[53a] Shakspeare seems to have profited afterward by this metaphor, even more perhaps than by all the direct pieces of instruction in poetry given him so handsomely by the worthy knight. And here it may be permitted the editor to profit also by the manuscript, correcting in Shakspeare what is absolute nonsense as now printed:—
“Vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself.”
It should be its sell. Sell is saddle in Spenser and elsewhere, from the Latin and Italian.
This emendation was shewn to the late Mr. Hazlitt, an acute man at least, who expressed his conviction that it was the right reading, and added somewhat more in approbation of it.
[55a] It has been suggested that this answer was borrowed from Virgil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of the manuscript. The Editor’s memory was upon the stretch to recollect the words; the learned critic supplied them:—
“Solum Æneas vocat: et vocet, oro.”
The Editor could only reply, indeed weakly, that calling and waiting are not exactly the same, unless when tradesmen rap and gentlemen are leaving town.
[66a] Here the manuscript is blotted; but the probability is that it was fishmonger, rather than ironmonger, fishmongers having always been notorious cheats and liars.
[70a] On the nail appears to be intended to express ready payment.
[72a] The Cordilleras are mountains, we know, running through South America. Perhaps a pun was intended; or possibly it might, in the age of Elizabeth, have been a vulgar term for hanging, although we find no trace of the expression in other books. We have no clue to guide us here. It might be suggested that Shakspeare, who shines little in geographical knowledge, fancied the Cordilleras to extend into North America, had convicts in his time been transported to those colonies. Certainly, many adventurers and desperate men went thither.