THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 COLLIER, COLERIDQE, 
 
 AND 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 p A N\ Ji < - ■•> t d s-^N U YaA -IJ < ^- \ 
 
 w 
 
 A REVIEW. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "LITERARY COOKERY." 
 
 LONDON: 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, AND ROBERTS. 
 
 1860.
 
 p R a g ^ ? 
 
 •6 73 
 
 LEEDS : 
 PRINTED BY EDWARD BAINE3 AND SONS.
 
 advertise:\[ent. 
 
 A CONSIDERABLE portioii of the following pages, — of those 
 more especially which relate to the " Seven Lectures," — was 
 prepared two or three years since ; shortly after the appear- 
 ance in the autumn of 1856, of the volimie they relate to, 
 which bears the following title — 
 
 SEVEN LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE AND MILTON, 
 
 BY THE LATE S. T. COLERIDGE : 
 
 A LIST OF ALL THE MS. EMENDATIONS IN 
 
 MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO, 1632 ; 
 
 AND AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE. 
 
 BY J. P. COLLIER, ESQ. 
 
 The interest then attaching to the subject was, however, 
 of a nature too confined, and too apparently personal, to 
 justify its intrusion upon the public. But circumstances 
 have recently occurred, and unexpected revelations have 
 been made, which have conferred extraordinary interest 
 upon ever5i;hing relating to Mr. Collier's literary produc- 
 tions. The Author of the present Review has therefore 
 been induced to rewrite and considerably extend his 
 remarks, with a view to render them applicable to the 
 present state of a great literary question. 
 
 Midsummer, 1860.
 
 REVIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 MR. COLLIER'S "SEVEN LECTURES" OF COLERIDGE. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Upon the discovery of an interesting record of a great 
 literary character like Coleridge, of whom much had' heen 
 previously written and published, what is the natural and 
 straightforward course that would, under ordinary circum- 
 stances, be expected from any person undertaking its 
 publication — especially from one conversant with litera- 
 ture — or, above all, from an old and practised editor of 
 other men's works ? "Woxild it not be a careful and scru- 
 pidous comparison of the newly foimd record with others 
 upon the same subject-matter already extant — a careful ex- 
 amination of dates and circumstances — and, if the record 
 were of a public Lecturer, an inquiry into the several 
 courses he had been known to deliver — the manner in which 
 similar records of them had been obtained and preserved, 
 and the degree of faith that might be placed in them ? — 
 and, finally, would i^; not be expected that the results of 
 these several investigations shoxdd be digested and com- 
 
 B
 
 INTHODrCTORY. 
 
 pressed iu tLc form of an intelligible preface, with notes and 
 references ? 
 
 "Was it in the fulfilment of such an expectation that Mr. 
 Collier — having in 1854 announced his discovery of verba- 
 tim reports of Seven Lectures of Coleridge, and exhibited 
 specimens of them to the public — consumed two whole 
 years afterwards in preparing them for the press P Let 
 the following extraordinary declaration be the reply : and 
 it is worthy of attention as containing (although in the 
 shape of a foot note) almost the only information strictly 
 germane to the preparation of the reports, in the whole 
 of an enormous preface extending over a third of the 
 volume : — 
 
 " I should, perhaps, state that I have referred to none of Coleridge's 
 subsequent publications to ascertain whether he has there broached, 
 modified, or altered any of his opinions. Some points, in the two 
 volumes of his "Literary Remains," 1836, may possibly accord; but, 
 although I have them by me, I have purposely not consulted them 
 with reference to my present transcripts, since my object was to give 
 Coleridge's sentiments precisely as, I believe, they were pronounced 
 in 1811-12."— Preface to " Seven Lectm-es," p. vii. 
 
 So that the investigation and research, just set forth as the 
 natural and befitting precursors of such a publication, are 
 here expressly ignored by Mr. Collier — even with respect to 
 books in his own possession, and previously well known to 
 him ! But he presents to his readers, in lieu thereof, a 
 preface of not less than 120 pages, consisting of — 
 
 1. Affidavit, certificates, and declarations, setting forth 
 
 the truth and exceUenco of the preparation about 
 to be administered. 
 
 2. Reported table-talk of Coleridge and others; which, 
 
 purporting to be no more than Mr. Collier's own 
 recollections of the substance of what was said, and 
 not the ipsismna verba, are exempt from question.
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 3. Criticisms and suggested amendments of the eurly 
 
 English writers, and their editors ; which have 
 
 nothing to do with the work to which they arc an 
 
 ostensible preface, although occupying full sixty of 
 
 its pages. 
 
 But since the first of these divisions — containing the 
 
 Affidavit, &c., may bo said to be in reply to a certain 
 
 pamphlet, entitled " Literary Cookery," for which the 
 
 author of the present remarks is responsible ; and since that 
 
 pamphlet has been very much misrepresented and vilified, 
 
 the present opportunity may be taken to enter into a short 
 
 defensive explanation respecting it. 
 
 Originally written as a letter to a newspaper, and there- 
 fore compressed within the narrowest limits, that pamphlet 
 was also premature ; because, ha\dng been sent forth dm-ing 
 the two years that elapsed between the first sample of these 
 Lectures and their finished performance, whatever flaws it 
 proclaimed in the one, were open to reparation and evasion in 
 the other. But although premature in this respect, it had by 
 no means been hurried forward upon the heels of the errors it 
 exposed, without first allowing ample time for their promul- 
 gator to have amended them if he woidd. The asserted 
 false dates, for example, had remained before the public, 
 uncorrected and unexplained, from Jidy, ISo-l, until the 
 publication of " Literary Cookery," at the end of 1855. 
 During that long interval, it must have become well known 
 to Mr. Collier that his dates had been questioned. At all 
 events they had received a public refutation from the 
 appearance, in the same periodical with his own, and with 
 which he was in constant communication, of another con- 
 temporary accoimt of the samo Lectures ; but with a year 
 ascribed to their delivery conspicuously different from that 
 which had been assigned to them by himself (see " Notes 
 and Queries," of August 4, 1855.) "V^Ticn, therefore, after 
 
 b2
 
 8 ' INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 this virtual contradiction of his dates, Mr. Collier still 
 appeared determined to witliliold all explanation, was it to 
 be complained of that the next notice of them should 
 assume a shape that could not be treated with disregard? 
 And when (extorted by the publication of "Literary Cookery") 
 the explanation, withheld for eighteen months, did at length 
 come forth, in the form of an affidavit on which to ground 
 an action for libel, in what did it consist ? Jn the state- 
 ment that the false dates — so long persisted in — so easy of 
 test by reference to half a score authorities — so often unne- 
 cessarily repeated in the original communication — ^had, after 
 all, no better foundation than the figures " 1812," inscribed, 
 no one knew how or when, on that very prospectus, the 
 date of which had been impugned, — inscribed, too, in pencil 
 marks, which had survived the lapse of nearly half a 
 century. 
 
 Nor was the length of time this explanation had been 
 withheld, the only reason that induced the author of 
 " Literary Cookery" to suppose that Mr. CoUier really 
 intended to adhere to and defend his false dates : another 
 reason for that impression was, that in the original announce- 
 ment of the discovery (July, 1854,) Mr. CoUier had stated, 
 with reference to courses of Lectures delivered by Coleridge 
 anterior to 1818 — 
 
 " One of these former courses was that of 1812 ; but I learn from a 
 diary I kept at the time (of which only fragments remain) that in the 
 preceding year Coleridge had delivered a series of Lectures on Poetiy, 
 at the Royal Institution. I did not attend them, and perhaps might 
 not have heard of them but that Coleridge -himself mentioned them 
 at my father's, on the 21st of October, 1812." — "Notes and Queries," 
 of 1st July, 1854. 
 
 Here, in two short sentences, 1812 was twice repeated, 
 and that year was fui'ther confirmed by the mention of a 
 course of Lectures delivered b}^ Coleridge the preceding year.
 
 INTRODUCTORY. B 
 
 For it was only of 1812 that such an assertion could have 
 been made, seeing that no coui'sc had been delivered for 
 several years preceding 1811. What other construction, 
 then, could any one place upon a recorded mention of a 
 course delivered the ];)reccdin(j year, but that Mr. CoUior 
 was prepared to abide by and to defend hie often asserted 
 date of 1812 ?* 
 
 This circumstance is not brought forward now for the first 
 time : it was noted on page 10 of *' Literary Cookerj^," and 
 there marked out for required explanation, by being printed 
 in italics, and followed bj- a note of interrogation. Never- 
 theless, Mr. Collier not only gave no explanation of it in 
 his affidavit, but he afterwards repeats the same assertion in 
 his amended account of the same diary in the Preface to 
 "Seven Lectures," in even stronger terms than before, by 
 substituting "last year," for "preceding year," and altering 
 the date from " 21st of October, 1812," to " 29th October, 
 1811." 
 
 It must be recollected that in the original account of this 
 diary, in 1854, the names of the week-days were not prefixed 
 to its dates as was afterwards done in the amended accoimt. 
 For example, in the first account, dates are quoted with 
 every appearance of preciseness, as thus — "the date is 13th 
 October, 1812 ;" but in 1856, the same date is quoted, with 
 apparently equal preciseness, " Sunday, 13th October," with- 
 out a year. Hence it is necessary to believe that Mr. Collier, 
 quoting dates from his owm diary in 1854, unaccoimtably 
 mnitted the important element of the names of the week- 
 days ; and yet added one that he now states formed no part 
 of them, namely, 1812 ! 
 
 The only date to which a week-day was added in the first 
 
 • Coleridge certainly was nnnounceel to deliver n course of Lectures on 
 the Belles Lcttres, at the Surrey Institution, to commence in November, 1812, 
 the very date fii-st assigned to his reports by Mr. Collier.
 
 10 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 account, was that mentioned in the prospectus of the 
 Lectures, but also indepeudently repeated by Mr. Collier, — 
 
 " It is singular that I have not marked the date of the day on which 
 any Lecture was delivered, excepting the first, on Monday, Nov. 18, 
 1812."— "Notes and Queries," July 22, 1854. 
 
 This was the only date, therefore, that could, at that time, 
 be impugned as impossible and inconsistent. And, in so 
 denouncing it, the author of " Literary Cookery" could only 
 deal with it as he found it ; but he remarked, as a very 
 suspicious circumstance attending it, that it woidd be a cor- 
 rect and consistent date according to old style ; pointing out, 
 at the same time, a very accessible source whence such a date 
 might have been adopted in ignorance of its true nature. 
 
 Now that there was nothing extraordinary or improbable 
 in assuming that literary persons, even as eminent as Mr. 
 Collier, might possibly be ignorant or unmindful of the 
 diffcrenco between old and new style in chronology, the 
 following mistakes will show ; and, apart from the present 
 subject, they possess sufficient interest as literary curiosities 
 to make them worth relating : — 
 
 Dr. Drake, in " Shakespeare and his Times," vol. ii., page 
 611, alluding to Shakespeare's death on the 23rd April, 
 1616, writes thus : — 
 
 " It is remarkable that on the same day expired, in Spain, his great 
 and amiable contemporary, Cervantes ; the world being thus deprived, 
 nearly at the same moment, of the two most original writers which 
 modern Europe has produced." 
 
