Spirit Walker (Crit. i, 201) includes this ‘Spirit’ in his list of numerous passages ‘in which the disyllabic pronunciation of spirit renders a line positively unmetrical or inharmonious to a degree beyond what the poet's ear could possibly have tolerated.’ [From childhood we have been so accustomed to regard sprite as the name of a goblin, that its introduction in a solemn line like the present could hardly fail to have a jarring effect, for which metrical smoothness would be hardly a sufficient compensation.—Ed.]
William Shakespeare. Horace Howard Furness. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra. Philadelphia and London. J. B. Lippincott Company. 1907.
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