ay:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug.
. . . . . .
--but, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug!"

This quotation proves clearly, I consider, that dug was meant by Cleopatra,
and not _dung_; and so I considered before the old manuscript correction of
MR. COLLIER'S appeared. The words "an awful" are as clearly to my mind _and
lawful_. I doubt, however, if they will be so acknowledged, as the use of
the words "an awful," it may be contended, are countenanced by other
passages in Shakspeare; I quote the following.

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, Act IV. Sc. I.--

"_3rd Outlaw._ Know then, that some of us are gentlemen,
Such as the fury of ungovern'd youth
Thrust from the company of _awful_ men."

The word "awful" is surely, in this place, _lawful_; an outlaw would be
little inclined to consider men as "awful," but the contrary. Read the last
line as under--

"Thrust from the company of _lawful_ men,"

and the meaning is simple and clear. The outlaws were thrust from the
company of _lawful men_, that is, men who obeyed the laws they had broken
in "the fury of ungovern'd youth."

In _King Richard II._, Act III. Sc. 3., the following use of the words
_lawful_ and _awful_ occurs:

"_K. Rich._ We are amazed; and thus long have we stood
To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,
[_To Northumberland._
Because we thought ourself thy lawful king;
And if we be, how dare thy joints forget
To pay their awful duty to our presence?"

The meaning in this case is no doubt clear enough, and the words "awful
duty" may be the right ones; but had they stood _lawful duty_ in any old
copy, he should have been a bold man who would have proposed to substitute
_awful_ for _lawful_.

_Second Part of King Henry IV._, Act IV. Sc. 1.--

"_Arch._ To us, and to our purposes, confin'd:
We come within our _awful_ banks again,
And knit our powers to the arm of peace."

The use of the word "awful" in this passage may be right, but, as in the
preceding case, I think, had _lawful banks_ stood in any old printed copy,
or had it even been found in MR. COLLIER'S volume, the fitness would have
been acknowledged.

Shakspeare used the word "lawful" in many instances where, no doubt, it may
with reason, strong as any given here, be changed to _awful_.