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A Review of Doctor Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare
A Review of Doctor Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare Author:William Kenrick Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: you fee, for ' I dare draw as foon as another man, if I fee oc- cafion, in a good quarrel, and the law of my fide.' . Dr. Warburton's note, as it is quote... more »d by our editor, runs thus : ... i' After fummcr, merrily.'] This is the reading of all the editions : yet Mr. Theobald has fubftituted fun.fet, becaufe Ariel talks of riding on the bat in this expedition. An idle fancy. That circumftnce is given only to defign the time of night in which fairies travel. One would think the con- ' fideration of the circumftanees fiiould have fet him right. Ariel was a fpirit of great delicacy, bound, by the charms of Profpero, to .a conftant attendance on his occafions. So ( that he was confined to the ifland winter and Cummer. But the roughnefs of winter is reprefented by Shakefpeare as dif- agreeable to fairies, and fuch like delicate fpirits, who, on this account, conftantly follow fumtner. Was not this then the moft agreeable circumfbnce of Ariel's new reco- vered liberty, that he could now avoid winter, and follow fummer quite round the globe ? But, to put the matter out ' of queftion, let us confider the meaning of this line, ' There 1 couch when owls do cry. Where ? in the cowjlip's bell and where the bee fucks, he tells ' us : this muft needs be in fummer. When ? when owls cry% and this is in winter. ' When blood is nipt, and ways be foul, Then nightly fings the flaring owl. Love's Labour Lost. The confequence is, that Ariel flies after fummer.' Such is Dr. Warburton's elaborate annotation : in anfwer to which it may be obferved that, whether Theobald's rea- foning be right or not, his own arguments are egregioufly wrong. 1 will admit, with Dr. Warburton, that Ariel here fpeaks of himfelf as a kind of fair...« less