 The same remark had been made many years before by 
 John Bowie, the editor of " Don Quixote ;" and it is thus 
 commented upon by M. Louis Yiardot, in his " Notice sur 
 la vie, &c., de Cervantes," — 
 
 " On trouve, en cffet, dans Ics biogiaphics de Shakspeare, qu'il deceda 
 le 23 avril, 1616. Mais il faut prendre garde que les Anglais n'adop-
 
 IXTUODUfTORY. 1 1 
 
 t^rcnt le calcndiier gregorien qu'cn 1754, et qu'ils furcnt jusquc-la en 
 retard des Espagnols pour les dates, commo les Russes le sent 
 aujourd'hui du reste de rEiu-opc. Shakspeare a done survceu douze 
 jours a Cervantes." 
 
 Here is a double mistake : first, on the part of the English 
 writers, as is cleverly enough pointed out by M. Viardot ; 
 and next on the part of M. Viardot himself — only that his 
 mistake is much more remarkable for ignorance of the sub- 
 ject, and far less excusable — inasmuch as it was committed 
 with full attention directed to the point in question, which 
 the others had wholly overlooked. M. Viardot states that 
 Shakespeare survived Cervantes by firelre dai/s, forgetting 
 that, although that number of days be now the difference 
 between old style and new, it was not so when Shakespeare 
 died. The difference was then but ten days, and did not 
 amount to twelve for nearly two centuries afterwards.* 
 
 But to return to Mr. Collier and " Literary Cookerj-." 
 No sooner had it become generally imderstood (for as yet, 
 and for many months afterwards, the affida^dt itself was 
 inaccessible,) that that gentleman had given upon oath some 
 explanation of his impossible dates, than the pamphlet which 
 had extorted it was withdrawTi, and its sale discontinued at 
 a moment when the notoriety given to it by Mr. Collier's 
 law proceedings must have occasioned an increased demand. 
 And for this courtesy to an unseen affidavit, the unwise 
 requital made by Mr. Collier and his friends was the asser- 
 tion that the pamphlet had been withdrawn through fear of 
 legal consequences ! IIow could that be, when the con- 
 sequences were then past and over ? when the signal 
 failure of the law proceedings had left the field open, and 
 given the best possible guarantee of perfect impunity ? In 
 
 * Another example is Mr. Knight's supposed Play Bill for ' Much ado 
 about Nothing," prefixed to his " Supplementary Notice" of that play, and 
 dated " This day being Tuesday, July 11, 1000, " which is a new-style date !
 
 12 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 point of fact, no fear of legal consequences had ever existed, 
 for tlio simple reason that neither author nor publisher of 
 " Literary Cookery" knew anj^thing of these law proceed- 
 ings until they were quashed and over, and even then only 
 from the newspapers of the day in common with the rest 
 of the public. To say, therefore, that fear of these pro- 
 ceedings had actuated the withdrawal of the pamphlet, was 
 simply an ingenious improving of the occasion, which could 
 be intended to deceive those only who knew not that these 
 proceedings were mere matters of form, entirely one-sided, 
 and ended where they began, without so much as notice to 
 the parties impugned. 
 
 Besides, who, with a grain of sense, could fear that an 
 action for libel would be permitted, or, if permitted, could 
 be successful, on the ground of defamatory inference from 
 literary facts, not one of which was or could be denied? 
 As well might an author accused of plagiarism bring his 
 " action of battery" on the plea that it amounted to a 
 criminal accusation of theft ! 
 
 And to prove that Mr. CoUier himself never reaUy 
 regarded the allegations in this pamphlet in any other 
 than a purely literary light, he remarks in the preface to 
 " Seven Lectures," — 
 
 " I heartily wish I merited to have it supposed (as it must he 
 supposed by the writer of " Literary Cookery") that I possess taste, 
 knowledge, or originality sufficient for the composition of such pro- 
 ductions." — Preface, page vii. 
 
 Now whether taste, or knowledge, or originality, be evident 
 in the composition of these lectures ; or Avhcther there be 
 any composition in them at all, except what Coleridge used 
 to call '' ferrumination,'* are purely matters of opinion, which 
 may bo treated of hereafter ; but as for the complimentary 
 supposition Mr. Collier says the imputation implies, it is
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 13 
 
 clearly iiicompatiblo with a different character he givee to 
 it a little further on, — 
 
 "A personal attack, with additional features of malignity, and a 
 base shrinking fi-om responsibility." 
 
 Hard words ! but alas ! vituperative language is not always 
 devoted to the defence of real innocence. Mr. ColKer 
 might almost have been taking lessons in that style of 
 defence from Mr. Ireland and his friends, from one of 
 whose pamphlets he might have extracted the following 
 parallel invective, — 
 
 " Ignorance is excusable ; but if a sensation of envious jealousy, or 
 malignant animosity, should have dictated this outrage upon Mr. 
 Ireland's character, it would merit, not contempt, but the most perfect 
 abhorrence." 
 
 The italics are in the original ; no doubt they had due effect 
 at the time, but they read rather oddly now that we know 
 all about Mr. Ireland and his character. 
 
 It is only necessary to say, in reply to these accusations 
 of malicious motives, &c., that the writer of "Literary 
 Cookery" has never even seen Mr. Collier; that he neither 
 has, nor pretends to have, any knowledge of him, directly 
 or indirectly, other than he has obtained from his literary 
 acts, and public writings ; — that, to him, the name " J. P. 
 ColKer," presents no other meaning than a literary entity, 
 which might be as well expressed by any other combination 
 of letters ; and that his dislike and distrust of that name, 
 once so respected, arise from the conviction that it designates 
 the originator of the most successfid and pernicious cor- 
 ruption of Shakespeare's text, under false pretences, that 
 modern times have produced. 
 
 The efforts of the writer of "Literary Cookery" are not 
 directed against Mr. Collier personally, nor against his
 
 14 • INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 private cliaracter, which, from general report, he believes 
 to be highly respectable ; but they are directed against 
 the corruption of Shakespeare's text ; and it is not his 
 fault that there is no other practicable way of attack- 
 ing that corruption except through Mr. Collier, who 
 produced it. 
 
 If it can be shown that the producer's hands are not 
 clean from literary fabrication in other matters, the downfall 
 of the marginal corrections must follow as a matter of course. 
 Let the presumed bona fides on which they are propped 
 be struck away, and they must eventually subside into 
 total insignificance, or be remembered only as a literary 
 curiosity. 
 
 It is a grand mistake to suppose that this desirable 
 consummation can be brought about by subjecting these 
 marginal corrections to the ordinary tests of evidence. Not 
 that there is nothing in them to attack, but that, like the 
 oiled and shaven Indian, there is nothing to lay hold of. 
 Nor is this impunity difficult of explanation. "While every- 
 thing is, or has been, assumed for these productions, they, 
 of themselves, assert nothing ; and, consequently, there is 
 nothing, as afiects them, capable of disproof ; nothing, 
 at all events, that may not, at need, be as easily shaken off 
 as the thief's garment, which he leaves in the hands of hia 
 captors. They are not pledged to a single fact, from first 
 to last, by the proof or disproof of which they might stand 
 or fall. A vague and shifting antiquity is first assumed 
 for them ; and on that antiquity is erected an equally 
 vague and irresponsible authority. Disprove the antiquity, 
 and the authority, already established in the belief of the 
 many, shifts its ground to some assumed, but equally baseless, 
 internal evidence of excellence — the test of which must, of 
 course, be individual opinion, the most vague and uncertain 
 of all.
 
 INTllODUCrORY. 15 
 
 All this is well illustrated in the following extracts from 
 the "Athenaeum" newspaper, one of the most influential, 
 as well as one of the most zealous amongst the upholders 
 of the " Marginal Corrections." In Januarj', 1853, that 
 jom-nal speaks of the corrections as follows : — 
 
 " Wo cannot hesitate to infer that there must have been Bomething 
 more than mere conjectiu-e — some authority from which they were 
 derived. And if the incontcstible facts lead us directly to an authority, 
 how are we to limit it, or why should wo hesitate to apply it universally? 
 Ou what grounds may we infer that some of the corrections in a 
 particular page are founded upon authority, and others are merely 
 conjectural? The consideration of the nine omitted lines stirs up 
 Mr. Collier to a little greater boldness on the question of authority ; 
 but, after all, we do not think ho goes the full length which the facts 
 would warrant." 
 
 So that the " Athenaeum" did not then think that even 
 Mr. Collier himself had gone so far in the assertion of 
 external authority " as the facts would warrant," — that he 
 had not been sturdy enough in insisting upon the extension 
 of that authority to the whole as well as to a portion of his 
 marginal corrections ! 
 
 And, undoubtedly, that was the only just and common- 
 sense view of the matter. There can, properly, be no middle 
 course : cither all or none must have authority : for, the 
 distinction between authority and conjecture once opened 
 to the decision of opinion, it must necessarily become as 
 vague as the outline of a cloud, which every one would fix 
 according to his fancy. So far, the "Athenajum" was 
 unquestionably right ; and, therefore, it ought to applaud 
 rather -than blame those who have followed the only other 
 rational course — that of entire condemnation. 
 
 But, in 1859, comes out an overwhelming exposure, by the 
 experts of the British Museum, of the fictitious nature of 
 the hand-writing in these margins — upon the genuine 
 antiquity of which the A^hole authority of the corrections
 
 16 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 was previously supposed to rest. What, then, does the 
 " Athcnoeum" say ? — 
 
 " Supposing it allowed that the underlying pencil-writing is in a free 
 modern hand, that the marginal notes of punctuation are only such as 
 are used at tliis day in a printer's office, what would the investigation 
 have done ? — Taken away the external authority of the corrections. 
 Just so much ; no more." — " Athenaeum," 9th July, 1859. 
 
 "WHiat ? Just so much ; no more ! Is the detected simula- 
 tion of ancient hand- writing no evidence of fabrication ? 
 Is the quasi anticipation, in the latter half of the 19th 
 Century, of the labours of the whole body of commentators 
 during the previous century and a half, no evidence of 
 fraudulent antedating ? 
 
 But the " Athenaeum" continues : — 
 
 " The folio never had any ascertained external authority. All the 
 warrant it has ever brought to reasonable critics is internal." 
 
 " If anybody, in the heat of argument, ever claimed for them a right 
 of acceptance beyond the emendations of Theobald, Malone, Dyce, and 
 Singer, (that is, a right not justified by their obvious utility or 
 beauty,) such a claim must have been untenable, by whomsoever 
 urged." 
 
 And this is said in the face of the former extract from the 
 same journal ! 
 
 But the claim here pronomiced to be "untenable" would 
 be absolute trifling in comparison with what the margins 
 really do claim. Is it possible the " Athena3um" can over- 
 look the fact that the Old Corrector does not by any means 
 place himself upon equal standing with the other commenta- 
 tors ; but that he claims to supersede them all in the quiet 
 possession of their own property, by sweeping into his wallet 
 everything worth having he could lay hands upon ; and from 
 want of discrimination, a great deal, too, not worth the 
 taking?
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 17 
 
 The " Athonccuni" concludes thus : — 
 
 " Tho folio derived no part of its authority from the supposition 
 that it traced back to the seventeenth century, nor would it lose any 
 part of its authority wore it proved to have originated in the nineteenth 
 century." 
 
