LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 267 



Ffor men haue seyn here to foryn, 



That love laughet when men be forsworn. 



Love should be love. Ovid is the obscure person alluded to 

 in the men here to foryn : 



Jupiter e ccelo perjuria ridet amantum. 



We dare say Mr. Hazlitt, if he ever read the passage, took it for 

 granted that to foryn meant too foreign, and gave it up in 

 despair. But surely Shakespeare s 



At lovers perjuries, 

 They say, Jove laughs, 



is not too foreign to have put him on the right seen.. 



Mr. Hazlitt is so particular in giving us v for 7/ and vice versd, 

 that such oversights are a little annoying. Every man his own 

 editor seems to be his theory of the way in which old poetry 

 should be reprinted. On this plan, the more riddles .you leave 

 (or make) for the reader to solve, the more pleasure you give 

 him. To correct the blunders in any book edited by Mr. Haz 

 litt would give the young student a pretty thorough training in 

 archaic English. In this sense the volumes before us might be 

 safely recommended to colleges and schools. When Mr. Hazlitt 

 undertakes to correct, he is pretty sure to go wrong. For ex 

 ample, in Doctour Doubble Ale (Vol. III. p. 309) he amends 

 thus : 



And sometyme mikle strife is 

 Among the ale wyfes, [y-wis] ; 



where the original is right as it stands. Just before, in the same 

 poem, we have a parallel instance : 



And doctours dulpatis 

 That falsely to them pratis, 

 And bring them to the gates. 



The original probably reads (or should read) ivyfis and gatis. 

 But it is too much to expect of Mr. Hazlitt that he should re 

 member the very poems he is editing from one page to another, 

 nay, as we shall presently show, that he should even read them. 

 He will change be into ben where he should have let it alone 

 (though his own volumes might have furnished him with such 

 examples as were go, have se/ is do, and fifty more), but he 

 will sternly retain bene where the rhyme requires be, and Ritson 

 had so printed. In Adam Bel the wordflryme occurs (Vol. II. 

 p. 140), and he vouchsafes us the following note : i.e. noon. It 

 is commonly used by early writers in this sense. \\\\\\Q Foiir 

 P. P., by John Hey wood, circa 1540, the apothecary says 



If he taste this boxe nye aboute the pryme 



By the masse, he is in heven or even songe tyme. 



