V.i.41 (120,8) Finch egg!] Of this reproach I do not know the exact meaning.  I suppose he means to call him singing bird, as implying an useless favourite, and yet more, something more worthless, a singing bird in the egg, or generally, a slight thing easily crushed.

V.i.64 (121,2) forced with wit] Stuffed with wit.  A term of cookery.—­In this speech I do not well understand what is meant by loving quails.

V.i.73 (121,3) spirits and fires!] This Thersites speaks upon the first sight of the distant lights.

V.ii.11 (124,1) And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff] That is, her key. Clef, French.

V.ii.41 (125,2) You flow to great distraction] So the moderns.  The folio has,

  You flow to great distraction.—­

The quarto,

  You flow to great destruction.—­

I read,

  You show too great distraction.—­

V.ii.108 (128,7) But with my heart the other eye doth see] I think it should be read thus,

  But my heart with the other eye doth see.

V.ii.113 (128,8) A proof of strength she could not publish more] She could not publish a stronger proof.

V.ii.125 (129,1) I cannot conjure, Trojan] That is, I cannot raise spirits in the form of Cressida.

V.ii.141 (129,2) If there be rule in unity itself] I do not well understand what is meant by rule in unity.  By rule our author, in this place as in others, intends virtuous restraint, regularity of manners, command of passions and appetites.  In Macbeth,

  He cannot buckle his distemper’d cause
  Within the belt of rule.—­

But I know not how to apply the word in this sense to unity.  I read,

  If there be rule in purity itself,

Or, If there be rule in verity itself.

Such alterations would not offend the reader, who saw the state of the old editions, in which, for instance, a few lines lower, the almighty sun is called the almighty fenne.—­Yet the words may at last mean, If there be certainty in unity, if it be a rule that one is one.

V.ii.144 (130,3) Bi-fold authority!] This is the reading of the quarto.  The folio gives us,

  By foul authority!—­

There is madness in that disquisition in which a man reasons at once for and against himself upon authority which he knows not to be valid.  The quarto is right.

V.ii.144 (130,4)

        where reason can revolt
  Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
  Without revolt]

The words loss and perdition are used in their common sense, but they mean the loss or perdition of reason.

V.ii.157 (131,6) And with another knot five-finger-tied] A knot tied by giving her hand to Diomed.