 And this is the sort of defence that is to ward off from 
 the Old Corrector the effect of the onslaught lately directed 
 against him in the exposures ; by Mr. Hamilton, of the 
 external evidence of fraudulent execution ; and by Dr. 
 Ingleby and others, of the internal evidence of fraudulent 
 design ! That such a defence should have succeeded, even 
 in appearance, and for a time, is only to be accounted for by 
 the fact that these corrections, like the bramble in the fable, 
 present no particle of tangible substance for tho storm of 
 evidence thus collected against them, to take hold of. They 
 escape from very nothingness ; and now, in the temporary 
 lull, they are as upstart as ever. The arguments advanced 
 from time to time in their support have veered round tho 
 compass until they have settled into a circidar proposition 
 not unlike the following : — 
 
 1. The corrections must be good because they are evi- 
 
 dently derived from authority. 
 
 2. The corrections must be derived from authority because 
 
 they are so evidently good. 
 
 But, unfortunately, tho goodness is only evident to those 
 who have already admitted the authority ; and the authority 
 is only evident to those who are already enamoured of the 
 goodness. The " Athenceum" now says the right of these 
 corrections to acceptance is justified by their " ob-s-ious utiKty 
 and beauty." Ob^dou8 to whom ? "SYlio is to be the arbiter 
 of utility and beauty ? Who is to determine amongst the 
 infinite shades of opinion from acme to zero ; from the 
 " Athenocum," that swallows in the gross, to Mr. IlaUiwcU,
 
 18 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 who has not (siuce he was disabused of " Bisson Midtitude") 
 "discovered a single new reading in Mr. Collier's volume 
 that will bear the test of examination" ? 
 
 Who, except the " Athenaeum," will now answer for the 
 stability of any of these corrections, when Mr. Collier him- 
 self (their god-father, if not a nearer connection,) is foimd 
 abandoning, day by day, those ho had formerly lauded to the 
 skies ? 
 
 Such then is this slippery personage, considered, by 
 admirers, the Old Corrector ; but, by distrusters, the old 
 defiler of Shakespeare's text. How is he to be effectually 
 contended with if not in the way recommended of old 
 against his prototj^o Proteus, by advancing imawares and 
 binding him in the chains of collateral evidence ? 
 
 Influenced by this consideration, as well as by the fact 
 that the more direct attack has already found able repre- 
 sentatives in other quarters, the author of " Literary 
 Cookery" has resumed his flank movement in the direction 
 of the " Seven Lectures" of Coleridge. In them, as there 
 is no disguise, so there can be no evasion. In them there 
 are specific dates (even now that they are amended) and 
 specific assertions, to which the touch-stone of anachronism 
 can be apphed. How they will emerge from the proof, will 
 be seen in the ensuing pages.
 
 CHATTER II 
 
 COMPARISONS. 
 
 The reader of these lectures, who retains some recollection 
 of Coleridge's other productions, will seek in vain for that 
 vivid and peculiar phraseology he has been accustomed 
 to associate with them. Old familiar things, it is true, 
 he will meet with in abundance — entire sentences and 
 passages to which he will have no difficulty in assigning 
 homes amongst the literary reliquia) of Coleridge ; but they 
 are without fitness or cohesion. They seem like disbanded 
 vagabonds without a leader, or rather like the caput mortuum 
 of used up tea leaves to which all the re-roasting and refriz- 
 zling in the world will fail to restore the old essential spirit. 
 
 Coleridge himself, assuming that it is himself, seems to have 
 been conscious of this when, in the sixth of these lectures, 
 page 32, he bespeaks the indidgence of his hearers : — 
 
 " It is true that my matter may not be so accurately arranged ; it 
 may not dovetail and fit at all times as nicely as could bo wished ; but 
 you shall have my thoughts warm from my heart, and fresh from my 
 uudci'standing ; you shall have the whole skeleton, although the bones 
 may not be put together with the utmost anatomical skill." 
 
 Quite true ! the matter does not dovetail, it resembles rubble- 
 work rather ; where old materials are shovelled in at random, 
 and left to find places as they can in the midst of vapid and 
 worthless rubbish. 
 
 The first comparison shall be a contrast, between the 
 style of criticism attributed to Coleridge in these lectures
 
 20 COMPARISONS. 
 
 and that kuowTi and acknowledged to be his by publication 
 with his works. And this comparison is rendered necessary 
 by the assumption of Mr. Collier (alluded to in the preceding 
 chapter) that the composition of these lectures is too good 
 to be the production of any meaner genius than Coleridge. 
 How far this is really the case may be .imagined from the 
 following specimen of original criticism upon this passage 
 in The Temj^est : — 
 
 " The fringed curtains of thine eye advance 
 And say, what thou seest yond." 
 
 Upon which the supposed lecturer thus remarks : — 
 
 " But I am content to try the lines I have just quoted, by the introduc- 
 tion to them ; and then, I think, you will admit, that nothing could be 
 more fit and appropriate than such language. How does Prospero intro- 
 duce them ? He has just told Miranda a wonderful story, which deeply 
 affected her, and filled her with surprise and astonishment, and for his 
 own purposes he afterwards lulls her to sleep. When she awakes, 
 Shakespeare has made her wholly inattentive to the present, but 
 wrapped up in the past. An actress, who understands the character of 
 Miranda, would have her eyes cast down, and her eyelids almost 
 covering them, while she was, as it were, living in her dream. At this 
 moment Prospero sees Ferdinand, and wishes to point him out to his 
 daughter, not only with great, but with scenic solemnity, he standing 
 before her, and before the spectator, in the dignified character of a great 
 magician. Something was to appear to Miranda on the sudden, and as 
 unexpectedly as if the hero of a drama were to be on the stage at the 
 instant when the curtain is elevated. It is under such circumstances 
 that Prospero says, in a tone calculated at once to arouse his daughter's 
 attention, 
 
 ' The fringed curtains of thine eye advance 
 And say, what thou seest yond.' 
 
 Turning from the sight of Ferdinand to his thoughtful daughter, his 
 attention was first struck by the downcast appearance of her eyes and 
 eyelids," &c. — " Seven Lectures," page 124. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that Coleridge ever could haye 
 uttered such fustian as this : absurd and common-place in
 
 COMPARISONS. 21 
 
 idea and expression it is still worse as a conception of the 
 situation. So far from Miranda being " wholly inattentive" 
 to what is passing, the very master-stroke of the situation is 
 her forced attention to it ; in order that Caliban's repulsive 
 form and brutal dispositions may be fresh upon her senses, 
 and so dispose t^iem, by re\nilsion from disgust, for the 
 grand experiment of Ferdinand's unexpected appearance. 
 Unexpected by her, but not by Prospero, who had just 
 despatched Ariel for the express purpose of leading Ferdinand 
 thither. Caliban's previous introduction is manifestly a part 
 of Prospero' s design. He arouses Miranda and saj's, — 
 
 " Come on ; 
 We'll visit Caliban, my slave, who never 
 Yields us kind answer." 
 
 And although the reluctant Miranda remonstrates, — 
 
 " 'Tis a villain, sir, 
 I do not love to look on ;" 
 
 yet Prospero perseveres, he calls forth Caliban, and 
 purposely leads him on to display his worst malignity, 
 his most abominable designs, in the presence of their object ! 
 If Miranda's eyes are closed or averted, it is to shut out 
 the disgusting image of Caliban ; and Prospero may be 
 imagined in the act of playfully unclosing them when he 
 addresses her in the lines which are made the theme of the 
 foregoing specimen criticism from the " Seven Lectures." 
 
 Stage managers, whose ambition would often seem to be, 
 to covmteract as much as possible the intention of the 
 author, send Miranda off the stage altogether before Caliban 
 enters ; notwithstanding that his malediction is addressed to 
 her as well as to her father, — 
 
 " As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed 
 With raven's feather from unwholesome fen 
 Drop on you both I " 
 
 c
 
 22 COMPAUISONS. 
 
 But the difficulty presented by the last word is easily got 
 rid of, in the "Acting Drama," by the trifling liberty of 
 suppressing it altogether. And really what is here attri- 
 buted to Coleridge is nearly as bad, — getting rid, if not of 
 the presence, at least of the consciousness, of Miranda by 
 sending her to dream, while observations so vitally affecting 
 herself are purposely introduced by her father. And then 
 the bombast of the description — where Prospero "in the 
 dignified character of a great magician" shows up Ferdinand 
 " not only with great but with scenic solemnity : " and 
 Ferdinand revealing himself " as if the hero of a drama 
 were to be on the stage lohen the curtain is elevated / " Thus vul- 
 garizing, by abominable association with a stage-curtain, the 
 poetical metaphor of " the fringed curtains of thine eyes." 
 
 Among the really authentic remarks of Coleridge upon 
 this play, which are preserved in his " Literary Remains," 
 there is none upon this precise situation with which the 
 foregoing might be confronted ; but, as an example of his 
 real language and style of criticism, the following general 
 view of the whole play may be compared : — 
 
 " The Tempest is a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in 
 ■which the interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of 
 portraiture, or the natural connexion of events, but is a birth of the 
 imagination, and rests only on the co-aptation and union of the 
 elements granted to, or assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama 
 which owes no allegiance to time or space, and in which, therefore, 
 errors of chronology and geography — no mortal sins in any species — 
 are venial faults and count for nothing. It addresses itself entirely to 
 the imaginative faculty ; and although the illusion may be assisted by 
 the efiect on the senses of the complicated scenery and decorations of 
 modern times, yet this sort of assistance is dangerous. For the 
 principal and only genuine excitement ought to come from within, — 
 from the moved and sympathetic imagination ; whereas, where so much 
 is addressed to the mere external senses of seeing and hearing, the 
 spii'itual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without will 
 withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate interest, which is 
 intended to spring from within." — " Literary Remains," vol. 2, p. 94.
 
 COMPARISONS. 23 
 
 These eloquent words possess additional interest just now 
 in tlio prophetic rebuke they administered to the spectacle 
 mania and geoj^raphical emendations of certain Shakspcarean 
 revivals of still more modern times. 
 
 But while it is difficult to perceive in the major portion of 
 these lectures the slightest approach to the style and spirit 
 of Coleridge, vestiges of him are here and there visible 
 enough in the shape of immistakeable repetitions from his 
 published works ; with this important difference, that some- 
 times they are so distorted from their original sense and 
 meaning, that nothing but an outer Kvery of absolute verbal 
 identity renders them recognizable. 
 
 Now this is just the most likely thing in the world to 
 happen in the case of spurious appropriation. Because a 
 real author could have no possible motive in recurring to the 
 same words except to restate the same meaning : for any 
 fundamental change of sense he would assuredly rcM-rite 
 the whole. On the other hand, a conveyancer, who might 
 not fully comprehend the meaning of his original, woidd 
 incur great risk of unconsciously altering the sense, where 
 he intended only to vary the expression, and thereby avoid 
 the appearance of absolute literal transfer. 
 
