Chapter LXIX: Act III: SCENE 4. Page 107

CONST. And _buss_ thee as thy wife.

In former times there was no vulgarity in this word, as the two first quotations by Mr Steevens demonstrate; but he is peculiarly unfortunate in his last example, which may without detriment be omitted in future editions. The singular vulgarity of Stanihurst's language cannot with propriety be used to exemplify the undegraded use of any word whatever.

No further proof of the justice of this remark is necessary than the mention of his "dandiprat cockney Cupido," or the "_blubbering_ Andromache," whom he describes as "stuttering and stammering to _fumble_ out an answer to her sweeting delicat Hector;" and numerous expressions of a similar nature occur in his eccentric translation of the pure and elegant Virgil. _To buss_ is either from the French _baiser_, or from some radical word common to both languages, and was formerly written _bass_. Thus Stanihurst, whom it may be allowable to quote on this occasion;

"That when Queen Dido shall col thee and smacklye _bebasse_ thee:"

And the duke of Orleans, in one of his love poems written in the time of King Henry the Fifth;

"Lend me your praty mouth madame
I wis dere hart to _basse_ it swete."

SCENE 4. Page 115.

PAND. No natural exhalation in the sky,
No _scape_ of nature, no distempered day,
No common wind, no customed event,
But they will pluck away his natural cause,
And call them meteors, prodigies and signs,
Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven.

The old copy reads _scope_ of nature. The alteration was made by Pope, and plausibly commented on by Warburton, who seems to have influenced Mr. Malone to adopt it. The speaker's design is to show that all the _common effects of nature_ which he mentions would be _perverted_ by the people; but an _escape_ of nature would be very _properly_ deemed _an abortive_. The original reading is therefore correct; nor could an apter word have been selected. Thus in _King Henry the Fourth, Part I._:

"And curbs himself even of his _natural scope_."