Serv. He did. Exton. And, speaking it, he wistfully look'd on me; &c. Surely, with the folio, wistly; and so Knight. The word is frequent in our old poets; e.g., Tarquin and Lucrece, St. cxciv., "She thought he blush'd, as knowing Tarquin's lust, And, blushing with him, wistly on him gaz'd." Venus and Adonis, St. Iviii.,— "O what a sight it was, wistly to view How she came stealing to the wayward boy!' Passionate Pilgrim, Poem iv. (not Shakespeare's), "The sun look'd on the world with glorious eye, Drayton, Muses' Elysium, vii. p. 63, "And in my boat I turn'd about, In Chapman wishly, Il. xi. Taylor, vol. i. p. 245, l. 16,— Amongst the Greeks; " &c. Harrington, Ariosto, xxxvi. xxviii.,— "Then lookt she wishlie all about the place, To finde out him that caused all her care." In the passage from K. R. II. we might possibly read,— "And, speaking it, look'd wistfully on me;" but this is very unlikely.52 52 ( Wistfully," says Mr. Knight in his note in the Pictorial Shakespeare, "has crept into the modern editions without authority." This no doubt is true of the Var. 1821, and of such XXII. Deserver-undeserver. Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2, give me swift transportance to those fields, Where I may wallow in the lily beds Propos'd for the deserver!" Note the ancient use of deserver, absolutely, for “ one who deserves well." So also undeserver is employed. Antony and Cleopatra, i. 2,— (Whose love is never link'd to the deserver, Till his deserts are past) begin," &c. Ford, Broken Heart, ii. 3, Moxon, p. 58, col. 2, sickness or pain Is the deserver's exercise." (As Milton, Samson, 1287, "But patience is more oft the exercise Of saints, the trial of their fortitude.") Massinger, Emperor of the East, v. 2, Moxon, p. 261, col. 2, "We may give poor men riches, confer honours On undeservers," &c. editions as adopt the vulgate text, called that of Steevens and Malone, but the following modern editions read wistly: Rowe's, 1709; Pope's, 1725; Theobald's, 1752; Hanmer's, 1743; Warburton's, 1747; Johnson's, 1765; and Capell's, 1768. I conclude, therefore, that wistfully is a comparatively recent sophistication. Wistly is the reading, I believe, of all the old copies, except the first and second quartos. These read wishtly. Wistly, wishtly, and wishly, seem only various forms of the same word.-Ed. Middleton, Sun in Aries, Dyce, vol. v., p. 303, "What makes less noise than merit? or less show All to vain-glory and to rumour still." By the way, Measure for Measure, v., towards the end of the play, fol. p. 83, col. 2, "Wherein haue I so deseru'd of you That you extoll [spoken ironically] me thus ?" Vulg., or at least in some editions,— "Wherein have I deserved 53 so of you?" &c. Possibly, so undeserv'd. Milton (I have the quotation from Knight's Quarterly Magazine, vol. ii. p. 378), "the famous (Parliament) I call it, though not the harmless, since none well-affected but will confess, they have deserved much more of these nations than they have undeserved." Otherwise Spenser, Hymne in Honour of Love, St. xxiii.,— "How falls it then, that with thy furious fervour As him that doeth thy lovely heasts despize?' i.e., "him that does not deserve to be afflicted." Middleton and Rowley, Fair Quarrel, iii. 1, antepenult., Farewell, most valiant and most wrong'd of men! quasi scribas, Noble-deserver, as not-deserver above, welldeserver. Bacon, Essay of Suitors,-" If affection lead a man to favour the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving or disabling the better deserver." 53 The sophistication deserved so was introduced by Pope.-Ed. XXIII. Ovid's influence on Shakespeare. Allusions to the story of Tereus. (I omit Titus Andronicus, iv. 1,-" Forc'd in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods," &c., Metam. vi. 520, sqq., because I believe we are pretty safe in rejecting the whole play as spurious. For the same reason I do not notice ii. 1, near the end,— "The emperor's court is like the house of fame, 4. The palace full of tongues, of eyes, of ears ;" "So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus.") Cymbeline, ii. 2, near the end. To the discourse of Pythagoras, Metam. xv.; As You Like "And see the revolution of the times "Quodque fuit campus, vallem decursus aquarum Fecit, et eluvie mons est deductus in æquor. ; The simile of the waves in the same passage ("—ut unda impellitur unda") seems to be alluded in Sonnet lx. compare indeed the whole of this sonnet with the context of Ovid; perhaps also T. and L. cxxxvi., cxxxvii. Possibly, to the story of Bacchus and the Tuscan mariners, Metam. iii. 664, in Ariel's pranks, Tempest, i. 2,-" I boarded the king's ship," &c. (I use the word allusion, throughout this article, incorrectly, wherever it seems to imply imitation of, or conscious allusion to, particular passages, which is alien from Shakespeare. I only remember three unequivocal instances of it: the first, Two Noble Kinsmen, i. 2, near the beginning, for this scene is certainly Shakespeare's, from Æn. i. 48,"Et quisquam numen Junonis adoret Præterea, aut supplex aris imponat honorem ?" The second is the concluding line, as I hold it to be, of Troilus and Cressida, "Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe;" from Æn. i. 208, "Spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem ;" and Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 1,— We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers By losing of our prayers;" see the well-known passages at the beginning and end of Juvenal's tenth Satire. I have, however noticed two that have the look of imitations. Cymbeline, iv. 2, "Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base;" (pronounce sire as a dissyllable ;) compare Horace, Lib. iv. Od. iv. 29, "Fortes creantur fortibus. Et bonis Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum (so I would point.) Timon, iv. 2, "Who then dares to be half so kind again ?" |