 Thus, let the two following versions of the same definition 
 be compared, one represented as having been spoken by 
 Coleridge in 1811, and the other obviously prepared by 
 himself for what must certainly have been a different course 
 of lectures : — 
 
 Mr. Collier's Version. Mr. Coleridge's Version. 
 
 " That I may be 
 clearly understood, I will venture 
 
 to give the following definition " In my last discourse I dc- 
 
 of poetry. It is an art (or fined poetry to be the art, or 
 whatever better term our Ian- whatever better term our lan- 
 guage may aflford) of reprc- guage may afford, of rcprcscnt- 
 senting in words external na- i'lg [ ] external nature and 
 
 (•2
 
 24 COMPARISONS. 
 
 ture and human thoughts and human thoughts [ ] both 
 affections both relatively to relatively to human affections, so 
 human affections, by the produc- as to produce as much immediate 
 tion of as much immediate plea- pleasure in each part as is corn- 
 sure in parts as is compatible patible with the largest possible 
 with the largest [ ] sum of pleasui-e on the whole." 
 sum of pleasure in the whole." — " Lit. Rem.," vol. 2, p. 41. 
 — "Seven Lectiires," p. 17. 
 
 If the absolute verbal identity of the greater part of 
 these two extracts — a marvellous identity if we are to 
 suppose that one of them went through all the vicissitudes 
 of speaking, hearing, and reporting, which the other did 
 not — ^be attempted to be accounted for by the supposition 
 that Coleridge lectured from a prepared note afterwards 
 preserved with his papers ; how is it that the sense, the only 
 thing of real importance, is so vitally different ? 
 
 By noticing the bracketed spaces in the two parallel 
 
 colimms, it will be seen that the change of sense is due, 
 
 firstly, to the addition, in the Collier version, of " in words," 
 
 in the seventh line, which restricts the definition to verbal 
 
 poetry, although Coleridge always included in his definition, 
 
 painting and sculpture also. Secondly, to a similar addition 
 
 in the following line of " and afiections," which introduces 
 
 the strange and impossible jumble of "representing human 
 
 afiections relatively to human afiections." And, thirdly, to 
 
 the change of phrase consequent upon the substitution of 
 
 " by the production of," for " so as to produce," a change 
 
 which, slight as it appears, is, in fact, equivalent to an entire 
 
 reversal of meaning ; as may be conveniently exhibited in 
 
 this way : — 
 
 T i-L n IT • C Nature is to be represented Jy ^/^e 
 
 In the Collier version. .5 , ,. ^ , ^ ^ 
 
 {promictton of pleasure. 
 
 T ,1 n 1 • 1 • ( Nature is to be represented so as 
 
 In the Coleridge version \ ^ 
 
 ( to produce pleasure. 
 
 A complete inversion of terms ! the same thing being cause
 
 COMPARISONS. 25 
 
 in one, and effect in the other : with the additional dif- 
 ference that the first is sheer nonsense, which never could 
 have been uttered by Coleridge at any time. 
 
 It may be observed, moreover, that the word ** both" 
 occurs in the same place in either version, with this dif- 
 ference, that in Coleridge it has a consistent reference to two 
 antecedents, whereas in the Collier version it reads as if it 
 had reference to three ! As if any man in his senses would 
 put together such a sentence as this, — " representing external 
 nature and human thoughts and affections both relatively to 
 human affections." 
 
 Is it not, then, as clear as noon-day, from the presence 
 of this word both in such an anomalous position in one 
 version, and in such a proper position in the other, that 
 the sentence was first constructed as it appears in the 
 Coleridge version, and afterwards altered, but not altered 
 ENOUGH ; — the incongruity which the addition would create in 
 connexion with the retained word having been overlooked ? 
 
 But, it may be said, " and affections" might have slipped 
 in by accident, from mishearing or misreporting, Unfor- 
 timately for that hj^othesis, such a possibility is barred by 
 the repetition of the whole sentence including the addition, 
 in a sort of subsequent recapitulation of the definition, 
 clause by clause. 
 
 The next comparison shall be : — 
 
 THE STORY OF THE FRESCOS. 
 
 Mr. Collier's Version. Mr. Coleridge's Version. 
 
 — " And in truth, deeply, O ! 
 
 far more than words can express, 
 
 as I venerate the Last Judgment 
 
 " I shall never forget, when and the Prophets of Michel 
 
 in Rome, the acute sensation of Angclo Buonaroti, — yet the very 
 
 pain I experienced in beholding pain which I repeatedly felt as I 
 
 the frescoes of Raphael and lost myself in gazing upon them, 
 
 Michael Angclo, and on reflect- the painful consideration that 
 
 ing that they were indebted for their having been painted in
 
 26 
 
 COMPARISONS. 
 
 their preservation solely to the 
 durable material upon which 
 they were painted. There they 
 are, the permanent monuments 
 (permanent as long as walls and 
 plaster last) of genius and skill, 
 while many others of their 
 mighty works have become the 
 spoils of insatiate avarice, or 
 the victims of wanton barbarism. 
 
 How grateful ought mankind 
 to bo, that so many of the great 
 literary productions of antiquity 
 have come down to us — that 
 the works of [Homer,] Euclid, 
 and Plato, have been preserved, 
 while we possess those of [Bacon,] 
 Newton, Milton, Shakespeare, and 
 of so many other living-dead men 
 of our own island. A second 
 irruption of Goths and Vandals 
 could not now endanger their 
 existence, secured as they are by 
 the wonders of modern invention, 
 and by the affectionate admira- 
 tion of myriads of human beings. 
 These, fortunately, may be 
 considered indestructible : they 
 shall remain to us till the end of 
 time itself — till time, in the 
 words of a great poet of the age 
 of Shakespeare, has thrown his 
 last dart at death, and shall him- 
 self submit to the final and inevi- 
 table destruction of all created 
 matter." — " Seven Lectures," 
 p. 20. 
 
 fresco was the sole cause that 
 they had not been abandoned 
 to all the accidents of a danger- 
 ous transportation to a distant 
 capital, and that the same ca- 
 price, which made the Neapolitan 
 soldiery destroy all the exquisite 
 master-pieces on the walls of the 
 church of the Trinitado Monte, 
 after the retreat of their antago- 
 nist barbarians, might as easily 
 have made vanish the rooms and 
 open gallery of RaflFael, and the yet 
 more unapproachable wonders of 
 the sublime Florentine in the Six- 
 tine Chapel, forced upon my mind 
 the reflexion ; How grateful the 
 human race ought to be that the 
 works of Euclid, Newton, Plato, 
 Milton, Shakspeare, are not sub- 
 jected to similar contingencies, — 
 that they and their fellows, and 
 the great, though inferior, peer- 
 age of undying intellect, are 
 secured; — secured even from a 
 second irruption of Goths and 
 Vandals, in addition to many 
 other safeguards, by the vast 
 empire of English language, 
 laws, and religion founded in 
 America, through the overflow 
 of the power and the virtue of 
 my country ; — and that now the 
 great and certain works of gen- 
 uine fame can only cease to act 
 for mankind, when men them- 
 selves cease to bo men, or when 
 the planet on which they exist, 
 shall have altered its relations, 
 or have ceased to be." — " Lit. 
 Rem.," vol. 2, p. 42.
 
 COMPARISONS. 27 
 
 In those parallel extracts, that from " Literary Reraains" 
 is exact : and the only liberties taken with the other side 
 have been, to retransposc the order of the two last 
 paragraphs, for the purpose of setting them opposite their 
 respective coimterparts ; and to enclose [Homer] and [Bacon] 
 within crotchets, in order to indicate that these two names, 
 which, being absent from the Coleridge list, constitute the 
 only diiferenco in the great authors named on either side, 
 were also absent from Mr. Collier's list when first promulgated 
 by him in 1854, (see " Notes and Queries" July 22, 
 1854.) How it has come to pass that these two names, 
 ABSENT AT FIRST, should afterwards appear in the matured 
 version of 1856, is a circumstance that, in common with 
 certain other discrepancies between the first and second 
 versions of these presimied imalterablc short hand notes, 
 Mr. Collier has not as yet explained. 
 
 But the main object, it must be recollected, in bringing 
 forward these parallel extracts, is to produce another 
 example of the repetition of Coleridge's matter under an 
 obvious misconception of its meaning. Turning back to the 
 first paragraph of each extract, which more immediately 
 relates to the story of the Frescos, it will be observed that, 
 in Mr. Collier's version, the gazer felt acute pain from the 
 reflexion that these paintings "were indebted for their 
 preservation solely to the durable material on which they 
 were painted." — " There they are," continues the supposed 
 lecturer, "permanent as long as walls and plaster last," &c. 
 But why should this reflexion cause acute pain, or any pain ? 
 Should not the permanence of the work, from whatever 
 cause arising, be a gratifying rather than a painful 
 reflexion ? 
 
 But this is not Coleridge's meaning. He says, indeed, 
 that he felt pain in gazing upon the same frescos, but he 
 explains the cause of pain us arising from an intelligible,
 
 28 COMPARISONS, 
 
 and, consequently, a totally different reflexion. Namely, 
 that these admirable works, being single exemplars, should 
 be exposed to chance destruction from any single aggression ; 
 and that they should, in fact, have been only saved from 
 recent spoliation — from being carried off to the Louvre in 
 Paris, and subjected to all the risk of a long and dangerous 
 transit, by the mere circumstance of being fast to the 
 WALL ! and, therefore, irremovable by the French. 
 
 Hence, there is a most essential difference between the 
 two versions. In the one, the preservation of the frescos 
 is attributed to the duruhility of the material on which they 
 are painted ; in the other, to its immovability. In the first, 
 \h.e p)oint of the reflexion is wholly lost, because no contrast, 
 on the score of durability, exists between frescos and 
 ordinary paintings ; which last may be, and often are, painted 
 upon materials of even more durable nature than walls and 
 plaster. But, in the second, there does exist a very palpable 
 contrast between detached paintings, which may be carried 
 away, and mural fixtures, which must either remain or be 
 destroyed where they are. 
 
 Thus one version of this reflexion betrays such a total 
 ignoring of the distinction upon which the other version 
 turns, that the question presents itself — Is it ' within the 
 bounds of credibility that one and the same person could 
 utter both ? 
 
 And yet the change of phrase that produces all this, 
 is so very slight, that a person not fully comprehending 
 Coleridge's reflexion might easily be betrayed into it. The 
 whole mischief is occasioned by changing "in fresco" into 
 its supposed equivalent, " durable material." 
 
 But the pain that Coleridge describes as arising from the 
 reflexion that these splendid works of art should only have 
 been saved from ruthless spoliation by being " painted in 
 fresco," that is, infixed in the wall, was only a secondary
 
 COMPAJIISONS. 29 
 
 illustration of his primary position, — that the superiority 
 of poetry of words over poetry of painting consists in their 
 respective polytype and monotype natures ; whereby the last 
 is exposed to annihilation from any single occurrence, and 
 can only give pleasure to a few beholders ; while the first, 
 preserved and difinsed in books and oral repetition, is 
 not only exempt from all contingency short of general 
 destruction, but is capable of conferring pleasure upon an 
 infinitely greater number. 
 
