It turns out that the disputed word (obviously not understood by any old editor or printer) is purely an error of the press." The corrector reads: So potently would I o'ersway his state, "and it seems scarcely possible to doubt that it was the word of the poet, and for this reason it is placed in the margin of the corrected folio, 1632." As I have never seen the corrector's book, I am obliged in self-defence to think it possible that he had seen mine; for in the edition of Shakespeare I gave in 1826 the line stands : So potent-like would I o'ersway his state. And having no faith in coincidences, when they are so marvellously repeated hundreds of times, I feel constrained to draw this conclusion. Be it observed, however, that potentlike is a nearer approach to the old reading than potently, and I cannot but wish the corrector had kept closer to my reading. P. 94. "Boyet brings word of the intended attack upon the Princess and her Ladies by the King and his Lords:Arm, wenches, arm! encounters mounted are. But it is not encounters' but encounterers 'mounted,' and so the old corrector notes." My own corrected folio has also this amendment, if it be one. I however doubt it, and think encounters more likely to be right. "Six lines lower, the Princess, in all ordinary editions, is made to ask : What are they That charge their breath against us? "To charge their breath' is nonsense, says Mr. Collier, and the corrector alters it most naturally to,— What are they That charge the breach against us? The Princess carrying on the joke of supposing that she and her Lady are in a state of siege." Should any one wish to be convinced of the utter impossibility of the corrector having had access to "better authority than we possess;" nay, of his utter incapacity to comprehend the poet, I would recommend this example of his skill to their consideration. The encounters with which the Ladies are threatened, are encounters of words, a wit combat. I must give the whole passage:— Boyet. Prepare, madam, prepare!— Muster your wits; stand in your own defence; Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence. To" charge their breath," says Mr. Collier, " is nonsense"! Yes. It is such acute nonsense that Barrow tells us is "one species of wit." To charge the breach would indeed in this place be sheer nonsense, and anywhere, I believe, breaches are not charged but stormed. O that the Poet could witness this attempt to travesty his language, and visit it upon the offenders! This is indeed a specimen of that infeliciter audentia which must move the indignation of all who admire Shakespeare, and are competent to understand him. P. 94. Mr. Collier continues, "We do not feel so confident respecting the next emendation :— That in this spleen ridiculous appears, To check their folly, passion's solemn tears. 'Solemn tears' may possibly be right; but we do not think it is, because the corrector erases the word, and substitutes another in the margin, which certainly better answers the purpose: To check their folly, passion's sudden tears.” Although this alteration may not, perhaps, be necessary; yet, had I been Mr. Collier, I should have been much more confident about it than its predecessors. Another word, "spleen," in this passage, which has escaped the corrector, seems to me a probable misprint. I think we should read, That in this scene ridiculous appears, To check their folly, passion's sudden tears. P. 95. O, poverty in wit! kingly poor flout! "Of which," says Mr. Collier, " readers have been left to make what sense they could. The old corrector clearly saw no sense in it, and has furnished us with other words so well qualified for the place that we cannot hesitate to approve them. The enemy had been utterly routed and destroyed, and the Princess, in the excess of her delight, breaks out,— O poverty in wit! kill'd by pure flout." Now the succeeding line, had it been attended to by the corrector, would have shown him that kill'd could not be the misprinted word, for the Princess continues, Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? I have no doubt we should read, O poverty in wit! stung by poor flout. Stung by, as written, might easily be mistaken for kingly. P. 96. The extreme parts of time extremely forms Thus the old copies. Mr. Collier says this is "a passage hitherto passed over, but which evidently requires the emendation which it has received from the corrector, who thus sets it right, and renders the sense distinct: the Princess is on the point of hastily quitting Navarre, on the news of the death of her father, and the King observes, The extreme parting time expressly forms Mr. Collier has forgotten Mr. Field's observations on this passage, in which he approves a silent deviation from the first 4to. and folio, made by Mr. Collier, in reading form for forms; but which last is the true reading. The corrector has not succeeded, in substituting parting for parts of, as it destroys the personification; and to substitute expressly for extremely destroys the meaning. The most probable reading is,— The extreme haste of time extremely forms And often, at his very loose, decides That which long process could not arbitrate. Parts was an easy misprint for haste. The hasty flight of time in the end "forms all causes to the purpose of his speed," &c. P. 96. "Another error occurs in the answer of the Princess to the request of the King, that she would not forget his lovesuit; the reading has been, I understand you not: my griefs are double. She did not understand him, because her sorrows had deadened her faculties, and the line as we find from the manuscript correction in the folio, 1632, ought to be,— I understand you not: my griefs are dull.” Specious but incorrect; the error lies in the small word are, which is a misprint for see. Read, I understand you not: my griefs see double. The Princess's griefs were too recent to have dulled her wits, but her tears might make her see double. She uses the expression metaphorically, as an evasive answer. Ib. "Biron then takes up the subject, and when, among other things, he says, As love is full of unbefitting strains, As wanton as a child, we ought to read strangeness for "strains," which is quite consistent with what he adds just afterwards, when he tells us that love is— Full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms, instead of 'straying shapes,' as it is misprinted in the folios. Both these words are altered by the old corrector." Here the "old corrector" has manifested again his ignorance of the language of Shakespeare, and his unfitness to assume the office of correcting it. Strains here signifies wanton, light, unbecoming behaviour.-"Skipping and vain, full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms," deviations from propriety of conduct; such as Mrs. Ford, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, alludes to, when she says of Falstaff, "unless he knew some strain in me, he would never have boarded me in this manner." See the note on Winter's Tale, Act iii. Sc. 2. P. 97. The corrector would here again change "dear groans" to "dire groans;" but dear was unquestionably the Poet's word, for this is not a solitary instance of its use. "Johnson and Malone," says Tooke, "who trusted to their Latin to explain Shakespeare's English, for dear and dearest would have us read dire and direst; not knowing that Deɲe and Deriend meant hurt and hurting mischief, and mischievous; and that their Latin, dirus, is from our Anglo-Saxon Dené, which they would expunge." That the corrector should fall into the error we are not surprised, but that Mr. Collier should advocate the mischievous interference with the Poet's language is not a little surprising. A A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. T the opening of this play we have some of those manifold "coincidences" with the corrected text of the variorum editions, which excite no little surprise and some misgiving, but I pass them over, as needing no other notice. ACT I. SCENE I. P. 100. The corrector would substitute for Bottom's common colloquial phrase, “and so grow to a point," to “and so go on to appoint." What but the pruritus emendandi could induce him to interfere with this passage, which is much better than his substitution, we are at a loss to imagine. Ib. The same observation will apply to the proposed change of "I will move storms" to "I will move stones." Bottom had said, "let the audience look to their eyes," and his meaning, in his bombastic style, was, "I will move storms of passion in them, let them look to their eyes." ACT II. SCENE I. Ib. The next is a most mischievous piece of meddling with a fine passage full of fancy, as it stands in the old authentic text: The cowslips tall her pensioners be; |