Chapter 40

“_Bast._ James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?

_Gur._ Good leave, good Philip.

_Bast._ Philip? _sparrow!_ James,” &c.

Theobald adopts Warburton’s conjecture of “_spare me_.”

O true Warburton! and the _sancta simplicitas_ of honest dull Theobald’s faith in him! Nothing can be more lively or characteristic than “Philip? Sparrow!” Had Warburton read old Skelton’s _Philip Sparrow_, an exquisite and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in Shakespeare’s time, even Warburton would scarcely have made so deep a plunge into the _bathetic_ as to have deathified “_sparrow_” into “_spare me_!”