 This primary position is the key to Coleridge's meaning in 
 many other passages where it is wholly lost by transfusion 
 into the " Seven Lectures." In these two versions, for 
 example, of another anecdote : — 
 
 Mr. Collier's Version. Mr. Coleridge's Version. 
 
 " When I was in Italy, a friend " On my mentioning these 
 
 of mine, who pursued painting considerations to a painter of 
 
 almost with the enthusiasm of great genius, who had been, from 
 
 madness, believing it superior a most honourable enthusiasm, 
 
 to every other art, hearing the extolling his own art ; he was so 
 
 definition I have given, acknow- struck with their truth, that he 
 
 lodged its correctness and ad- exclaimed * I want no other argu- 
 
 mitted the superiority of poetry." ments ; poetry, that is verbal 
 
 — (p. 20.) poetry, must be the greatest.'" 
 
 -(p. 41.) 
 
 On the Collier side, the painter, although bordering on 
 madness in favour of his art, succumbs to a bald definition 
 in which there is no particle of allusion to comparative 
 advantages. 
 
 On the Coleridge side, the same painter, moderated to 
 honourable enthusiasm, is only convinced by " these con- 
 siderations^^ — that is, by the comparative advantages of verbal 
 poetry over painting, as set forth in the foregoing primary 
 position. Thus, by repetition in the "Seven Lectures" the 
 meaning and point of the anecdote is wliolly lost ; whUe, by 
 way of exchange, the diction is intensified to bombast.
 
 30 COMPARISONS. 
 
 The same loss of sense may be again observed in a 
 sub-comparison of a portion of the passages already 
 quoted : — 
 
 Seven Lectures. Coleridge. 
 
 " How grateful ought mankind " How grateful the human race 
 
 to be that so many of the great ought to be that the works of 
 literary productions of antiquity Euclid, Newton, Plato, Milton, 
 have come down to us — that the Shakespeare, are not subjected to 
 works of Homer, Euclid, &c., similar contingencies." 
 have been preserved, while we 
 possess those of Bacon, Newton, 
 &c." 
 
 Here the two reflexions, in words nearly the same, are yet 
 notably different in sense. In the one, gratitude is said to 
 be due on account of the mere fact of present possession, — 
 on the other, on account of the principle of indestructibility to 
 which that present possession is attributable. Thus it is the 
 latter alone that consistently illustrates and carries out the 
 primary position before alluded to. [It should, perhaps, be 
 stated that the italics in the last pair of extracts are not in 
 the originals, but have been introduced for the purpose of 
 setting forth the distiuction more clearly.] 
 
 In the foregoing repetitions, it is the altered sense that is 
 chiefly relied upon as affording proof of want of genuineness. 
 They consist for the most part of relations of actual occur- 
 rences, to which two complexions so widely different could 
 not be given without positive untruth. Mere repetition of 
 matter, however close in verbal resemblance, would not, in 
 itself, afford proof of fabrication — except in corroboration of 
 other suspicious circimistances — ^because there is nothing in 
 itself impossible in an author using up his own old materials, 
 although his so doing might detract from our opinion of his 
 resources. Had it not been for this consideration, examples 
 of mere repetition, not involving change of sense, might
 
 CX)MPAKISO>'S. 31 
 
 have been greatly extended. As it is, a few only shall be 
 added to show hoAV easily such lectures might have been 
 compiled from Coleridge's published works, — and also that, 
 of these works, it is not the "Literary Remains" only, 
 that appears to have contributed materials for the " Seven 
 Lectures." 
 
 In the previous parallel — of the Frescos — there may be 
 observed a slight variation, where " peerage of undying 
 intellect," on the Coleridge side, becomes "living-dead men" 
 on the other. This last is not without its ovm. subsidiary 
 parallel. In the " Biographia Literaria," written in 1815, 
 and published by Coleridge in 1817, it is found in this 
 shape : — 
 
 " For unrivalled instances of this excellence, the reader's own memory 
 will refer him to the Lear, Othello, in short to which not of " the 
 great ever living dead »«««'«" diamatic works. Ino^emme copia fecit. — 
 '« Biog. Lit.," vol. 2, page 19. 
 
 The italics and quotation marks are Coleridge's own ; 
 whereby it appears that in 1815 he gave this epithet 
 as a quotation, and applied it to Shakespeare alone. 
 The Latin lino, with which the extract ends, has foimd 
 its way into the commencing paragraph of the "Seven 
 Lectures." 
 
 The perusal of novels — " is " For as to the devotees of 
 
 such an utter loss to the reader the circulating libraries, I dare 
 
 that it is not so much to be called not compliment their pass-time, 
 
 pass-time as kill-time." or rather kill-time, with the 
 
 — " Fills the mind with a maw- name of reading • • • nothing but 
 
 kish and morbid sensibility." — laziness and a little mawkish 
 
 " Seven Lectures," p. 3, sensibility." — " Biog. Lit.," vol. 
 
 1, p. 49. 
 
 The following is inmiortalised hy the extraordinary dis- 
 covery and recovery of the uussiiig quotation from Jeremy
 
 32 
 
 COMPAllISOXS. 
 
 Taylor at the end ; which Mr. Collier unfortunately lost, 
 but which is here happily regained : — 
 
 " In older times, writers were 
 looked up to almost as inter- 
 mediate beings, between angels 
 and men ; afterwards they were 
 regarded as venerable, and, per- 
 haps, inspired teachers ; sub- 
 sequently they descended to the 
 level of learned and instructive 
 friends ; but in modern days 
 they are deemed culprits more 
 than benefactors : as culprits 
 they are brought to the bar 
 of self-erected and self-satisfied 
 tribunals." 
 
 Note. — "Here my shorthand note in- 
 forms me that Coleridge made a quotation 
 from Jeremy Taylor, but from what work, 
 or of what Import, does not appear." — 
 " Seven Lectures," p. 4. 
 
 " In times of old, books were 
 as religious oracles ; as literature 
 advanced, they next became 
 venerable preceptors ; they then 
 descended to the rank of instruc- 
 tive friends" — " and at present 
 they seem degraded into culprits 
 to hold up their hands at the bar 
 of every self-elected but not less 
 peremptory judge, who chuses to 
 write from humour, or interest, 
 from enmity or arrogance, and 
 to abide the decision (in the 
 words of Jeremy Taylor) ' of 
 him that reads in malice, or him 
 that reads after dinner,'" — 
 "Biog. Lit.," vol. 1, p. 58. 
 
 This Chapter of Comparisons may fitly conclude with a 
 parallel between "Seven Lectures" and Mr. Collier himself. 
 The subject shall be the well-known commendatory verses to 
 the memory and genius of Shakespeare, signed I. M. S., 
 which first appeared in the second, or 1632, foKo edition of 
 his plays. They consist of about eighty lines, the whole of 
 which are represented to have been recited by Coleridge in 
 one of these lectures, together with the following accom- 
 panying remarks, which compare singularly with those of 
 Mr. Collier on the same subject as published by him in his 
 first edition of Shakespeare's works : — 
 
 Attributed to Coleridge in 1811. 
 
 " These lines are subscribed 
 I. M. S., meaning, as some have 
 explained the initials, " John 
 Milton, Student." 
 
 Written by Mr. Collier in 1844. 
 
 " This poem is subscribed 
 I. M.S. in the fol. 1632. I. M. S. 
 may possibly mean John Milton, 
 Student."
 
 COMPARISONS. 33 
 
 «' The internal evidence seems " We know of 
 
 to me decisive, for there was, no other poet of the time capable 
 
 I think no other man of that of writing the ensuing lines." 
 
 particular day capable of wri- — " Collier's Shakespeare." — 1st 
 
 ting anything so characteristic Edit, 
 of Shakespeare." — " Seven Lec- 
 tures," p. 107. 
 
 In Mr. Collier's more recent edition, of 1858, he repeats 
 the above note from his former edition, and superadds the 
 following: : — 
 
 ^o 
 
 " Such was Coleridge's opinion often expressed, but especially in his 
 leetui-es on Shakespeare aud Milton, delivered 1811-12." 
 
 So that independently of the startling similitude between 
 the note of 1844 and the lecture of 1811, there are these 
 two difficulties to be encountered. 
 
 1, Since the assertion that Coleridge "often expressed" 
 
 this opinion can only arise from uninterrupted per- 
 sonal recollection of the fact,— =-how is it that Mr. 
 Collier appears so wholly to have forgotten that fact 
 in 1844, when he repeated, without acknowledgment, 
 almost the very words he now attributes to Coleridge ? 
 
 2. Since the words, said to have been pronounced by 
 
 Coleridge in 1811 (as in the foregoing extract), 
 expressly disclaim the first promulgation of the 
 opinion ; to whom could he have alluded, in saj'ing, 
 " as some have explained the initials ?" 
 
 Godwin, writing upon the subject of these verses almost at 
 the same time — his book was published in 1815 and must 
 have been written considerably sooner — does not mention 
 any such explanation of the initials : but, on tlic contrarj', 
 80 far was he from thinking them applicable to the poet 
 Milton, that he attributes them to " John Milton, Senior," 
 the father, without any mention wliatever of the son. In
 
 34 COMPARISONS. 
 
 fact, the whole tenor of Godwin's observations ("Life of 
 E. and J. Phillips," 1815, page 170,) renders it impossible 
 to believe that he had ever heard of such an opinion as that 
 these initials had been attributed by any one to the younger 
 Milton. And yet this very Godwin was constantly in 
 company with Coleridge about the time of the delivery of 
 these lectures as we learn from Mr. CoUier's own diary. 
 (Preface to " Seven Lectures," page xiv.) 
 
 But what is, if possible, still more conclusive evidence 
 that such an opinion was absolutely xmknown to, and unheard 
 of by, the very men whose position in the literary world, 
 and whose immediate interest in the subject would render 
 them, of all others, the most likely to be acquainted with^ it 
 if it existed, is that Boaden, who ten years later again took 
 up the subject, (in 1824), and who carefully investigated and 
 rehearsed every suggestion that had been made with respect 
 to the authorship of these verses, introduces Godwin again 
 upon the scene in these words, — 
 
 " I lately conversed with Mr. Godwin upon the subject," (that is, 
 upon the subject of his suggestion whether I, M. S. might not be John 
 Milton, Senior) " and he observed to me that he had thrown out his query 
 without much revolving it in his mind." • • • " I happened to recollect 
 that Milton, the son, had discriminated as to the powers bestowed upon 
 his father and himself; and pointed out to my old friend the following pas- 
 sage in the Latin verses ' Ad Patrem,' &c."— Boaden's " Inquiry," p. 161. 
 
 Now is it in the remotest degree possible that such a 
 ventilation of the names of both the Miltons could have 
 taken place between two such men as Godwin and Boaden 
 
 one of whom had written and the other was about to 
 
 write upon the very subject of the probable authorship of 
 these verses,— without the slightest allusion being made to 
 their having been supposed to be by John Milton, Student, 
 if either of those gentlemen had ever heard or dreamed of 
 such an opinion ?
 
