--The learned critic's [Warburton] emendations are now to be
examined. _Scattered_ he has changed to _scathed_; for _scattered_, he
says, gives _the idea of an anarchy, which was not the case_. It may be
replied that _scathed_ gives the idea of ruin, waste, and desolation,
_which was not the case_. It is unworthy a lover of truth, in questions
of great or little moment, to exaggerate or extenuate for mere
convenience, or for vanity yet less than convenience. _Scattered_
naturally means _divided, unsettled, disunited_.--Next is offered with
great pomp a change of _sea_ to _seize_; but in the first edition the
word is _fee_, for _hire_, in the sense of having any one in _fee_, that
is, at _devotion for money_. _Fee_ is in the second quarto changed to
_see_, from which one made _sea_ and another _seize_.
III.ii.4 (398,1) thought-executing] Doing execution with rapidity equal
to thought.
III.ii.19 (399,4) Here I stand, your slave] [W: brave] The meaning is
plain enough, he was not their _slave_ by right or compact, but by
necessity and compulsion. Why should a passage be darkened for the sake
of changing it? Besides, of _brave_ in that sense I remember no example.
III.ii.24 (399,5) 'tis foul] Shameful; dishonourable.
III.ii.30 (399,6) So beggars marry many] i.e. A beggar marries a wife
and lice.
III.ii.46 (400,1) Man's nature cannot carry/The affliction, nor the
fear] So the folio: the later editions read, with the quarto, _force_
for _fear_, less elegantly.
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