Note 1489 — THE INDVCTION.[1487]
Reading edition
This line was also altered in the first edition while at press, as in one copy the reading is,
“The tapets torne and euery tree downe blowen:”
and is uniformly repeated in the subsequent editions, which also adopt the running title of “Mayster Sackuille’s Induction,” following the copy where the alteration to “tree” appears, though the head title conforms to the other copy. It therefore remains uncertain which was intended as the correction. “Bloom” is the reading preferred by Capell and Warton, and the context appears to confirm the adoption. In a preceding line the blustering blasts of winter are said to have bared the trees, and the poet goes on to describe that the cold had pierced the green, had rent and overthrown the mantles of the groves, had torn the tapets, or tapistry, and blown down every bloom. In this picture there is not any thing extravagant, or beyond the usual effects of winter, whereas were every tree down blown, it would amount to a hurricane, and not to the common decay of nature despoiling the earth of the flowers wherewith it was clad by summer, and as described by the poet in the following stanza. J. H.
I would prefer “tree” notwithstanding. Bloom applies to spring, not autumn. E. B.