 COMPARISONS. 35 
 
 And yet wo are now told by Mr. Collier, in 1858, and 
 expected to believe, althougli it is utterly inconsistent with his 
 own published words in 1844, that Coleridge not only recited 
 these eighty lines in a lecture in 1811, and then publicly 
 attributed them to "John Milton, Student," but that he 
 often expressed that opinion ; and, more wonderful stUl, that 
 Coleridge himself had the suggestion at second or third 
 hand, according to the number we may suppose to have been 
 represented by the indefinite " as some have supposed"' ! 
 
 Did ever a concurrence of more damning circumstances 
 than these lectures reveal, conspire to fix the brand of 
 fabrication upon any suspected production ? The absence 
 of the two bracketed names in the first published version, 
 and their appearance in the second (as noticed before on 
 page 27), is, in itself a circiunstance of the gravest import. 
 It is impossible to accoxmt for it by any hj'pothesis of 
 accidental contingency. That one name might be inadver- 
 tently omitted from a first copy and afterwards restored in a 
 second, is possible enough ; but that possibility immediately 
 recedes when another condition is added, — that the omitted 
 name should also be found absent from another version of 
 the same subject, in an independent source, to which the 
 writer of the first had no acknowledged access. But when 
 this distant possibility is again complicated in the doubled 
 and redoubled concurrence of two such names, two such 
 omissions, and two such subsequent interpolations, the final 
 possibility that all this could happen honestly, becomes so 
 remote, that its distance, like that of the fixed stars, is 
 practically infinite. 
 
 Such is the presumptive evidence that prepares the way 
 for the absolute demonstration of the next chapter.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANACHRONISM. 
 
 M ALONE, in his elaborate refutation of the Ireland MSS., 
 entitled " An Inquiry into the authenticity of certain Miscel- 
 laneous Papers, &c.," refers, on page 340, to a law case 
 reported in " State Trials," vol. vii, p. 571 ; whereia the 
 question turned upon the genuineness of a certain Book and 
 Deeds, produced by the Lady Theodosia Ivy, in defence of 
 her right to lands claimed by the plaintiff. The most 
 important of these doctmients were two leases purporting 
 to have been made, one in November, and the other in 
 December, in the Second and Third of Philip and Mary, 
 (A.D. 1555,) who were therein styled " King and Queen of 
 England, Spain, France, both Sicilies, &c." But Philip and 
 Mary were not styled " King and Queen of Spain" imtil 
 some months after the pretended dates of these leases ; and 
 from that anachronism their falseness was demonstrated. 
 
 Such being an outline of the case, the following are some 
 of the details : and as the evidence, and several of the obser- 
 vations thereon, may seem to convey pointed allusions to 
 the book and papers produced by Mr, Collier, it may be as 
 well to state that they are extracted verbatim and unaltered 
 from the report of the trial : — 
 
 • • * • • 
 
 Lord Ch. Jus. I assure you this book is grandly suspicious. 
 
 Mr. Att. Gen. They threaten us with forgei'ies and I know not 
 what.
 
 ANACHRONISM. 
 
 37 
 
 Lord Ch. Jks. If in case you come and produce a book, and you 
 value yourselves upon the antiquity of it as an 
 evidence, and in that book Nouell is written in the 
 same hand as the rest of the Book ; but because 
 you find that Nowell was not 'till three score years 
 after, Nowell is turned by another hand to Collet — 
 it draws a great suspicion on your Book as set up 
 for a purpose. 
 
 ■Mr. Williams. It is true, My Lord, if we did that it were some- 
 thing ; but we find an old Book — and we produce 
 it as such — we have not altered it, therefore it 
 cannot be done for our purpose. 
 
 Lord Ch. Jus. Who knows who did it ! but done it is. 
 
 Sir John Trevor. My Lord, we would gladly know where they had 
 this lease so that it may appear whence it came ; 
 for we know they have an excellent art of finding 
 out of deeds. 
 
 Knowles. My Lord, I had it in a garret, in a kind of nook, about 
 six feet long and tliree and a half wide, in my 
 own house, in the garret, among other things. 
 
 Mr. Sol. Gen. 
 
 Lord Ch. Jus. 
 
 Pi*ay, my Lord, give me leave to ask him a question, 
 for it is plain this man is mistaken. 
 
 Mistaken ! yes, I assure you, very grossly : ask him 
 what questions you will ; but if he should swear 
 as long as Sir John Falstaflfe fought, I would never 
 believe a word he says. 
 
 Mr. Bradbury. 
 
 Mr. Att. Gen. 
 Mr. Bradbury. 
 
 My Lord, we have had a violent suspicion that 
 these deeds were forged : but we suspect now no 
 longer, for we have detected it ; and we will show 
 as palpable, self-evident, forgery as ever was. I 
 dare undertake to prove them plainly forged. 
 
 That is an undertaking indeed ! 
 
 It is an undertaking indeed to detect the de- 
 fendant's artifice ; but I will venture upon it, and 
 shall demonstrate it so evidently that Mr. Attorney 
 himself shall be convinced they are forged. 
 
 D
 
 38 AXACHROXISM. 
 
 Mr. AH. Gen. Come on, let us see this demonstration. 
 
 [Parts of the Deeds of the 13th November and 22nd December, 
 2nd and 3rd Philip and Mary, were then read ; as were the Titles of 
 Acts of Parliament which began 22nd October, and ended 9th 
 December, in the 2nd and 3rd of Philip and Mary. And also several 
 of the fines levied in the following Hilary and Easter terms ; in which 
 the true style of the King and Queen was found : in Trinity term the 
 style was altered.] 
 
 3Ir. Bradbury. I cannot see how these deeds can be truly made. 
 I cannot believe the miller alone, or he that drew 
 his leases for him, could so long before prophesy 
 what manner of style should be hereafter used. 
 
 [Verdict was given for Plaintiff; and motion was made by his 
 Counsel that several deeds produced by the defendant, and detected of 
 forgery, might be left in Court, in order to have them pursued and 
 convicted of the forgery. And in Trinity term, 1684, there was an 
 information accordingly against Lady Ivy for forging and publishing 
 the same.] 
 
 The Attorney General laboured hard to ward off the 
 effect of Mr. Bradbury's "demonstration," by arguing that 
 Philip and Mary might really have been designated King 
 and Queen of Spain at any time subsequent to the 25th of 
 October, 1555, when the abdication of Philip's father was 
 first publicly proclaimed. But he was answered that that 
 first abdication did not extend to Spain. And although 
 there is scarcely any historical occurrence of like magnitude, 
 respecting the date of which there is so much uncertainty as 
 the abdication of the throne of Spain by Charles the Fifth, 
 yet because the Attorney General was unable to support his 
 hjqjothetical defence by the production of any authentic 
 docimient, bearing the suggested designation, prior to April, 
 1556, his ingenious defence was overthrown, rather by nega- 
 tive inference than positive proof. 
 
 Now in these "Seven Lectures" an exactly similar 
 anachronism is represented as ha\dng been uttered by 
 Coleridge, of which the proof is positive and complete ;
 
 ANACHRONISM. 39 
 
 since there can be no uncertainty whatever as respects tlie 
 dates either of the alleged anticipation or of its subsequent 
 fulfilment. 
 
 In the sixth lecture, which, as may be ascertained from 
 the newspapers of the day, was delivered by Coleridge 
 on the 5th of December, 1811, he is made to speak of 
 " Sir Humphry Davy ;" a designation which, although 
 afterwards so familiar, was not then in existence. So that 
 precisely as there was no such style as King and Queen 
 of Spain in December, 1555, so was there no such title as 
 Sir Humphrv' Davy in December, 1811. 
 
 Hence there needs no apology for re-introducing the 
 report of Lady Ivy's case in illustration of this inquiry, 
 with which it has, in fact, a much closer analogy than with 
 that for which it was cited by ]Malone. His business Avith it 
 was merely collateral ; being for the purpose of exposing the 
 process by which old documents may be fabricated, as 
 described in the evidence of one of the witnesses : but here 
 there is not only an anachronism precisely similar in 
 character to that upon which the trial turned, but the details 
 in both cases present some extraordinary features in common. 
 
 The witness Knowles' minute accoimt of the "coflfer" 
 in his garret, and of his marvellous discovery of the old 
 papers therein, bears a very interesting resemblance to 
 Mr. Collier's description of his own discovery. The time 
 of year, too, to which the anachronisms are respectively 
 attributed, November and December, and the anticipation 
 of the real fact by exactly the same interval " till the April 
 following." And then the collateral suspicion as to the 
 honesty of a Book, and the value set upon " the antiquity 
 of it," which to the out-spoken Lord Chief Justice of that 
 day appeared so " grandly suspicious." Nay even the 
 very words of Mr. Bradbuiy may, miitato nomine, exactly 
 apply — I cannot see how these [lectures] can be truly 
 
 d2
 
 40 ANACHRONISM. 
 
 made. I cannot believe that the [lecturer] or he who made 
 his [lectures] for him cotJd so long before prophesy what 
 manner of style should be hereafter created ! 
 
 It must, hoAvever, be premised, before proceeding farther, 
 that we are boimd by the affidavit of Mr. Collier to receive 
 his report of these lectures as the ipsissima verba " taken 
 down from the lips of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in the year 
 1811, as aforesaid." And the fidelity with which they have 
 been reported and transcribed is further certified by an 
 elaborate semblance of exactitude which is produced here 
 and there by foot notes — where the reporter's ear is said 
 to have betrayed his hand into slight verbal mistakes ; and 
 these mistakes, even of the most simple and obvious kind, 
 such as hcmt for lemt, scheme for theme, are not set right 
 without an unusual display of conscientious and punctilious 
 notification, (see pp. 14, 33, 95, 103, &c.) 
 
 One of these foot notes is especially remarkable for an air 
 of such needless self- distrust in the reporter, that it requires 
 a large amount of charity to believe it genuine, and not, as 
 Lord Jefiries would say, " set up for a purpose." 
 
 In the text there is the word continuity, to which the 
 following foot note is appended by Mr. Collier : — 
 
 " I give this passage exactly as I find it in my notes ; but it strikes 
 me that something explanatory must have been omitted, and, perhaps, 
 the word I have written ' continuity' ought to be contiguity." 
 
 Now, in the first place, since these two words, continuity and 
 contiguity, are synonymous in the sense required, nothing 
 could be gained by substituting one for the other : and, in 
 the second place, the most cursory reader of Coleridge must 
 be aware that continuity was a favourite word of his : 
 examples of it may be observed in the " Literary Remains," 
 vol. 2, p. 97, where it appears in the form of the verb 
 to continuate; and in the "Biographia Literaria," vol. 1,
 
 ANACHRONISM. 41 
 
 p. 124, where continuity occurs twice in one page to illustrate 
 two different subjects. "WTien, moreover, it is considered 
 that this word is not a whit more obscure than its proposed 
 substitute, and that it has a place in every P^nglish 
 Dictionary, the innocence of the foot note does seem a little 
 overdone. 
 
 But what, now, is the inevitable deduction from all this 
 affectation of strict fidelity ? Why, that it must necessarily 
 preclude any recurrence, in the present case, to that sort of 
 h3rpothetical defence — so successful with respect to the im- 
 possible dates exposed in " Literary Cookery," — that the 
 blvmder may be attributable to mistaken suggestion on the 
 part of the transcriber. Such an explanation might serve 
 for once, but it will hardly do a second time in the face of 
 such impressive evidences of critical exactness. 
 
