Becomes afeafd'" * How
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* Mr. Seward here irUroduces^a note containing a very prolix commentary on some pat*sages in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra — In the lines, -** If we draw lots, he speeds; His cocks do win the battle still of mine.When it is all to nought ; and his quails everBut mine in-hoop'd at odds," he says there is '^ evidently a sad anti-climax: His cocks win the battle of mine when it is allto nought on my side, and his quails, fighting in a hoop, beat mine when the odds are on myjA^e ;*' and would therefore react, *' Beat MR. SEWARD^S PREFACE. xlix How should we have flatned our authors if we had, as the Reheartml callsit, transprosed them in the like manner? *• In this place work a quicksand.And over it a shallow smiling water,And his ship ploughing it, aiid them qfear^d;Do their fear bravely.'* The second instance quoted in the Musaeum as a proof of Mr, Upton'sexcellency, is his alteration of another of Shakespeare's peculiar graces iathe following celebrated passage. ** Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot :This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod, and the delighted spiritTo bathe in fiery floods, or to resideIn thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice/* The epithet delighted in the fourth line is extremely beautiful, as it carrieron the fine antithesis between the joys of life and the horrors of death.This sensible warm motion must become a kneaded clod, and this spirit^ rfc-lighted as it has hitherto been with the soothing delicacies of sense andthe pleasing ecstacies of youthful fancy, must bat/fc in Jiery floods. Thisis peculiarly proper from a youth just snatched from revelry and wanton-ness, to suffer the anguish and horror of a shameful death. But thisbeautiful sense not being seen, Mr. Upton makes the first editor surpris-ingly blind indeed, for he says that he did not see the absurdity of a spirit'sbeing delighted to bathe in Jiery floods. Upon supposition therefore of thisabsurdity being chargeable on the old text, he alters delighted spirit to de^lifiquent spirit: A change which totally loses the whole spirit of the poet'soriginal sentiment. These are su<3h mistakes that neither the most exten-sive literature nor the accuracy of a Locke's judgment can secure a manfrom; nor indeed any thing but h poetic taste, a soul that *' Is of imagination all compact,*' *• Beat mine in ivhoop*d-al odds.*'Dr. Johnson mentiont and rejects this variation ; Dr. Farmer denies the necessity of change. peotmetaphor is, * ^Where's my serpent of old Nile ? ——Now I feed myself
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