I can but wonder that Mr. Pope did not see the pointing should be thus regulated:

Our true intent is: All for your delight

We are not here :-that you should here repent you,
The actors are at hand.

P. 130. This grizly beast, which Lion hight by name. All the rest of this speech is in alternate rhyme; but no rhyme remains to name: we must therefore either conclude that an intermediate line is lost here; or else I suspect an accidental transposition in the words, which, set right, may restore it to a triplet.

This grizly Beast, which by name Lion hight,

coming first by night, or rather did affright,

P. 130. That I, one Flute by name, present a Wall. Here is a small mistake here, that neither sagacity, nor collation with the old copies, could direct Mr. Pope to set right. It is plain, from p. 83, that Flute played Thisbe. Indeed both the old Quartos, in 1600, propagate this error; but the first and second Editions in Folio read, as it surely ought to be:

That I, one Snout by name.

P. 132. Here come two noble beasts in, a Man and a Lion.

I do not think the jest here is either complete, or right. It is differently pointed in several of the old copies, which, I suspect, may lead us to the true reading: viz.

Here come two noble beasts, in a Man and a Lion.

But here the text is wrong; immediately, upon Theseus saying this, enter Lion and Moonshine. I can therefore scarce doubt but our Author wrote:

Here come two noble beasts, in a Moon and a Lion. the one having a crescent and lanthorn before him and representing the man in the Moon; the other in a Lion's hide.

P. 135.

P. 135. Dem. And thus she means: videlicet.
Surely, our Poet wrote:

And thus she moans, &c.

All Thisbe's subsequent speech being a lamentation for Pyramus; and besides, it is said just above: Here she comes, and her Passion ends the play. Which, by the way, I think should be spoken by Philostrate, and not by Theseus; for the former, as we find by p. 128, had seen the interlude rehearsed, and consequently knew how it ended.

P. 135. These lily Lips, this cherry nose, &c.

All Thisbe's lamentation runs in metre and versification.

The first and second rhyme.

The third rhymes to the sixth.
The fourth and fifth rhyme.
The sixth rhymes to the third.

But this versification is, in the single instance here quoted, transgressed. There must be therefore, I imagine, a small innovation, by some accident or other, upon the text. I would restore it thus:

These lily Brows,

This cherry nose, &c.

Now black brows being a beauty, lily brows are as ridiculous as a cherry nose, green eyes, or cowslip cheeks.

Ibid. Lay them in gore, &c.
Would it not be better:

Lave them in gore, &c.

Here, Sir, I conclude this part of my task, and have room left to trouble you but with very few queries farther at present. But I will continue my rule, that no paper shall be lost.

Merry Wives, p. 212:

Shall. The Luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old Coat.

This has been a most inveterate passage to me, and so still continues. I propound it to you as a riddle,

riddle, and I wish most fervently you may have the luck to solve it; to which end too, I will gladly communicate such hints, if they may possibly give any light. Justice Shallow, in this Play, is supposed to be Sir Thomas Lucy, who persecuted Shakespeare for deer-stealing. The Lucys, as we find by Dugdale's Warwickshire, quartered 12 fishes called Luces in their arms; and of Luces, Gesner tells us, there is a marine and a fresh-water species. I was thinking that if in Heraldry the fresh-water Luce might signify a younger branch, and the sea Luce a head of a family, and Falstaff were to say this to Shallow, it might carry a good deal of concealed satire; but then, as Sir Hugh interposes his dialogue, and as there is no reply made to this supposed satire, I am obliged to disapprove my own conjecture.

I can have room but for one more; and that shall be out of Hamlet, p. 228:

Haste me to know, that I with wings as swift

As Meditation, or the Thoughts of Love, &c. Here is either, I suspect, a most barbarous tautology, or a great mistake in terms. Thought, indeed, is swift; but Meditation is not so. That is, I take it, a deliberate action of the soul, by which we weigh and ponder our first simple ideas, and so form a judgment upon them.

I imagine our Author wrote,

As Mediation, or the Thoughts of Love.

So a tautology will be quite removed; and a beauty, in my poor opinion, added to the thought.

I wish the paper would further comply with my inclination but it shall, in yielding me the scope to confess myself, dear Sir,

Your most sincerely obliged humble servant,

LEW. THEOBALD."

VOL. II.

R

LETTER

LETTER X.

To Mr. WARBURTON, at Newark.

DEAR SIR, Thursday, 29 May, 1729.I have received the pleasure of your last, and very zealously embrace the encouragement you give me of corresponding; which I shall always be fond of continuing, so long as you indulge me in it, and I am capable of desiring self-improvement. I entirely come into your thoughts, that this epistolary intercourse should be kept up with all the negligence of conversation; a studied elegance of style would here be affectation, and an impediment in its consequence. Therefore, to proceed in your own method, I shall first trouble you with my thoughts on your observations, and then subjoin my own fresh enquiries.

As to your explanation of the Basilisco-like, there can be no dispute but it is very ingenious. I am only afraid, as you say on another of mine, lest it should be thought too refined. It carries an allusion in a single word, without the thought being any further prosecuted; consequently must be very dark to the person spoken to, as well as to the whole audience.

The difficulty of Limoges and Austria is sufficiently cleared up to me.

And I am no less indebted for your reconciling me to three-man Songmen, as it now stands in our Author. It was my own thought once, that it meant one that could sing all the three parts in any musical composition; but I was staggered in this by Mr. Galliard's opinion, that the word could hardly bear that idea: yet I am convinced it may, in spite of his technical judgment.

*. And now to come to some short remarks new passages transmitted to me.

upon

the

Tempest,

Tempest, p. 6:

If you can command these elements to silence, and work the Peace of the present, we will not hand, &c.

You propose of the Prease; but Prease, or Press, I am afraid, signifies only a Crowd, not a Tumult. I have all along read and understood the passage thus:

the peace o' the present, i. e. on the Present. That is, if you can command silence, and appease these elements on the instant, at a word's speaking, what need we be at such labour in working a ship?

We split, we split, &c.

Prosp.

These two lines, I conceive, were designed to be spoken as by the ship's crew, who make a confused clamour within, on their apprehensions of sinking. Master of a full poor Cell. These two, I confess, taken as adjectives, have such a contrariety in their sense, that the expression approaches very near to a blunder. But I have always understood the first of them to be adverbially coupled to the other with an hyphen;

As to the next,

Master of a full-poor * Cell.

Like one who having into Truth, &c.

here you propose to substitute-injured Truth-as a cure for the sense. I will tell you how I have read and conceived it; and then submit it to you, whether there needs any recourse to that change: Like one

Who having into Truth, by telling 't oft,

Made such a Sinner of his Memory,

To credit his own Lie.

i. e. says Prospero,

My brother has behaved so like a common Liar that tells his false stories so often over, till he de

* Perpauperis, perexigua Cellulæ. And the French, I remember, express themselves in the very same manner, fort-demalade, fortiter, &c.