_To do any thing by the
card_, is, _to do it with nice observation_.
V.i.151 (316,6) the age is grown so picked] So _smart_, so _sharp_, says
HANMER, very properly; but there was, I think, about that time, a
_picked_ shoe, that is, _a shoe with a long pointed toe_, in fashion, to
which the allusion seems likewise to be made. _Every man now is smart;
and every man now is a man of fashion_.
V.i.239 (319,7) winter's flaw!] Winter's _blast_.
V.i.242 (319,8) maimed rites!] Imperfect obsequies.
V.i.244 (319,9) some estate] Some person of high rank.
V.i.255 (319,2) Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants] I have been
informed by an anonymous correspondent, that _crants_ is the German word
for _garlands_, and I suppose it was retained by us from the Saxons. To
carry _garlands_ before the bier of a maiden, and to hang them over her
grave, is still the practice in rural parishes.
_Crants_ therefore was the original word, which the author, discovering
it to be provincial, and perhaps not understood, changed to a term more
intelligible, but less proper. _Maiden rites_ give no certain or
definite image. He might have put _maiden wreaths_, or _maiden
garlands_, but he perhaps bestowed no thought upon it, and neither
genius nor practice will always supply a hasty writer with the most
proper diction.
V.i.310 (323,6) When that her golden couplets] [W: E'er that] Perhaps it
should be,
_Ere yet_--
_Yet_ and _that_ are easily confounded.
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