"
{50b} Faith nailing the ears is a strong and sacred metaphor. The
rhyme is imperfect,--Shakspeare was not always attentive to these
minor beauties.
{53a} Shakspeare seems to have profited afterward by this metaphor,
even more perhaps than by all the direct pieces of instruction in
poetry given him so handsomely by the worthy knight. And here it
may be permitted the editor to profit also by the manuscript,
correcting in Shakspeare what is absolute nonsense as now printed:-
"VAULTING ambition that o'erleaps ITSELF."
It should be its SELL. SELL is SADDLE in Spenser and elsewhere,
from the Latin and Italian.
This emendation was shewn to the late Mr. Hazlitt, an acute man at
least, who expressed his conviction that it was the right reading,
and added somewhat more in approbation of it.
{55a} It has been suggested that this answer was borrowed from
Virgil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of the manuscript.
The Editor's memory was upon the stretch to recollect the words; the
learned critic supplied them:-
"Solum AEneas vocat: et vocet, oro."
The Editor could only reply, indeed weakly, that CALLING and WAITING
are not exactly the same, unless when tradesmen rap and gentlemen
are leaving town.
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