The authour
of the _Revisal_ cannot admit the measure to be faulty. There is only
one foot, he says, put for another. This is one of the effects of
literature in minds not naturally perspicacious. Every boy or girl finds
the metre imperfect, but the pedant comes to its defence with a
tribrachys or an anapaest, and sets it right at once by applying to one
language the rules of another. If we may be allowed to change feet, like
the old comic writers, it will not be easy to write a line not metrical.
To hint this once, is sufficient. (see 1765, VI, 424, 2)
III.i.65 (460,5) For Banquo's issue have I fil'd my mind] [W: 'filed]
This mark of contraction is not necessary. To _file_ is in the bishop's
_Bible_.
III.i.69 (460,6) the common enemy of man] It is always an entertainment
to an inquisitive reader, to trace a sentiment to its original source;
and therefore, though the term _enemy of man_, applied to the devil, is
in itself natural and obvious, yet some may be pleased with being
informed, that Shakespeare probably borrowed it from the first lines of
the Destruction of Troy, a book which he is known to have read. This
expression, however, he might have had in many other places. The word
_fiend_ signifies enemy.
III.i.71 (461,7) come, Fate, into the list,/And champion me to the
utterance!] This passage will be best explained by translating it into
the language from whence the only word of difficulty in it is borrowed,
"_Que la destinee se rende en lice, et qu'elle me donne un defi a
l'outrance_.
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