Chapter 105

“One without substance,” &c.

The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:—

“One without substance of herself, that’s woman; Without the pleasure of her life, that’s wanton; Tho’ she be young, forgetting it; tho’ fair, Making her glass the eyes of honest men, Not her own admiration.”

“That’s wanton,” or, “that is to say, wantonness.”