio—the ordinary reading represents ornament as 'the beauteous scarf veiling an Indian beauty,' a sentence which by no means serves to illustrate the reflexion which Bassanio wishes to enforce. Sir Thomas Hanmer proposed to read dowdy for beauty!"
My object in this quotation is not that of commending the emendation, but of affording an opportunity of recording the following reasons which induce me to reject it; not only as no improvement to the sense, but as a positive injury to it.
1st. The argument of Bassanio is directed against the deceptiveness of ornament in general, of which seeming beauty is only one of the subordinate illustrations. These illustrations are drawn from law, religion, valour, and beauty; all of which are finally summed up in the passage in question, beginning "Thus ornament," &c. and still further concentrated in the phrase "in a word." Therefore this summing up cannot refer singly to beauty, no more than to any other of the subordinate illustrations, but it must have general reference to adventitious ornament, against which the collected argument is directed.