means to say, "Do not harp on my seeming insanity, do not banish reason for seeming inconsistency." The corrector has neglected the most difficult part of this speech, in which a slight typographical error, having been hitherto unperceived, has made it a crux to the commentators but let your reason serve To make the truth appear, where it seems hid And hide the false seems true. The last line should be read And hide the false seems-true. That is, Use your reason to make the truth appear, and hide the true-seeming false. The hyphen is all that is wanting. P. 54. And, on my trust, which the corrector would change to truth, should be troth. Ib. The Duke's unjust, And put your trial in the villain's mouth, "The manuscript-corrector informs us that 'retort,' in the second line, is a misprint for reject," says Mr. Collier. There is no necessity for change. Johnson informs us that to retort is to refer back, the Duke had not rejected the appeal, but referred it to Angelo. P. 56. A COMEDY OF ERRORS. ACT I. SCENE I. T the outset of this play the corrector commences his unnecessary interference with the text in the speech of Ægeon. 66 Yet that the world may witness, that my end He substitutes fortune for nature. Mr. Collier might well say Possibly by nature we might understand the natural course of events." Yes, to be sure! P. 57. Mr. Collier tells us that "the line, near the end of the Duke's last speech, as it appears in the folios,— To seek thy help by beneficial help, has produced several conjectures for its emendation, and among them one by [himself] who suggested that the true reading might be, To seek thy hope by beneficial help; and that such is precisely the change proposed by the corrector of the folio, 1632.” Although a remarkable instance of coincidence, a more improbable and unhappy conjecture could hardly have been made, for Ægeon had no hope; he immediately afterwards says Hopeless and helpless does Ægeon wend. So that the corrector and Mr. Collier have both conjectured ill. It is most probable that the word help was accidentally repeated by the printer for fine; which the context shows must have been in the Duke's mind, when he immediately adds Beg thou or borrow to make up the sum. We may therefore, I think, safely read, To seek thy fine by beneficial help. ACT III. SCENE I. P. 60. There are some unwarrantable interpolations made in two of Dromio's speeches at the commencement of the third act, by which neither the sense, humour, nor metre are improved. The conceit of this corrector who thought he could improve upon Shakespeare is intolerable! SCENE II. Ib. At the commencement of Scene 2 of Act iii. the corrector has again used the unwarrantable liberty of changing the words of the poet to suit his own fancy, and substitutes "Shall unkind debate" for "shall, Antipholus," because, forsooth, in the next line ruinate has been misprinted for ruinous. He seems to have adopted the principle that " we are at liberty to substitute any one word for another" at our own discretion; a license that Malone attributes to Steevens. Some of his changes Mr. Collier cannot avoid confessing "seem scarcely required." ACT IV. SCENE II. P. 62. As in this play there was little legitimate correction to make, the corrector indulges largely in his vagaries, he would substitute swift for sweet in Dromio's speech when he comes for his master's purse, as too familiar a word! according to Mr. Collier, but Dromio is familiar enough in all the rest of his speeches. The impertinent additions, even to a whole unnecessary line in another doggrel of Dromio's, implies that the corrector thought he was warranted in rewriting the text ad libitum. We know what liberties are sometimes taken for supposed dramatic effect, but they are not the less objectionable where the printed text of the poet is concerned. ACT V. SCENE I. P. 63. "The line in the Merchant's speech, as it is given in the folios, The place of depth and sorry execution, is amended" by the corrector to "The place of death and solemn execution." The first correction is Rowe's; of which Mr. Collier has said, in a note to his Edition of Shakspeare, "We doubt much whether in this instance, where sense can be made of depth, the word in the original copy, we ought not to have adhered to the text." Mr. Hunter is of opinion that the old reading is right, and that "in this Greek story, the Barathrum, the deep pit into which offenders were cast" is meant by the place of depth. And the second ought never to have been made: sorry, i. e. sad is the poet's expressive word. P. 64. They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence, "The corrector of the folio, 1632," says Mr. Collier,"alters it to, They left me,' which is clearly right." WHY CLEARLY RIGHT? P. 64. "Egeon, astonished at not being recognized by Antipholus of Ephesus, exclaims, in the reading of the folios,-O, time's extremity ! Hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue? &c. but we learn from the manuscript-corrector that the last line ought to be, as seems natural,— O, time's extremity! Hast thou so crack'd my voice, split my poor tongue?" Why? again,again, more natural than the reading of the old copy? Are we to change the poet's language to suit our own fancies? Ib. "All copies agree in what appears to be a decided though a small error in reading,— And thereupon these errors are arose. ; 'These errors all arose' has been suggested as the poet's words and we find all in the margin of the corrected folio, 1632, while are is erased in the text." When Mr. Collier published his edition of Shakespeare, how entirely at issue was his opinion. He then said "there is, however, no warrant for alteration." Ib. In the following lines Mr. Collier says, "The corrector makes the slightest possible change in the second line, and at once removes the difficulty." Thirty-three years have I been gone in travail Of you, my sons, and at this present hour In the first line but is in the first folio, been in the second. I read the passage many years since thus : Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail : Thus conforming to the text of the first folio, with the exception of the necessary rectification of the number of years, and the substitution of ne'er for are. A much more probable misprint than at for till. I may here venture to add that the two lines just following, which are evidently corrupt, are passed over both by Mr. Go to a gossip's feast and joy with me These readings are suggested by Heath and Johnson, and have my entire concurrence, notwithstanding the dissent of Steevens and Malone. The word nativity, in the last line, had evidently been caught by the eye of the compositor from the preceding line. I MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. ACT III. SCENE I. PASS over many of the proposed corrections in this play because they have already been suggested and some of them adopted. The coincidences are too numerous to admit for a moment that they are fortuitous. Others are doubtful improvements; I may possibly have to deal with them in another place. P. 71. What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? Mr. Collier says, "Nobody has explained what is meant by the words 'behind the back of such,' nor need we inquire into it, since they are merely one of the perversions arising out of the mishearing of the scribe of the copy of the play used by the printer the real words of the fourth line appear to be, No glory lives but in the lack of such.” We must conclude, therefore, that the corrector had access to the original MS. of the poet, or that this is one of his own conjectures! Mr. Collier would probably favour the first of these conclusions? But as the text is perfectly intelligible as we have it in the old authentic copies, it cannot but be deemed a rash and uncalled-for substitution. "Behind the back of |