Ebook A Few Remarks on the Emendation, "Who Smothers Her With Painting," in the Play of Cymbeline

There are, perhaps, few subjects requiring greater caution in their consideration than conjectural criticisms on the texts of our early poets. The English language and its idioms have so imperceptibly altered during the last three centuries - that whilst the casual observer might imagine the language of Elizabeth's time was almost identical with that spoken at the present day - even the student of our literature, unless he has paid special attention to that particular section of English philology which may be termed, for want of a more expressive term, the language of idiom, will be inclined to measure the phraseology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the standard of that now in common use, and so be involved in errors which, arising from a defective system, will of course be almost innumerable.