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V.i.23 (119,4) cold palsies] This catalogue of loathsome maladies ends in the folio at cold palsies. This passage, as it stands, is in the quarto: the retrenchment was in my opinion judicious. It may be remarked, though it proves nothing, that, of the few alterations made by Milton in the second edition of his wonderful poem, one was, an enlargement of the enumeration of diseases.

V.i.32 (119,5) you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur] Patroclos reproaches Thersites with deformity, with having one part crowded into another.

V.i.35 (119,6) thou idle immaterial skeyn of sley'd silk] All the terms used by Thersites of Patroclus, are emblematically expressive of flexibility, compliance, and mean officiousness.

V.i.40 (119,7) Out, gall!] HANMER reads nut-gall, which answers well enough to finch-egg; it has already appeared, that our author thought the nut-gall the bitter gall. He is called nut, from the conglobation of his form; but both the copies read, Out, gall!

V.i.41 (120,8) Finch egg!] Of this reproach I do not know the exact meaning. I suppose he means to call him singing bird, as implying an useless favourite, and yet more, something more worthless, a singing bird in the egg, or generally, a slight thing easily crushed.

V.i.64 (121,2) forced with wit] Stuffed with wit. A term of cookery.—In this speech I do not well understand what is meant by loving quails.

V.i.73 (121,3) spirits and fires!] This Thersites speaks upon the first sight of the distant lights.

V.ii.11 (124,1) And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff] That is, her key. Clef, French.

V.ii.41 (125,2) You flow to great distraction] So the moderns. The folio has,

You flow to great distraction.—

The quarto,

You flow to great destruction.—

I read,

You show too great distraction.—

V.ii.108 (128,7) But with my heart the other eye doth see] I think it should be read thus,

But my heart with the other eye doth see.

V.ii.113 (128,8) A proof of strength she could not publish more] She could not publish a stronger proof.

V.ii.125 (129,1) I cannot conjure, Trojan] That is, I cannot raise spirits in the form of Cressida.

V.ii.141 (129,2) If there be rule in unity itself] I do not well understand what is meant by rule in unity. By rule our author, in this place as in others, intends virtuous restraint, regularity of manners, command of passions and appetites. In Macbeth,

He cannot buckle his distemper'd cause

Within the belt of rule.—

But I know not how to apply the word in this sense to unity. I read,

If there be rule in purity itself,

Or, If there be rule in verity itself.

Such alterations would not offend the reader, who saw the state of the old editions, in which, for instance, a few lines lower, the almighty sun is called the almighty fenne.—Yet the words may at last mean, If there be certainty in unity, if it be a rule that one is one.

V.ii.144 (130,3) Bi-fold authority!] This is the reading of the quarto. The folio gives us,

By foul authority!—

There is madness in that disquisition in which a man reasons at once for and against himself upon authority which he knows not to be valid. The quarto is right.

V.ii.144 (130,4)

where reason can revolt

Without perdition, and loss assume all reason

Without revolt]

The words loss and perdition are used in their common sense, but they mean the loss or perdition of reason.

V.ii.157 (131,6) And with another knot five-finger-tied] A knot tied by giving her hand to Diomed.

V.ii.160 (131,7) o'er-eaten faith] Vows which she has already swallowed once over. We still say of a faithless man, that he has eaten his words.

V.ii.161 (131,8)

Ulyss. May worthy Troilus be half attach'd

With that which here his passion doth express!]

Can Troilus really feel on this occasion half of what he utters? A question suitable to the calm Ulysses.

V.iii.21 (133,2)

For us to count we give what's gain'd by thefts,

And rob in the behalf of charity]

This is so oddly confused in the folio, that I transcribe it as a specimen of incorrectness:

—do not count it holy,

To hurt by being just; it were