There are among Mr. Theobald's alterations others which I do not approve, though I do not always censure them; for some of his amendments are so excellent, that, even when he has failed, he ought to be treated with indulgence and respect.
_Len_. What haste looks through his eyes? So should he look, that _seems_ to speak things strange. The meaning of this passage, as it now stands, is, _so should he look, that looks as if he told things strange_. But Rosse neither yet told strange things, nor could look as if he told them; Lenox only conjectured from his air that he had strange things to tell, and, therefore, undoubtedly said,
--What haste looks through his eyes? So should he look, that _teems_ to speak things strange.
He looks like one that _is big_ with something of importance; a metaphor so natural, that it is every day used in common discourse.
_1 Witch_. A sailor's wife had chesnuts in her lap, And mouncht, and mouncht, and mouncht. Give me, quoth I. (a) Aroint thee, witch!--the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' th' Tyger: But in a sieve I'll thither sail, And like a rat without a tail, I'll do--I'll do--and I'll do.
_1 Witch_. I myself have all the other. And the (b) very points they blow; All the quarters that they know, I' th' ship-man's card.-- I will drain him dry as hay, Sleep shall neither night nor day, Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man (c) forbid; Weary sev'n nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak and pine; Tho' his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost. Look, what I have.
(a) Aroint thee, witch! In one of the folio editions the reading is _anoint thee_, in a sense very consistent with the common accounts of witches, who are related to perform many supernatural acts by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the place where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense _anoint thee, witch_, will mean, _away, witch, to your infernal assembly_. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word _aroint_ in no other author; till looking into Hearne's Collections, I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting the devils into great confusion by his presence, of whom one that is driving the damned before him with a prong, has a label issuing out from his mouth with these words, "OUT OUT ARONGT," of which the last is evidently the same with _aroint_, and used in the same sense as in this passage.