—­Bless’d be those,
  How mean soe’er, that have their honest wills,
  With reason’scomfort.—­

Who gratify their innocent wishes with reasonable enjoyments.

I.vi.35 (180,2) and the twinn’d stones/Upon the number’d beach?] I know not well how to regulate this passage. Number’d is perhaps numerous. Twinn’d stones I do not understand. Twinn’d shells, or pairs of shells, are very common.  For twinn’d, we might read twin’d; that is, twisted, convolved; but this sense is more applicable to shells than to stones.

I.vi.44 (181,3)

  Sluttery, to such neat excellence oppos’d,
  Should make desire vomit emptiness,
  Not so allur’d to feed]

[i.e. that appetite, which is not allured to feed on such excellence, can have no stomach at all; but, though empty, must nauseate every thing.  WARB.] I explain this passage in a sense almost contrary.  Iachimo, in this counterfeited rapture, has shewn how the eyes and the judgment would determine in favour of Imogen, comparing her with the present mistress of Posthumus, and proceeds to say, that appetite too would give the same suffrage. Desire, says he, when it approached sluttery, and considered it in comparison with such neat excellence, would not only be not so allured to feed, but, seized with a fit of loathing, would vomit emptiness, would feel the convulsions of disgust, though, being unfed, it had nothing to eject. [Tyrwhitt:  vomit, emptiness ... allure] This is not ill conceived; but I think my own explanation right. To vomit emptiness is, in the language of poetry, to feel the convulsions of eructation without plenitude. (1773)

I.vi.54 (182,4) He’s strange, and peevish] He is a foreigner, easily fretted.

I.vi.97 (184,5) timely knowing] Rather timely known.

I.vi.99 (184,6) What both you spur and stop] What it is that at once incites you to speak, and restrains you from it. [I think Imogen means to enquire what is that news, that intelligence, or information, you profess to bring, and yet with-hold:  at least, I think Dr. JOHNSON’s explanation a mistaken one, for Imogen’s request supposes Iachimo an agent, not a patient.  HAWKINS.] I think my explanation true. (see 1765, VII, 286, 7)

I.vi.106 (184,7)

  join gripes with hands
  Made hard with hourly falshood (falshood as
  With labour) then lye peeping in an eye]

The old edition reads,

  —­join gripes with hands
  Made hard with hourly falshood (falshood as
  With labour) then by peeping in an eye, &c.

I read,

  —­then lye peeping—­

The author of the present regulation of the text I do not know, but have suffered it to stand, though not right. Hard with falshood is, hard by being often griped with frequent change of hands.