Has 1609 any independent authority? In the main a reprint of 1596, it is certainly a respectable piece of work, in punctuation especially far more logical and consistent than either of the quartos: the editor seldom fails to show exactly how he understands his text. Our respect for 1609 would be enhanced if we could believe that the editor was Gabriel Harvey, as Todd at one time fancied. But that notion is untenable, and Todd himself abandoned it. We may go further: the editor of 1609 did not belong to the generation of Harvey and Spenser. For this conclusion I will adduce only one piece of evidence, but it is decisive. In the last decade of the sixteenth century syllabic _-es_ in possessives and plurals still lingered even in verse not deliberately archaic. But it was strange to the editor of 1609. Sometimes he remarks it, and signalizes his discovery by printing it _-ez_, as ‘woundez’, ‘beastez’, ‘clothez’. Sometimes he fails to remark it, and fills up the syllable by conjecture: thus ‘_Nightes_ children’ becomes ‘_Nights_ drad children’ (I. v. 23); ‘th’Earthes gloomy shade’ becomes ‘the Earthes gloomy shade’ (III. x. 46). He seems, moreover, to have made little or no use of 1590. When, as sometimes happens, a word has been dropped in 1596, he emends by conjecture: thus at I. ii. 29:-- ‘For the coole shade him thither hastly got’ 1590; ‘For the coole shade thither hastly got’ 1596; ‘For the coole shadow thither hast’ly got’ 1609. Cf. also III. ix. 13, l. 9, III. xi. 26, l. 7, &c. The few instances in which 1590 and 1609 agree as against 1596 may fairly be set down to coincidence. Yet I am disposed to assign some independent authority to 1609.[12] The grounds for this view are slight, and may be stated in full:-- (1) At I. x. 20, l. 5, 1609 adds the missing line, ‘Dry-shod to passe, she parts the flouds in tway.’ (2) At II. viii. 48, l. 8, it corrects ‘Sir _Guyon_’ to ‘Prince _Arthur_’. (3) At III. iii. 50, l. 9, it completes the imperfect Alexandrine by adding ‘as earst’. (4) At III. vi. 45, l. 4, it adds a broken line, ‘And dearest loue,’ to an eight-line stanza. (5) At IV. xii. 13, ll. 1, 2, 1596 reads:-- ‘Thus whilst his stony heart with tender ruth Was toucht, and mighty courage mollifide’; 1609 reads:-- ‘Thus whilst his stony heart was toucht with tender ruth, And mighty courage something mollifide.’ (6) At V. Proem 11, l. 2, it reads ‘stead’ for the non-rhyming ‘place’.