IV.v.112 (110,4) thus translate him to me] Thus explain his character.

IV.v.142 (111,5) Hect. Not Neoptolemus so mirable] [W:  Neoptolemus’s sire irascible] After all this contention it is difficult to imagine that the critic believes mirable to have been changed to irascible.  I should sooner read,

  Not Neoptolemus th’ admirable;

as I know not whether mirable can be found in any other place.  The correction which the learned commentator gave to Hanmer,

  Not Neoptolemus’ sire so mirable,

as it was modester than this, was preferable to it.  But nothing is more remote from justness of sentiment, than for Hector to characterise Achilles as the father of Neoptolemus, a youth that had not yet appeared in arms, and whose name was therefore much less knovn than his father’s.  My opinion is, that by Neoptolemus the author meant Achilles himself; and remembering that the son was Pyrrhus Neoptolemus, considered Neoptolemus as the nomen gentilitium, and thought the father was likewise Achilles Neoptolemus.

IV.v.147 (112,6) We’ll answer it] That is, answer the expectance.

IV.v.275 (117,5) Beat loud the tabourines] For this the quarto and the latter editions have,

  To taste your bounties.—­

The reading which I have given from the folio seems chosen at the revision, to avoid the repetition of the word bounties [273].

V.i.5 (118,1) Thou crusty batch of nature] Batch is changed by Theobald to botch, and the change is justified by a pompous note, which discovers that he did not know the word batch.  What is more strange, Hanmer has followed him. Batch is any thing baked.

V.i.19 (119,3) Male-varlet] HANMER reads male-harlot, plausibly enough, except that it seems too plain to require the explanation which Patroclus demands.

V.i.23 (119,4) cold palsies] This catalogue of loathsome maladies ends in the folio at cold palsies.  This passage, as it stands, is in the quarto:  the retrenchment was in my opinion judicious.  It may be remarked, though it proves nothing, that, of the few alterations made by Milton in the second edition of his wonderful poem, one was, an enlargement of the enumeration of diseases.

V.i.32 (119,5) you ruinous butt; you whoreson indistinguishable cur] Patroclos reproaches Thersites with deformity, with having one part crowded into another.

V.i.35 (119,6) thou idle immaterial skeyn of sley’d silk] All the terms used by Thersites of Patroclus, are emblematically expressive of flexibility, compliance, and mean officiousness.

V.i.40 (119,7) Out, gall!] HANMER reads nut-gall, which answers well enough to finch-egg; it has already appeared, that our author thought the nut-gall the bitter gall.  He is called nut, from the conglobation of his form; but both the copies read, Out, gall!