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first folio was printed, such a passage as this would have been left in this chaotic state? It is impossible that it should have been so.

"Post.

And so, great powers,

If you will take this audit, take this life,
And cancel these cold bonds."

Upon this passage Samuel Johnson, LL. D., lexicographer and 'great moralist,' remarks—" This equivocal use of bonds is another instance of our authour's infelicity in pathetick speeches." I have heard that there are bigoted admirers of Dr. Johnson, though having never met one, I am loth to believe in the existence of such a phenomenon ; but from the resentment which such may feel at the manner in which I have spoken of their ponderous idol, I shelter myself behind the bulwark of wrath which such a note as this will excite in the bosom of every man who has Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, and can read and understand the English language. Shakespeare's "infelicity in pathetic speeches" is good, excellent good.

Of the rhyming dialogue in the Apparition in this Scene, I had merely written on my notes, before having read any comments upon the play--'this, beyond a doubt, is not Shakespeare's.' I found, however, that it had been so judged by almost all the critical students of his works. This was inevitable. The passage is evidently the production of some one about the theatre who had been in the habit of writing

such doggerel for the comedies in fashion just before Shakespeare took possession of the stage; and Shakespeare probably consented to its introduction for peace sake, to please the author or a brother manager,-knowing, too, that there were those in his audience to whom it would be acceptable. It is ineffably flat, and altogether superfluous; but it must not be removed from the place in which it appears in the authentic copy.

SCENE 5.

"Iach. Your daughter's chastity-There it begins. He spake of her, as Dian had hot dreams,

And she alone were cold.

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See in this passage that Imogen's purity was not the mere accompaniment of a passionless nature, that contemptible nothing which some would elevate into a virtue. What is virtue worth which is not virtue of its own will,which is the mere index of a want of capacity to be otherwise? Imogen was chaste because she knew every thrill of passion. Had she been passionless, she would have been only an imperfect woman, and continent only, not chaste; and continence is not a virtue: else our mothers were all vile.

PERICLES.

ACT I. SCENE 1.

"Aub. At whose conception (till Lucina reign'd) Nature this dowry gave to glad her presence,

The senate house of planets all did sit," &c.

Commentators and editors find difficulty in this word "conception." Mason thinks it means 'birth;' Steevens would change it to concession, and Malone would introduce a long parenthesis. But is not the signification of the passage, taken together, very clear? and does it not evidently mean, that during the pregnancy of Thaisa's mother,―i. e. from conception till Lucina reigned,-the senate house of planets all did sit ?

SCENE 4.

"Cle. This Tharsus o'er which I have government,

(A city on whom plenty held full hand),

For riches strew'd herself even in the streets."

There have been some efforts to clear the obscurity of the last line, but no one has noticed Jackson's reasonable correction of a very easy typographical error, in reading,

"For riches strew'd her pelf even in the streets."

Jackson once in a while ventures a successful conjecture; and contemptible as nearly every page of his book is, it should not be entirely disregarded by any editor, as we have seen by more important instances than the present.

ACT III. SCENE 3.

"Per. Unscissor'd shall this hair of mine remain,
Though I show will in't."

Plainly, Mr. Dyce is right in reading,

BOSWELL.

"Though I show ill in't."

ACT IV. SCENE 6.

"Lys. If she'd do the deeds of darkness, thou would'st say."

Mr. Dyce suggests "the deed of darkness," which is unquestionably the correct reading.

CORRECTION.

When writing the remarks on page 468 upon the hopelessly corrupted passage in Act V. Sc. 4, of Cymbeline, I had entirely forgotten that the last four leaves of that play are wanting in Mr. Collier's folio. We of course cannot know whether the passage was corrected or not. But other similar passages are left unchanged in quite sufficient numbers to preserve the validity of this strong argument against the authority of the volume.

SONNETS.

THE question, who was the person to whom Shakespeare addressed his Sonnets, has long been considered one of the most obscure and interesting in the history of literature. But it seems to me, that a single attentive perusal of them should set all doubt at rest. Nearly all of them were evidently written for some other person or persons, according to the fashion of that day for lovers and others to seek assistance from those gifted by the Muse. Among other evidences of the existence of this custom, is the following amusing one in Drayton's Sonnets.

"A Witlesse Gallant a young Wench that woo'd
(Yet his dull Spirit her not one iot could moue)
Intreated me, as e'r I wish'd his good,

To write him but one Sonnet to his Loue:

*

But with my Verses he his Mistres wonne,
Who doted on the Dolt beyond all measure.

But see, for you to Heaven for Phraze I runne," &c.
P. 260, ed. 1619.

In this way, perhaps, Shakespeare made the money by which he first got a footing in the theatre. The person, for whom most of these poems were written, may have been Mr. W. H., to whom the publisher wishes happiness and immortality, as their "only begetter." This supposition with regard to their origin, seems to me so natural, and so consistent with

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