362 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



Generally he uses the grave accent, but now and then 

 the acute. Mr. Hazlitt's text follows all these variations 

 exactly. The main difference between the two is that 

 Ritson prints the first personal pronoun i, and Mr. Haz- 

 litt, I. Ritson is probably right ; for in the " Schole- 

 house of Women" (vv. 537, 538) where the text no 

 doubt was 



" i [i. e. one] deuil a woman to speak may constrain, 

 But all that in hel be cannot let it again," 



Mr. Hazlitt changes "i" to "A," and says in a note, 

 *' Old ed. has /." That by his correction he should miss 

 the point w^as only natural ; for he evidently conceives 

 that the sense of a passage does not in the least concern 

 an editor. An instance or two will suffice. In the 

 "Knyght and his Wyfe" (Vol. 11. p. 17) we read, 



" The fynd tyl hure hade myche tene 

 As hit was a sterfull we seme ! " 



Mr. Hazlitt in a note explains tene to mean " trouble or 

 sorrow " ; but if that w-ere its meaning here, we should 

 read made, and not hade, which would give to the word 

 its other sense of attention. The last verse of the coup- 

 let Mr. Hazlitt seems to think perfectly intelligible as it 

 stands. We should not be surprised to learn that he 

 looked upon it as the one gem that gave lustre to a poem 

 otherwise of the dreariest. We fear we shall rob it of all 

 its charm for him by putting it into modern English : — 

 " As it was after full well seen." 



So in the " Smyth and his Dame " (Vol. III. p. 204) 



we read, 



" It were a lytele maystry 

 To make a bljrnde man to se," 



instead of '^ as lytell." It might, indeed, be as easy to 

 perform the miracle on a blind man as on Mr. Hazlitt. 

 Again, in the same poem, a little further on, 



