"I know I love in vain, and strive against hope; yet into this
_insatiable_ and _unretaining_ sieve I still pour in the waters of my
love, and fail not to lose still."

I said that the sense of _fallacious_ seemed to be too refined and
recondite. To believe that Shakspeare borrowed his _captious_ in this
sense, from the Latin _captiosus_, we must suppose that he was well
acquainted with the exact sense of the Latin word; a supposition which, in
regard to a man who had _small Latin_, we can scarcely be justified in
entertaining. This interpretation is, therefore, too recondite: and to
imagine Helena as applying the word to Bertram as being "_incapable of
receiving_ her love," and "truly _captious_" (or deceitful and ensnaring)
"in that respect," is surely to indulge in too much refinement of
exposition.

That Shakspeare had in his mind, as MR. SINGER {66} suggests, the
punishment of the Danaides, is extremely probable; but this only makes the
explanation of _captious_ in the sense of _absorbent_ more applicable to
the passage, with which that of Seneca, quoted above, may be aptly
compared.

I am sorry that Johnson was so unfortunate as to propose _carious_ as an
emendation; but even in doing this, he had, according to my notion of the
lines, the right sense in view, viz., that of _letting through_ or
_swallowing up_, like a rotten tub or a quicksand.

I hope that MR. SINGER will take these remarks in good part, as being
offered, not from a wish to oppose his opinion, but from a conviction that
the interpretation now given is right, and from a desire that to every word
in Shakspeare should be assigned its true signification.