Page:Appreciations of Horace Howard Furness.djvu/34

 26 askance. Hypothetical allusions to historic personages and events (we like to think that there are half-a-dozen such crowded into a score of Oberon's lines), he dismissed as unworthy of critical consideration. Even when points of resemblance came as close as do the affectations of speech in Lovers Labour's Lost to the weary euphuisms of Lyly, Dr. Furness stoutly refused to trace a dim connection. An undecipherable word or phrase never presented itself to his level judgment as a species of riddle, to be guessed at frantically until the end of time. If he did not know what the word or the phrase meant, he said so, and went on his way rejoicing. Who can forget his avowal of 'utter, invincible ignorance' as to the mysterious 'scamels' which Caliban finds on the rock, and his determination to retain the word as it stands. 'From the very beginning of the Play,' he reminds us, 'we know that the scene lies in an enchanted island. Is this to be forgotten? Since the air is full of sweet sounds, why may not the rocks be inhabited by unknown birds of gay plumage, or by vague animals of a grateful and appetizing plumpness? Let the picture remain of the dashing rocks, the stealthy, freckled whelp, and, in the clutch of his long nails, a young and tender scamel.'

So, too, with Mark Antony's 'Arme-gaunt Steede,' which, since the publication of the First Folio, has supplied abundant matter for conjecture: