THE POEMS OF ISABELLA WHITNEY: A CRITICAL EDITION by ...

In "The admonition by the Auctor," Collier prints the
191
line, "Ovid, within his Arte ef leue, / doth teach them this
same knacke" as "Ovid within the Arte of Love" (11. 21-22).
The change of "his" to "the" adds nothing to the meter or
the content, while the deletion of the commas changes the
clause "within the Arte of Leue" from non-restrictive to
restrictive, a difference which might be grammatically
correct, but which might change the intent of the author.
By setting the location of Ovid's advice off with commas,
the reader's scansion ef the line is slewed, adding emphasis
to the phrase; because The Art of Love was not available in
an English translation in 1567, the variant recorded in
Collier lessens the emphasis on the author's own learning
and breadth of knowledge. "Ye" also becomes "you" in "And
alwayes trie before ye trust" (1. 37), a change that is
unnecessary but which, if added by Collier, might be an
attempt to make the poem sound more modern, as "ye" was no
longer as commonly used in the nineteenth century. If this
were his intent, however, he is net consistent in changing
his text, for he leaves "ye" throughout the rest of the
poems, changing it to "you" only this one time.
The greatest number of verbal changes occurs in "A
Loueletter from a faythful Louer." Here, the lines printed
in the octavo, "And thy selfe such domb [doom], shalt geue,
/ as gilty shalt thou finde," appear, in Collier, as, "And
thou thy selfe such domb shalt geue / as gilty thou shalt