Chapter CXXXIX: Act I: SCENE 3. Page 422

OTH. Wherein of antres vast and desarts _idle_.

Dr. Johnson has very properly taken notice of Mr. Pope's _inadvertency_ in substituting _wild_ for _idle_; but whether he is strictly right in regarding this word as "poetically beautiful," according to Shakspeare's use of it, may admit of some doubt. Perhaps in a modern writer it would be poetical, where designed to express _infertility_. It may be worth while to examine how it was originally used.

In Ælfric's version of Genesis, ch. i. ver. 1, the _inanis et vacua_ of the Vulgate is rendered ẏꝺel ⁊ æmꞇɩᵹ. Now it is conceived that _inanis_ never signified _infertile_, but _useless_, _unprofitable_; and such appears to be the meaning of _idle_. In two or three of the early Latin and English dictionaries, _inanis_ is rendered _idle_; and in this sense the latter word is used by Shakspeare in _Richard the third_, Act III.:

"You said that _idle weeds_ were fast in growth."

It is clear that in the last instance _infertility_ is out of the question: but _useless_ and _unprofitable_ well denote the poet's meaning, or rather that of the inventor of the proverb, which was afterwards corrupted into "_ill_ weeds," &c.

It is conceived therefore that Dr. Johnson is not accurate in his opinion, that _idle_ in the before-cited Saxon translation is an epithet expressive of the _infertility_ of the chaotic state. Wicliffe has not adopted this term; he has preferred _vain_: but in the first page of the English _Golden legend_, which contains a part of the first chapter of Genesis, we have--"the erth was _ydle_ and voyde." Here Caxton the translator must have followed the _Vulgate_, corroborating what is already stated on the construction of _idle_. The learned reader will not want to be informed why this term could not occur in any of the subsequent English versions of the Bible.

SCENE 3. Page 447.

IAGO. ... the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall
be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida.

There is another phrase of this kind, viz. _to exchange Herb John for coloquintida_. It is used in Osborne's _Memoirs of James I._, and elsewhere. The pedantic Tomlinson, in his translation of Renodæus's _Dispensatory_, says, that many superstitious persons call mugwort Saint John's herb, "wherewith he circumcinged his loyns on holidays," p. 317. Shakspeare, who was extremely well acquainted with popular superstitions, might have recollected this circumstance, when, for reasons best known to himself, he chose to vary the phrase by substituting the _luscious locusts_ of the Baptist. Whether these were the fruit of the tree so called, or the well known insect, is not likely to be determined.