 The first existence of the title " Sir Humphry Da\^%" 
 is thuB recorded in the " London Gazette :" — 
 
 " Carlton House, April 9th, 1812. His Royal Highness the Prince 
 Regent was this day pleased, in the name and on behalf of His 
 Majesty, to confer the honour of Knighthood on Humphry Davy, 
 Esq., LL.D." 
 
 Before this, the style would be "Mr. Davy^" or " Professor 
 Davy," which last is assuredly the title Coleridge wovdd use 
 when referring to Davy in his official connexion with the 
 Royal Institution. 
 
 But what will be thought of this alleged prophetic men- 
 tion of Sir Humphry Davy by Coleridge in 1811, when it 
 is found that a very similar allusion, in almost the same 
 terms, but very different in time, was really made by 
 Coleridge, and that it is recorded in his publislied works, 
 and signed, dated, and attested by himself (vide " Literary 
 Remains," vol. 2, page 203 : one of those volumes, it will 
 be recollected, of \\hich Mr. Collier says, — " Although I
 
 42 ANACHRONISM. 
 
 have tliem by me I have purposely not consulted them with 
 reference to my present transcript.") 
 
 But to give this remarkable coincidence full effect, the 
 two allusions must be placed in parallel contrast, in which 
 shape they would more properly have belonged to the 
 preceding chapter, had they not been specially reserved for 
 this : — 
 
 5th December, 1811. 7th January, 1819. 
 
 " Not long since, when I lee- " I gave these lectures 
 
 tured at the Royal Institution, at the Royal Institution, before 
 
 I had the honom- of sitting at six or seven hundi-ed auditors — 
 
 the desk so ably occupied by in the spring of the same year 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy, who may in which Sir Humphry Davy 
 
 be said to have elevated the art made his great revolutionary 
 
 of chemistry to the dignity of discovery in chemistry." 
 a science." — " Seven Lectures," " Recorded by me S. T. 
 
 P- 31. Coleridge." (Date as above.) 
 
 The only material difference between these two extracts 
 is, first, in the dates, of which one is possible the other 
 impossible : and, next, in the manner in which the references 
 to chemistry are treated, presenting almost as great a con- 
 trast as the dates, — in the justness and appropriateness 
 of one and the absurd inapplicability of the other. Who, 
 that knows anything of the history of chemistry, coidd 
 believe that Coleridge ever said anything so silly as that 
 the art of chemistry might be said to have been elevated 
 in the nineteenth century to the dignity of a science ? 
 
 There are two other circumstances, with reference to this 
 anachronism, which force themselves on the attention. 
 First, the date originally ascribed by Mr. Collier to this 
 lecture, namely, 1812, loould have escaped the anachronism ! 
 Secondly, the whole passage involving the anachronism, as 
 copied above from " Seven Lectures," was printed by antici- 
 pation in 1854 ; so that it was inextricably before the 
 public, and consequently irrevocable in 1855, when the
 
 ANACHRONISM. 43 
 
 falseness of the date 1812 was exposed by the publication 
 of " Literary Cookery." 
 
 And is Mr. Collier now, because his private character 
 is irreproachable, to be held exempt, in his literary capacity, 
 from the natural effect of evidence like this ? Are persons 
 to be charged with personal maKce, envy, and all unworthi- 
 ness, because, — in a case of suspected literary fraud, to 
 which no graver penalty attaches than the loss of literary 
 character, — they cannot shut their eyes to the many suspi- 
 ciouij evidences that crowd these lectures ; nor refuse credit 
 to a yet stronger and more direct demonstration of subse- 
 quent fabrication than was held sufficient in a Court of Law 
 to convict a titled lady of real forgery, where large estates 
 were the forfeit, and a criminal arraignment the penalty ?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. 
 
 A CHAPTER under this title may seem out of place in a 
 discussion upon Lectures by Coleridge ; but when it is known 
 that fully one-third of the book under consideration, entitled 
 " Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, by the late 
 S. T. Coleridge," consists of "A list of every manuscript 
 Emendation in Mr. Collier's copy of Shakespeare's "Works, 
 Folio, 1632," it will be seen that an examination of that 
 book would be incomplete without some notice of the list 
 of emendations which thus forms so large a portion of it. 
 
 One hundred and twenty pages of small print are devoted 
 to a dry catalogue of these so-called emendations ; and 
 as no one of them occupies more than a line or two, to the 
 nimiber of about twenty-three to a page, the total number of 
 altered words must be something like two thousand seven 
 hundred ! 
 
 Strange to say, an argument of excellence has been 
 attempted to be based upon this circumstance of nimaber ; 
 by the same process of reasoning, perhaps, that great 
 pecuniary delinquents are treated with a sort of respect 
 proportioned to the magnitude of their transactions. But 
 can these admirers of the Old Corrector, who would exact 
 for his productions a claim to the marvellous upon the score 
 of mere quantity, be really serious ? Can they possibly 
 imagine that any person of ordinary cleverness (and extraor- 
 dinary folly) would have the least difficulty in taking up an
 
 THE FELK ITV OF THK MARGINS. 45 
 
 edition of Shcikespearc and making such alterations as the 
 Old Corrector's almost as fast as he could write them 
 down ? 
 
 Oh, but the Old Corrector's emendations arc tenfold more 
 numerous than those of all the commentators put together ! 
 Why ? Because the commentators, even the most reckless 
 of them, were restrained by some respect for the original, by 
 some consciousness of individual responsibility ; first, as to 
 the necessity, and next as to the fitness of their suggestions. 
 Not so the irresponsible " Corrector : " his sole object woidd 
 appear to have been the attaiimient of that very element of 
 quantity, as though he had foreseen the use that might 
 afterwards be made of it ; his aim was not so much emenda- 
 tion as alteration ; wanton, causeless alteration, — of letters, 
 of terminations, of words into equivalent words, or still 
 worse, into hap-hazard substitutes, which, if coming from a 
 less mysterious soxirce, would not have been listened to for 
 a moment. 
 
 The argument of quantity is amusingly carried to the 
 absurd, by the discovery in the British Museum, that Mr. 
 Collier's " Complete List" does not, Mr. Ilamilton declares, 
 " contain one-half of the corrections, many of the most 
 significant being among those omitted." It follows, if 
 quantity is an element of excellence, that the corrections, 
 since the discovery of this additional access of rubbish, must 
 be considered as enormously increased in value. 
 
 But, after all, it is scarcely to be wondered at that this 
 circumstance of quantity shoidd be made much of, since it is 
 almost the only fact connected with the folio that now 
 remains unshaken. All the other strongholds are becoming 
 untenable. The authority of antiquity, the most notable 
 and important of all, was imconditionally surrendered by 
 the " Athenasmn " dui-ing the short panic consequent upon 
 the exposure in the British Museum, (July, 1859), of the
 
 46 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. 
 
 false character of the writing. That was a memorable 
 disclaimer, and it cannot be too often repeated ! It appeared 
 in the "Athenaeum" of the 9th July, 1859, a few days 
 after the publication in the "Times" of Mr. Hamilton's 
 letter : — 
 
 " The folio derived no part of its authority from the supposition that 
 it traced back to the seventeenth century, nor would it lose any part 
 of its authority were it proved to have originated in the nineteenth 
 centm-y." 
 
 This, if it proves nothing else, proves at least that there 
 is no sort of break- down in the character of the folio, no 
 disproof of its pretensions, that the "Athenaeum" would 
 balk at in its pre-determined and unflinching support. 
 
 Whether unwittingly premature or not, that disclaimer, 
 in its surrender of the antiquity, was as complete as the 
 greatest enemy of the margins could desire ; for it is idle 
 to say that if the antiquity were real it wotdd not confer 
 great and important authority upon the folio. If the pres- 
 tige of the ancient looking writing, and its presumed 
 precedence in their own suggestions to men who laboured 
 at the text a century before the folio was heard of, had not 
 been of vital importance to the estimation the corrections 
 are held in, what has all the disputing been about for the 
 last seven years ? — What, even now, is the meaning of the 
 struggles of the " Athenaeum," to stifle the neological test 
 and to discredit the result of the palaeographical scrutiny ? 
 Even in a moral point of view, by what stretch of ingenuity 
 can it be said that a production, in the simulated disguise 
 of the seventeenth century, tcould not lose any part of its 
 authority if proved to have originated in the nineteenth century ? 
 The question admits of no such compromise ; either these 
 corrections are entitled to all the respect due to the antiquity 
 they pretend to, or they are deliberate and elaborate for- 
 geries, and, as such, entitled to no respect at all.
 
 THE FELICll-Y OF THE MARGINS. 47 
 
 But the disclaimer continues : — 
 
 " It was and is a book brimming with the most remarkable sugges- 
 tions and criticisms made by an unknown hand ; and having no tittle 
 of authority as a Shakspearean gloss beyond that derived from the 
 felicity of its hints and emendations." 
 
 Was there ever a more unblushing denial than this, when 
 it is notorious that the pretended antiquity of these correc- 
 tions had alone obtained a hearing for them ? 
 
 Was there ever a more preposterous substitution of 
 assertion for reality, than to speak of their " f elicit if ^ as an 
 accredited fact, when it is well known that a large 
 preponderance of opinion condemns them as altogether 
 worthless and contemptible ? 
 
 But the "Athcnaiuni" is not the only certifier to the 
 felicity of the margins. That happy word has been still 
 more recently expanded into " exquisitely felicitous," by a 
 WTiter in the last number of the " Edinburgh Review," 
 (April, 1860, page 4G6.) 
 
 Less cautious than the " Athenaeimi," which evidently 
 considers general assertion the safest, the Edinburgh 
 Ile\aewer goes the length of selecting one correction, 
 which he calls "a striking example," and introduces as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Now nothing is more striking in the work of our Corrector than 
 the number of passages of this description, with which he boldly deals, 
 and with which no one had dealt before. It docs not signify for our 
 present purpose whether his manner of dealing with them suit our 
 taste or not ; it is the fact itself which is so remai-kable. To take a 
 single instance. Timon bids the Athenian 
 
 ' Take his haste, 
 Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, 
 And hang himself.' 
 
 Take his haste is sheer nonsense ; it is all but certain Shakespeare did 
 not write it ; yet it is so near sense that every editor has passed it by 
 as not worth touching. The Corrector reads ' take his halter.' We are
 
 48 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. 
 
 not here concerned with the aptness of the change : we are only 
 considering its boldness : why should a mere forger have gone out 
 of his way to meddle with a text which no man had disturbed 
 before ? 
 
 " This very striking example might be multiplied, had we only room 
 for this course of proof by hundreds." — " Edinburgh Review," April, 
 1860, page 459. 
 
 The most notable thing in this criticism is the nervous 
 anxiety of the reviewer to avoid committing himself to a 
 direct opinion as to the " aptness of the change." Twice he 
 alludes to that most essential point, but only to declare " it 
 does not signify" and "we are not here concerned" with 
 it. He might well have some vague misgiving about it, for 
 no alteration could be in worse taste, or, fortunately for the 
 text, more easy of refutation. Even the limited approval of 
 it, implied in its selection as a favoui'able example, ought to 
 deprive the writer of the review of all pretension to pass 
 judgment upon any subject connected with the text of 
 Shakespeare, by convicting him of incapacity to enter into 
 and appreciate its true spirit. 
 
