Malone, with singular stolidity, and perhaps with a determination to oppose Steevens, asserts that expiate means fully completed and ended! And in a note on the sonnet he explains it, fill up the measure! citing a line from Locrine, 1595,

Lives Sabren then to expiate my wrath.

Where the word, as Mason observes, is nothing to the purpose, but means to atone for, or satisfy.

How expiate can be made to signify completed, or ended, or fill up the measure, I cannot understand. Shakespeare always uses expressive words, and did not write nonsense. He again uses to expire as a verb active, in Romeo and Juliet, in a similar manner :

Of a despised life.

and expire the term

And Spenser, in Mother Hubberd's Tale, v. 308,

Now when as Time flying with winges swift
Expired had the term that these two Jewels
Should, &c.

Steevens has remarked that Shakespeare delights to introduce words with this termination. We have festinate and conspirate in King Lear; combinate in Measure for Measure, and ruminate in King Henry VI. We may safely, therefore, in future read,―

Make haste, the hour of death is expirate.

And in the sonnet,

Then look I death my days should expirate.

P. 317.

TH

KING HENRY VIII.

ACT I. SCENE I.

HEOBALD very properly altered the distribution of the dialogue, and the words, and the corrector follows him, but the words,

The office did

Distinctly his full function

which the corrector gives to Buckingham, should evidently be the conclusion of Norfolk's speech.

Ib. The substitution of consummation for "communication" was not at all necessary. Johnson's view of the passage is quite satisfactory:-"What effect had this pompous show, but the production of a wretched conclusion?" Why interfere with a perfectly intelligible text?

P. 318. To substitute "a beggar's brood" for "a beggar's book," is mere wanton interference. The reading of the old copy is by far the most likely, as ascribing Wolsey's arrival at eminent station chiefly by his book learning. There was a natural jealousy, on the part of the nobility, at seeing themselves surmounted by a man of low extraction, on account of acquirements they despised; brood can never have been the poet's word. The immediate suggestion is apparent in the stage business. Wolsey enters with two secretaries, with papers, and it is as he looks over these-the examination of Buckingham's purveyor,-handed to him by a secretary, that he exchanges disdainful glances with the duke.

SCENE II.

Ib. "According to the corrector of the folio, 1632, there are several misprints in this scene which need correction. The first is in the Queen's speech, where she is remonstrating against the exacting commissions sent out by the Cardinal, which had led to the use against the King of 'language unmannerly,'—

Yea, such which breaks

The sides of loyalty, &c.

"We are here instructed to read 'ties of loyalty.' The Cardinal answers (p. 512) that he has done no more, and knows no more than others; to which the Queen replies :

You know no more than others; but you frame

Things, that are known alike, which are not wholesome, &c.

"For alike,' the correction is belike:

Things that are known, belike, which are not wholesome.

"Again, at the end of the Queen's next speech, the expression, "There is no primer baseness,' of all the folios, is altered (in accordance with Southern's suggestion mentioned in [Collier's Shakesp.]) to 'There is no primer business;' and such we may hereafter treat as the original word. Farther on (p. 514), the King, struck at the amount of the exactions under Wolsey's commissions, exclaims,—

Sixth part of each?

A trembling contribution!

"The old corrector here put his pen through the m in 'trembling,' making the word trebling, as if the King meant to say that the sum was treble what it ought to have been. When the Duke of Buckingham's Surveyor enters to give evidence against his lord, the Queen says to the King,—

I am sorry that the Duke of Buckingham

Is run in your displeasure;

"which may be quite right, but it ought to be noticed that a marginal emendation makes the last line,—

Is one in your displeasure.

"This last change, like some of the others, may be deemed no necessary emendation."

"Ties of loyalty" for "sides of loyalty" is not necessary. "Breaks the sides of loyalty" is parallel expression to " flaw'd the hearts of their royalties," a few lines earlier. So in Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Scene 12:

Oh, cleave my sides! heart, crack thy frail case!

belike for 'alike' I find also in my corrected second folio, where a is deleted and be written over it. But alike seems to me the unquestionable reading. Wolsey says he knows no more than others-the answer is, that he is the framer or originator of things which are "known alike," - i. e. known equally to all, but very unwelcome to some who would not know them. The Queen speaks with determination, and such an expression as belike would spoil the effect of her speech.

"There is no primer business" for baseness was the correction of Warburton, and had long been the established reading, and undoubtedly the true one, until Mr. Collier, as well as Mr. Knight, restored the old corruption. This is another coincidence on the part of the corrector.

Of the substitution of one for "run," in the passage

I am sorry that the Duke of Buckingham

Is run in your displeasure

Mr. Collier himself says, "This last change, like some of the others, may be deemed no necessary emendation.”

What then becomes of the "better authority," which we are led to suppose that the corrector had access to?

P. 319. We have here another coincidence in the adoption of Theobald's correction of " under the confession's seal" for under the commission's seal.

Ib. We must have better evidence than the mere fancy of the corrector before we admit the interpolation of the words a daring in the rhyming conclusion of the King's speech.

Let him not seek't of us: By day and night

He's traitor to the height.

SCENE III.

Ib. "The manuscript-corrector leads us to believe that there are two errors of the press in the following, where Lord Sands is speaking of Wolsey :

Men of his way should be most liberal];

They are set here for examples.

"We can readily accord in the first, if not in the second emendation:

Men of his sway should be most liberal;

They are sent here for examples."

Neither of these innovations on the old undoubted text are to be tolerated. Lovel has said of Wolsey,

That Churchman bears a bounteous mind indeed,

A hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us:
His dews fall everywhere.

On which Lord Sands remarks:

He may, my lord, he has wherewithal: in him
Sparing would show worse than ill doctrine,

Men of his way should be most liberal;

They are set here for examples.-

Can there be a doubt that his ecclesiastical function is meant, by his way? Churchmen, especially of high rank, are set here for examples. It is wearisome to have to point out such egregious misunderstanding of the poet's language, and yet necessary to defend him from his conceited improvers.

SCENE IV.

P. 320. The insertion of me at the end of the line,—

Because they speak no English, thus they pray'd me

To tell your grace

is admissible. Valeat quantum!

ACT II. SCENE I.

Ib. The addition of thus, to the imperfect line as it stands in the folio, 1632, may have been derived from that of 1623, or some other edition, but it has long been in the text, and therefore required no notice. Of the substitution of when for where," by which nothing is gained, Mr. Collier very prudently says," The change is not material." Then why interfere? for to throw doubt on any old perfectly intelligible reading is "miching malhecho, and means mischief."

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