over in silence. It is in the dialogue between Menenius and the Guard :

1 Guard. You are a Roman are you?

Men. I am as thy general is.

1 Guard. Then you should hate Rome, as he does. Can you, when you have pushed out of your gates the very defender of them, and, in a violent popular ignorance, given your enemy your shield, think to front his revenges with the easy groans of your old women, the virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant-as you seem to be.

As the varied passions of the intercessors are evidently intended to be represented, it is possible that for “virginal palms" we should read "virginal qualms;" the words would be easily mistaken for each other in old manuscript. Warburton made an unhappy proposal to substitute a non-existent French word, pasmes! We have the word virginal in Spenser, and in Woman's a Weathercock, 1612:

Lav'd in a bath of contrite virginal tears.

"Virginal palms" may however mean, the palms or hands of the maidens joined in supplication.

P. 362. The next impertinent piece of meddling, in substituting quite unnecessarily mistaking for mistaken, Mr. Collier himself wisely repudiates.

P. 363. "An alteration which can hardly be subject to doubt or dispute, occurs where Aufidius is descanting on the manner in which he had served the designments' of Coriolanus to his own injury: the passage in all editions has stood as follows:

:

Serv'd his designments

In mine own person; holp to reap the fame

Which he did end all his.

"Rowe printed make for end,' and he was followed by several editors, who did not see how sense could be extracted from end.' Shakespeare is here only using a metaphor which he has often employed before, and it is obvious from the context that for 'end' we ought to read ear, which means, in its derivation as well as in its use, to plough: therefore, when Aufidius says that he had

Holp to reap the fame

Which he did ear all his ;

" he means that Coriolanus had ploughed the ground, intending to reap a crop of fame, which Aufidius had assisted him to harvest. The use of the word 'reap' proves what was in the mind of the poet. It is needless to enumerate the places where Shakespeare employs the verb, to ear, in the sense of to plough."

The substitution of ear for "end" is a good emendation of an evident misprint, but the correctors have only half done. their work; ear, i. e. plough, and reap should change places; or Aufidius is made to say that he had a share in the harvest, while Coriolanus had all the labour of ploughing, and the passage will then run thus:

serv'd his designments

In mine own person; holp to ear the fame
Which he did reap all his.

This is the suggestion of a correspondent of Notes and Queries, vol. vii. p. 378.

P. 366.

TH

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

ACT I. SCENE I.

HE alteration of "continence" to conscience may be a matter of " taste," but it is by no means requisite.

SCENE II.

Ib. The same may be said of the alterations of words for the purpose of multiplying the rhymes throughout this play; but the first instance is so truly absurd as to show that the taste of the correctors was rather a love of rhyme than of reason. Mr. Collier says:-" where Titus tells Tamora that her son must be slain as a sacrifice for his dead sons, the

rhyme seems so inevitable, that we can hardly suppose it relinquished excepting by design":

To this your son is mark'd; and die he must
T' appease their groaning shadows that are dust.

"The printed copies poorly read' gone' for dust."

It must have been a desperate love of rhyme that could have induced the correctors to perpetrate this piece of nonsense-groaning shadows that are dust!!! Why is this rhyme "inevitable," at least what the printed copies "poorly read" is perfectly intelligible, and gone could not be a misprint for dust.

P. 367. The change of "proclamations" to acclamations, and of " abroad" to abroach, have something specious about them; but, as sense can be made of the old reading, Mr. Collier's own canon of non-interference is against their introduction.

Ib. "We have here a proof that the old corrector may have resorted to the quarto copies of this play, where only, and not in the folios, in the following line,—

That slew himself and wise Laertes' son,

"the epithetwise' is found. It is possible, however, that the necessary word was obtained from recitation, or even from some independent authority, written or printed. Some of the changes in this play could scarcely have been made without some such aid.”

Why not from subsequent editions adopting the reading of the quartos ? Does Mr. Collier think that "shadows that are dust" was obtained from "some independent authority"?

ACT II. SCENE II.

Ib. We have here a large specimen of the skill of the correctors in turning unexceptionable dramatic blank verse into bad and, in one place again, senseless rhyme. And yet Mr. Collier thinks that "Nothing can well read more easily, naturally, or harmoniously"! For the line:

we have,

Sons let it be your charge, as it is ours,

Sons let it be your charge, and so will I!!!

"How far," says Mr. Collier, " any of these changes were supported by authority, must remain a question; at least we are not in a condition to answer it."

I think the question may be unhesitatingly answered; that the correctors had no other "authority" than their own pragmatic conceit. Let any one compare Let any one compare the passage as it stands in the old text with this rifaccimento, and I shall be much surprised if the preference be not given to the former. But what right have we even to improve the text by rewriting it?

SCENE III.

P. 368. There are two trifling substitutions, neither of them of the slightest importance or necessity, in this scene; which, not to be tedious, I pass over.

SCENE V.

P. 369. Here is an uncalled for interpolation to complete a hemistich, as if hemistichs never occurred in these dramas!

ACT III. SCENE I.

Ib. The substitution of 'tis true for "

you do" is again a

mere matter of taste.

ACT IV.

P. 370. There are two or three more trifling substitutions in this act, most of them questionable, as Mr. Collier seems to admit.

ACT V.

P. 371. There is abundant indulgence of the correctors' love of innovation for the rhyme toward the close of this play, but we have already said enough on that subject.

P. 374.

"A

ROMEO AND JULIET.

ACT I. SCENE I.

MANUSCRIPT-emendation in the folio, 1632, makes it certain that 'civil,' in the following portion of Sampson's speech, is a misprint:-'When I have fought with the men, I will be civil with the maids; I will cut off their heads.' 'Civil' is struck out, and cruel inserted instead of it. Malone rightly preferred cruel.”

And yet Mr. Collier wrongly preferred civil! notwithstanding the evidence of the excellent undated quarto, and of that of 1637, which is almost an exact copy of it. It did not want the evidence of the correctors to make it certain that this was the true reading, which I adopted in my edition in 1826.

Ib. Of the unnecessary substitution of "angry word," for airy word," Mr. Collier judiciously says, of the authority of the correctors, that it "ought not, perhaps, to have weight enough to induce us to alter the received and very intelligible Their authority, then, misled them here..

text.

Ib. "Romeo, describing love, remarks,—

Love is a smoke, made with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes.

"Johnson, Steevens, Reed, and others, have contended that 'purg'd' cannot have been the poet's language; and they suggest urg'd, in the sense of excited. This emendation might answer the purpose, if no better were offered, but in the margin of the folio, 1632, we are told to substitute a word that exactly belongs to the place, and that might be easily misread 'purg'd' by the printer:

Being puff'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes.

Every body is aware how a fire sometimes sparkles in the eyes of those who blow it with their breath: the smoke is first 'made' by the gentle 'fume of sighs,' and then caused to sparkle by being violently puffed by the lover's breath."