and the following passage from Donne will illustrate it. scape was a wile or trick : Having purpos'd falsehood, you Can have no way but falsehood to be true; These are offered merely as conjectures. SCENE VII. A P. 445. "Cordelia urges Kent to put off his humble disguise, but he answers,— Pardon me, dear madam; Yet to be known shortens my made intent. "For 'made intent,' Warburton would substitute 'laid intent;' but Johnson contends that made intent' is only another word for formed intent. Both were wrong: 'main intent' was miswritten made intent,' and hence the doubt. Kent refers to the chief purpose for which he had disguised himself, which would be anticipated and defeated, if he were too soon known : Yet to be known shortens my main intent." There is no necessity for change; Johnson is right, for, as he observes, we still say to make a design, and to make a resolution. Made and main have little typographical resemblance. Ib. The insertion of good after " make," and the omission of it is a very doubtful change, but as the quartos afford the unequivocal reading "prove," we may conclude that to make was used in the folios as an equivalent expression, to avoid the repetition of prove in the line: If none appear to prove it on thy person. Ib. The substitution of skill for "place" without the slightest reason or necessity is another impertinent attempt to improve upon the language of the poet. P. 446. "When Lear enters, bearing the dead Cordelia, he asks for a looking-glass : Lend me a looking-glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, "The looking-glass was not 'stone,' and a manuscript-correction substitutes shine, as having been misprinted 'stone:' If that her breath will mist or stain the shine; "i. e. the polish of the looking-glass. 'Stain' and 'stone' read awkwardly in juxta-position, and the error might easily be committed. Of old, mirrors were made of steel, and Gascoigne wrote a well-known satire called by the contradictory title of 'The Steel-glass :' hence it would not have surprised us if the poet's word had been steel for 'stone.' Both the correctors' shine and Mr. Collier's suggested steel would be absurd readings. Stone may surely have been used in the same metaphorical manner that we now term glass chrystal? The word however was most probably same,— Lend me a looking-glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the same, Why then she lives. Ib. The substitution of light for sight is another piece of pragmatic interference with the undoubted language of the poet; which needs no improvement. Dull is the appropriate epithet to sight and not to light. Thus Huloet "To waxe dulle of sight, Hebetesco;" and Baret, " Dulle eie-sight, Hebes, acies oculorum." Add to this that Lear has just before, "Who are you ? Mine eyes are none of the best." How Mr. Collier can countenance and advocate such mischievous attempts to disturb the true text of the poet, I am at a loss to conceive. P. 448. TH OTHELLO. ACT I. SCENE I. HE first "striking emendation" in this tragedy, the substitution of" learn'd in forms and usages of duty" instead of "trimm'd in forms and visages of duty," Mr. Collier very wisely deems" unsafe to be received into the text," and therefore he does not here urge that it was derived from some "authority" unavailable to us. He may be assured that its adoption would be ruinous to the sense, and for the credit of his correctors it would have been as well to have suppressed it. Ib. "We should feel no hesitation in altering 'timorous' to clamorous in the following passage, where Iago tells Roderigo to awake and alarm Brabantio: Do; with like timorous accent, and dire yell, "Here 'timorous,' even taking it as frightened, seems quite out of place, when coupled with 'dire yell;' and we may, therefore, fairly conclude that the poet wrote, as the old corrector states, Do; with like clamorous accent, and dire yell," &c. Is Mr. Collier to be told that the old synonym of timorous is not "frightened" but feareful, and that Shakespeare always uses it in that sense? We have it in the Dictionaries of the poet's time," Timerous, feareful, Meticulosus, Horridus, Formidolosus." Meddling here would therefore be mischievous. P. 449. "Roderigo informs Brabantio that his daughter had made a gross revolt,' Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes In an extravagant and wheeling stranger. "Here the commentators have notes upon 'extravagant,' but pass over 'wheeling' without explanation, although very un intelligible where it stands: a manuscript-correction in the folio, 1632, shows that it is a misprint for a most applicable epithet; and other emendations are proposed, such as Laying for 'Tying,' and on for 'in,' which render the meaning much more obvious than in the ordinary reading : Laying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes On an extravagant and wheedling stranger. Pope, adopting 'Tying,' follows it in the next line by the preposition to instead of 'in;' neither Laying nor on are by any means absolutely necessary, but wheedling for wheeling is an important improvement of the text, and shows that the word was of older employment in our language than some lexicographers have supposed. Nothing can be more natural than that Roderigo should call Othello a 'wheedling stranger,' who had insinuated himself into the good graces of both father and daughter." Even could Mr. Collier adduce an instance of the use of this word wheedling before the reign of Charles II. it would be difficult to persuade us to displace the reading of the old copies; for connected as it is with the word extravagant, i. e. wandering, wheeling is no doubt used in the sense of the Italian "Girevole," which had also a secondary meaning of inconstant, unsteady. Iago afterwards designates him as "an erring [i. e. wandering] Barbarian." That this word should have been suggested makes it certain that the corrector in this instance lived not earlier than the last century. Ib. Surely the mention of the rectification of the press error apines for "paines," so long since set right, was entirely superfluous. SCENE III. P. 450. The substitution of with the same for "where they aim," is a stupid misapprehension of the passage, As in those cases, where they aim reports, "Tis oft with difference. i. e. in those cases where reports are made from guess or conjecture. Thus in Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. v. they aim at it, And botch the words up to fit their own thoughts, as the correctors have done here! P. 450. To substitute evidence for “ wider” and omit “more” is another instance of the slashing liberties these correctors indulge in; but the reading of the quarto, now the received text, is quite satisfactory: To vouch this is no proof, Without more certain and more overt test; P. 451. Mr. Collier says, "We subjoin the representation of the text as made by the corrector of the folio, 1632: I therefore beg it not, To please the palate of my appetite, And heaven defend your counsels, that you think I will your serious and great business scant, When she is with me. No; when light-wing'd toys Of feather'd Cupid foil with wanton dullness My speculative and offic'd instruments, &c. "In the third line it seems that 'heat' got transposed, while of was omitted; in the fourth line, me was misprinted 'my ; and in the sixth line, counsels became 'good souls,' terms Othello would hardly apply to the Duke and Senators of Venice. Foil, in the ninth line, agrees with the quartos, where instruments is also in the plural. These changes appear to be so effectual, as far as regards the plain sense of the passage, that all that some commentators have said in favour of disjunct, instead of defunct' (the word in every old edition), is thrown away: Othello did not ask for the company of his wife for his own proper satisfaction, or to comply with the young effects of heat, in him defunct at the age at which he had arrived; and he therefore undertook that no amorous trifling should induce him to neglect the great duties entrusted to him." In his edition of Shakespeare Mr. Collier adheres to the |