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It is necessary likewise to explain many words by their opposition to others; for contraries are best seen when they stand together. Thus the verb stand has one sense as opposed to fall, and another as opposed to fly; for want of attending to which distinction, obvious as it is, the learned Dr. Bentley has squandered his criticism to no purpose, on these lines of Paradise Lost.
– – – In heaps
Chariot and charioteer lay over-turn'd,
And fiery foaming steeds. What stood, recoil'd,
O'erwearied, through the faint Satanic host,
Defensive scarce, or with pale fear surpris'd
Fled ignominious – – –
"Here," says the critic, "as the sentence is now read, we find that what stood, fled," and therefore he proposes an alteration, which he might have spared if he had consulted a dictionary, and found that nothing more was affirmed than that those fled who did not fall.
In explaining such meanings as seem accidental and adventitious, I shall endeavour to give an account of the means by which they were introduced. Thus to eke out any thing, signifies to lengthen it beyond its just dimensions by some low artifice, because the word eke was the usual refuge of our old writers
