"The above unquestionably reads better than as the text has been ordinarily given to 'prevent the term of life' means, as Malone states, to anticipate the end of life; but still he strangely persevered in printing 'time' for term.”

It would have been more strange if Malone had ventured to change the undoubted word of the poet! One of his chief merits is close adherence to the old text where good sense can be made of it. He tells us that "By time is meant the full and complete time, the period," time is duration. We may learn, if necessary, from "our old authority," Baret, the poet's meaning. "Died before his time," Filius immaturus obit," and "To prevent one daie, Anticipare uno die."

SCENE V.

P. 403. The insertion of the two omitted words in the second folio was probably suggested by later Editions, for they have long been restored. The second folio also omits the word master in Messala's question to Strato,

How died my master, Strato?

which is found in the first folio, but that the third folio was not corrected upon it is evident, the line there being :

How died my Lord, Strato?

P. 404. The alteration of "general" to generous, and changing "And" to Of in the speech of Antony :

All the conspirators, save only he,

Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;

He, only, in a general honest thought

And common good to all, made one of them

are mere capricious innovations, and not at all required. Mr. Collier may well say " the propriety of introducing the change into the text is a matter of discretion." We may trust he will be discreet enough to avoid it.

I

CANNOT say it conveys to my mind a very high opinion of the corrector's sagacity that he should change " quarry, the reading of all the old copies, to quarrel, which was the suggestion of Johnson adopted by Malone on anything but good grounds. The epithet “damned” [i. e. doomed] is inapplicable to quarrel in the sense which it here bears of condemned. Mr. Collier himself says that quarry "gives an obvious and striking meaning much more forcible than quarrel." We cannot therefore avail ourselves of what he calls the "confirmatory authority" of the correctors.

Ib. The substitution of comes for "seems" in the speech of Lenox, when Ross enters in haste:

What a haste looks through his eyes!

So should he look that seems to speak things strange.

is no great improvement upon Johnson's proposal to read "that teems to speak things strange." But the old reading may be right, and seems be received in its usual sense of appears.

SCENE III.

P. 406. As usual we have here the words to show interpolated to make out the rhyme, where no rhyme was evidently intended, for the word know already rhymes to "blow” in the preceding line.

Ib. "The old impressions have,

As thick as tale
Can post with post.

"Rowe wished to read hail for 'tale,' but without warrant; but Can was unquestionably misprinted for Came.' Near the bottom of the next page" (p. 107, vol. vii. Collier's Shakesp.) "That trusted home' of the folios, is changed to "That thrusted home.' In modern times the word has been variously treated."

Rowe was right in correcting the obvious misprint can to came, but wrong in disturbing the old undoubted word tale,

66

as thick as tale" is as quick as they could be told or numbered. Shakespeare has the word thick for quick twice, and Baret in v. "Crebritas literarum, the often sending, or thicke coming of letters." To substitute thrusted for "trusted" would be to introduce a very doubtful anomalous word, instead of the undoubted and perfectly intelligible one: in all the old copies trusted home is entirely, thoroughly relied on.

SCENE IV.

P. 407. In the passage where Duncan speaks of the merits of Macbeth, the lines stand thus in the first folio:

Thou art so far before,

That swiftest wing of recompense is slow
To overtake thee-

The second folio misprints the line

That swiftest wine of recompense is slow.

The correctors of Mr. Collier's copy convert it into winde. It is remarkable that the corrector of my second folio has converted the e into a d, and reads wind, and what else could be done with it by conjecture? I have a copy of the third folio, which has belonged to some theatre, or company of players, in which the same correction is made. But there can be no doubt that the reading of the first folio, wing, is the true word. These later folios and their correctors are of little or no authority.

Ib. The substitution of more for mine in the following passage

Would thou hadst less deserved

That the proportion both of thanks and payment
Might have been mine.

Mr. Collier thinks "a doubtful change," but I confess it seems to me much more plausible than many that he considers undoubted.

SCENE V.

Ib. "A very acceptable alteration is made, on the same evidence, in Lady Macbeth's speech invoking night, just

before the entrance of her husband: it is in a word which has occasioned much speculation:

Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, "Hold, hold!"

"Steevens, with reference to blanket,' quotes rug and rugs from Drayton; and Malone seriously supposes that the word was suggested to Shakespeare by the coarse woollen curtain of the theatre,' when, in fact, it is not at all known whether the curtain, separating the audience from the actors, was woollen or linen. What solution of the difficulty does the old corrector offer? As it seems to us, the substitution he recommends cannot be doubted :

:

"The scribe misheard the termination of blankness, and absurdly wrote blanket.'"

To say nothing of the want of euphony in this perversion of the language of the poet, the old authentic reading has been so fully established by similar thoughts from Drayton, and even from Shakespeare, that no one can now be disposed to change it for the corrector's blankness. Thus in Polyolbion, 26th song,

Thick vapours, that like ruggs, still hung the troubled air.

And in Mortimeriados

The sullen night in mistic rugge is wrapp'd.

And in Lucrece

Her twink'ling handmaids too [the stars] by him defil’d
Through night's black bosom should not peep again.

We have also "the night's black mantle," in the 3rd part of K. Henry VI., and "night—whose pitchy mantle over-veil'd the earth," in the 1st part.

SCENE VII.

P. 408. Who could have imagined that any one familiar with the poet, as Mr. Collier tells us he has been, "for the last fifty years," could for a moment entertain the absurd change of "beast" to boast, in the following celebrated passage! Macbeth, after his wife's taunting speech,

Mr. Collier would have Lady Macbeth mince matters, after the passionate and intemperate remonstrance she has addressed to her husband. And then with regard to the word boast, what boast was it in Macbeth to break the matter to her! The almost gentle manner in which, in a former scene, he hints at his purpose in the words,

My dearest love,

Duncan comes here to night

shows that what may be supposed to have passed in their future conference would be any thing but a boast. If the correctors had no other presumptive follies to answer for than this attempt to alter the undoubted language of the poet, they would deserve our commiseration. "It is not easy to