No More Learning

, and
'best' in _1669_ is probably an emendation. The use of 'most' as an
adjective, superlative of 'great', is not uncommon:

God's wrong is most of all.
Shakespeare, _Rich. III_, IV. iv. 377.

Though in this place most master wear no breeches.
Ibid. , _2 Hen. VI_, I. iii. 144.

l. 54. I can make no exact sense of this line either as it stands in
_1669_ or in the MSS.
One is tempted to combine the versions and read:

Yea thy pale colours, and thy panting heart,

the 'secrets of our Art' being all the signs by which they
communicated to one another their mutual affection. But it is
necessary to explain the presence of 'inwards' or 'inward' in both the
versions.

PAGE =103=, l. 79. _The Summer how it ripened in the eare_; This fine
passage has been rather spoiled in all editions hitherto by printing
in this line 'yeare' for 'eare', even in modernized texts. The MSS.
and the sense both show that 'eare' is the right word, and indeed I
have no doubt that 'year' in _1635_ was simply due to a compositor's
or copyist's pronunciation. It occurs again in the 1669 edition in the
song _Twicknam Garden_ (p. 28, l. 3):

And at mine eyes, and at mine years,

These forms in 'y' are common in Sylvester's _Du Bartas_, e. g.
'yerst'. The O. E. D. gives the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries as
those in which 'yere' was a recognized pronunciation of 'ear', but it
is found sporadically later and has misled editors.