“The participle in ed I consider to be perfectly analogous to the participle in ing, and used like it in either an active or passive sense, belonging, therefore, neither to the one voice nor the other exclusively.”

Supposing for a moment that Shakspeare used delight_ed_ for delight_ing_, the sense of the passages would, I presume, be in Measure for Measure, “the spirit affording delight;” in Othello, “if virtue want no beauty affording delight;” in Cymbeline, “the gifts delighting more from being delayed.”  Here we have a simple, and, in the last two instances, I think, a more satisfactory meaning than Mr. Hickson’s sense of lightened, disencumbered, affords, even could it be more unquestionably established.

I have, however, met with a passage in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (ed. 1598, p. 294.) which might lead to a different interpretation of delighted in these passages, and which would not, perhaps, be less startling than that of Mr. Hickson.

“All this night (in despite of darknesse) he held his eyes open; and in the morning, when the delight began to restore to each body his colour, then with curtains bar’d he himselfe from the enjoying of it; neither willing to feele the comfort of the day, nor the ease of the night.”

Here, delight is apparently used for the return of light, and the prefix de is probably only intensive.  Now, presuming that Shakspeare also used delighted for lighted, illuminated the passage in Measure for Measure would bear this interpretation:  “the delighted spirit, i.e., the spirit restored to light,” freed from “that dark house in which it long was pent.”  In Othello, “if virtue lack no delighted beauty,” i.e. “want not the light of beauty, your son-in-law shows far more fair than black.”  Here the opposition between light and black is much in its favour.  In Cymbeline, I must confess it is not quite so clear:  “to make my gifts, by the dark uncertainty attendant upon delay, more lustrous (delighted), more radiant when given,” is not more satisfactory than Mr. {201} HICKSON’S interpretation of this passage.  But is it necessary that delighted should have the same signification in all the three passages?  I think not.

These are only suggestions, of course, but the passage from Sidney is certainly curious, and, from the correct and careful manner in which the book is printed, does not appear to be a corruption.  I have not seen the earlier editions.  I have only further to remark, that none of our old authorities favour DR. KENNEDY’S suggestion, “that the word represents the Latin participle delectus.”

Since the above was written, Mr. HICKSON’S reply to MR. HALLIWELL has reached me, upon which I have only to observe that he will find to guile was used as a verb.  Thus in Gower, Confessio Amantis, fo. 135. ed. 1532: