Sc. 3.

"I have deliver'd to Lord Angelo,
A man of stricture, and firm abstinence."--_Duke_, Act I. Sc. 4.

"Lord Angelo is precise;
Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone."--_Duke_, Act I. Sc. 4.

"A man, whose blood
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense,
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study and fast."--_Lucio_, Act I. Sc. 5.

See also Angelo's portraiture of himself in the soliloquy at the
commencement of Act II. Sc. 4.:

"My gravity,
Wherein (let no man hear me) I take pride,
Could I, with boot, change for an idle plume
Which the air beats for vain."

And, lastly, the passage immediately under consideration:

"This outward-sainted deputy,
Whose settled visage and deliberate word,
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew."--_Isabella_, Act III.
Sc. 1.

Thus much as to the propriety of the word "pensive," in relation to the
reputed character of Angelo.

The next question is, whether the word "pensive" is an appropriate epithet
to the word "guards." If Messrs. Knight and Collier are correct in
construing "guards" to mean the "trimmings or border of robe," this
question must be answered in the negative. But it appears to me that they
are in error, and that the true meaning of the word "guards," in this
particular passage, is "outward appearances," as suggested by Monck Mason;
and, consequently, that the expression "pensive guards" means a grave or
sanctified countenance or demeanour--"the settled visage and deliberate
word" which "nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew."

It requires no argument to establish that the word "pensive" is suitable to
the metre in both places in which the misprint occurred and it is equally
clear that "prenzie" and "pensive" in manuscript are so similar, both in
the number, form, and character of the letters, that the one might easily
be printed for the other. The two words also have a certain resemblance, in
point of sound; and if the word "pensive" be not very distinctly
pronounced, the mistake might be made by a scribe writing from dictation.

Referring to Mrs. Cowden Clarke's admirable concordance of Shakspeare, it
appears that the word "pensive" is used by Shakspeare in the _text_ of his
plays