 First, the reviewer says — " Take his haste is sheer 
 nonsense;" but in the next breath he adds — "yet it is so 
 near sense that every editor has passed it by without 
 remark ! " After this rather paradoxical description he 
 lauds the boldness of the Corrector for rushing in where all 
 else had feared to tread. " Why should a mere forger," 
 he asks, " have gone out of his way to meddle with a text 
 which no man had touched before ?" The answer is obvious, 
 — for the sake of meddling ! It was not out of his way, it 
 was exactly in his way, to rim down each column of the text 
 and make a point at every phrase or letter he thought might 
 serve his purpose of alteration. And, supposing the " mere 
 forger" is as modern as he is suspected to be, what so 
 likely to attract his notice as this phrase " take his haste," 
 which would grate against his common-place experience,
 
 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. 49 
 
 and, to short-sif^litcd perception like his, would doubtless 
 appear " sheer nonsense ! " 
 
 But is "let him take his haste (and) come hither" such 
 absolute nonsense as the reviewer pronounces it to be ? 
 Take it to the nearest Ragged School, give it to the children 
 as a question, and require the meaning ; give them another 
 phrase from Anthony and Cleopatra, " Put it to the haste" 
 — with which the Old Corrector has not meddled — require 
 the meaning of that also, and it will be seen with which of 
 these phrases the children will have the greater difficulty. 
 
 In what consists the nonsense of " take his haste" ? Is it in 
 the use of take for the more familiar make ? Will any one 
 pretend to say that the choice between these two verbs is 
 any thing but a mere caprice of idiom ? The distinction 
 between them is entirely arbitrary and conventional. A 
 person takes his walk, but he makes his journey ; he takes 
 his tea, but he makes his dinner ; he takes his departure, 
 but he makes his exit. Nay, there are some nouns with 
 which both verbs are used indiscriminately, so that one may 
 take or make his choice between them. 
 
 And, with respect to haste ; although in English the familiar 
 idiom is to make haste, yet in Latin it was adhibere celeritatem, 
 — to take haste. Timon of Athens is a serious play, and, in 
 Timon's own speeches more especially, abstinise phraseology 
 abounds. It is then even more in character with the rest of 
 the play that Timon should here make use of the more 
 abstruse idiom. 
 
 Is it, then, in the possessive his, prefixed to haste, that we 
 must look for the nonsense ? No, for that point is speedily 
 settled by reference to Mrs. Cowden Clarke's Concordance, 
 which furnishes nearly a score examples in Shakespeare's 
 plaj's of haste conjoined with a personal pronoun. 
 
 Lastly, is it in the absence of a meaning appropriate to 
 the situation, that the sheer nonsense of " take his haste" is
 
 50 THE FELICITY OF THE MAKGINS. 
 
 to be searched for ? No, for there cannot be more excellent 
 sense than let him hasten and come hither ; it is the exact 
 sense of all other that fits the place. 
 
 But it has been premised that this abominable substitution 
 of " take his halter" is easy of refutation. 
 
 It may be shown to be not only at variance with the text, 
 but destructive of it, by marring the point and animus of 
 Timon's speech. 
 
 The citizens of Athens are in extremity of danger. They 
 repent, when too late, that they have driven from amongst 
 them, in Timon, the only man who could have saved them. 
 Two of the Senators are deputed to seek him in the woods 
 and implore his return. They find him, and are assailed by 
 him with the bitterest scofis and execrations ; or if Timon 
 suffers them for an instant to suppose he is relenting, it is 
 only to plunge them all the deeper in despair. In the 
 speech of which the passage in question is a portion, he 
 bitterly cajoles them, luring on their hopes, bit by bit, and 
 word by word, until the very last, when he crowns the 
 infliction by the suddenness of disappointment. 
 
 But the whole context must be seen together : — 
 
 Timon. Commend me to my loving countrymen, 
 
 « * * 
 
 Commend me to them, 
 
 * * * 
 
 I will some kindness do them. 
 
 Senator. I like this well, he will return again. 
 
 Timon. I have a tree which grows here in my close 
 That mine own use invites mc to cut down 
 And shortly must I fell it : Tell my friends, — 
 Tell Athens — in the sequence of degree 
 From high to low throughout — that whoso please 
 To stop affliction, let him take his haste, 
 Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, 
 And — hang himself.
 
 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. />1 
 
 Now the slightest real perception of the spirit of this 
 speech would teach the Edinburgh Reviewer that the sur- 
 prise must be reserved to the last line ; and that "let him 
 take his haste, come hither," is an augmentative of the 
 hopes of the expectant senators. 
 
 Let not a moment be lost ! Let each man hasten liither 
 to learn the remedy I am about to provide ! 
 
 But let halter be substituted for hante in the antepen- 
 ultimate line (to say nothing of the platitude, nor of the 
 injui-y to tlie metre by the intrusion of a redundant 
 syllable), it would mar the w^hole contrivance of the 
 speech by prematm-ely revealing the climax, and thus, by 
 destro}'ing the suspense, deprive the dernier coup " hang 
 himself" of all its point ! 
 
 Fortunately the great mass of the corrections are as 
 demonstrably bad as this striking example of the " Edinburgh 
 Review," and maj', in like manner, be brought to bar 
 and convicted. But they cannot all be so : some must of 
 necessity be only negatively bad, and how are these to be 
 dealt with if they are to be permitted to assume, without 
 proof, the legitimate position belongmg of right to the text 
 in possession ? 
 
 The causes which have combined to bring about this 
 anomalous reversal in the position of assailants and de- 
 fendants would appear to be these : — 
 
 First, the mystery under which these corrections were 
 originall}'- presented to the public, — alwaj's disposed to 
 believe in the marvellous and to receive omne ignotum pro 
 magnifico. 
 
 Second, the extraordinary and persevering support they 
 have received from the Press generally. 
 
 Third, the strange license, practically assumed for them, 
 of denying their joint liability as correlatives in the same 
 performance.
 
 62 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. 
 
 By means of this last admirable contrivance an unlimited 
 power of disclaimer has been obtained, and piece-meal refu- 
 tation rendered of no avail, by the simple expedient of 
 disowning all the palpably worthless and disproved correc- 
 tions, and shifting the felicity to the indefinite remainder. 
 
 Many of the corrections, boasted of at first as of the 
 greatest value, have been abandoned by Mr. Collier himself 
 without in the least diminishing the general cry of felicity : 
 and even the apparently vital element of antiquity may be, 
 as has been seen, surrendered in the lump, while in the same 
 breath the felicity is as confidently but as vaguely asserted 
 as ever. 
 
 Now since it is impossible to bring to trial the whole 
 muster-roll, item by item, an operation that would extend 
 to many volimies of useless labour, which, when completed, 
 no one, probably, would take the trouble to wade through, a 
 sort of middle course is about to be resorted to here, on the 
 principle that a thorough examination of a consecutive por- 
 tion, complete in itself, may create a deeper conviction of 
 the real worthlessness of these corrections than any number 
 of detached examples, taken here and there from the whole 
 collection. 
 
 The method of complete analysis, although exercised on 
 only one play, shall yet, by giving an account of every grain 
 in the sample, leave no stone unturned, no comer unsearched, 
 for the brimming felicity of the " Athenaeum," and the 
 " exquisitely felicitous'^ of the " Edinburgh Review" to hide 
 themselves from admiration. 
 
 The play on which this experiment is about to be tried is 
 not one selected by an enemy of the margins for the purpose 
 of exposing their weakest points ; neither is it selected, as 
 complained of by the Edinburgh Heviewer in the case of 
 Hamlet, because there are quarto impressions of it extant ; 
 but it is selected because it is the choice of Mr. Collier
 
 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. 53 
 
 himself, in the preface to " Seven Lectures," and there made 
 the theme of all his strong allegations against those whom 
 he accuses of ha^ang pilfered from the treasures of his Old 
 Corrector (see Preface, page Ixi., et seq.). It has also been 
 selected for the most ob\-ious reason of all, that the promi- 
 nence it receives in the volume just referred to, renders it 
 the fittest subject for this, a review of it. 
 
 The play so selected is Loves Labour's Lost : and besides 
 being the choice of Mr. Collier, it is in other respects a 
 favourable example for the Old Corrector. The alterations 
 of the text comprised in it amount to not less than 99 — the 
 greatest nimiber in any one play with the exception of 
 Hamlet; and it is the fortxmate recipient of one of those 
 far-famed nine entire lines — the wonders of the age — 
 the mii'aclcs of the margins ! 
 
 The conditions of the examination shall be these : — 
 
 1. The several items of correction shall be set dowii 
 verbatim from the "List" printed by Mr. Collier in his 
 "Seven Lectures," and extending from page 170 to page 
 174 of that volume. 
 
 2. Such corrections as have been traced to sources known 
 pre\iously to the promulgation of the margins, shall be 
 restored to their several owners, and, where necessary, 
 specially commented upon. [It is clearly unnecessary to 
 treat this class in any other way : Firstly, because, in any 
 case, the text derives no advantage from them through the 
 Old Corrector, inasmuch as they were previously obtainable 
 elsewhere. Secondly, because anterior possession, on which 
 alone the Corrector could have any claim to them, has been 
 abandoned : for if the folio could not " lose any part of its 
 authority, if proved to have originated in the nineteenth 
 century," of course it can have no anterior claim to what 
 was written in the eighteenth.] 
 
 £
 
 54 THE FELICITY OF THE MARGINS. 
 
 3. Such corrections as have been abandoned shall be 
 so marked on the evidence of Mr. Collier's latest edition 
 of Shakespeare's works, 1858 ; in which he professes to 
 have incorporated all the marginal corrections approved of 
 by him. 
 
 4. Corrections of errors which exist no where but in the 
 2nd Folio, and which, therefore, are of no interest to the 
 general text, shall be simply marked " 1632." 
 
 5. In the remaining items the reasons for the decisions 
 arrived at respecting them shall be set forth as briefly as 
 may be consistent with the nature of the several readings.
 
 AN ANALYSIS 
 
 OF THE CORRECTIONS IN 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST, 
 
 AS SEI FORTH IN MK. COLLIEE'S UST, ENTITLED 
 
 " A LIST OF EVERY MANUSCRIPT NOTE AND EMENDATION IN 
 MR. COLLIER'S COPY OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS, 
 
 Folio, 1632."
 
 The following notification is prefixed to Mr. Collier's List : and, 
 as the same arrangement is preserved, it may be repeated here. 
 
 « * * 
 
 * 
 
 It is to he observed that the column to the left hand 
 supplies the old, or the received text; and the column to the 
 right hand the manuscript alterations made, or piroposed, in 
 the folio, 1632. ^ome of the printed readings, or misreadings, 
 'peculiar to that edition, have the figures 1632 added to them.''*
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ANALYSTS OF THE MANUSCRIPT CORRECTIONS IN 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. 
 
 ACT I.— Scene 1. 
 
 The grosser manner of these The grosser manner of this 
 
 worlds' delights. world's delights. 
 
 The original phrase has a fine meaning of its own, which 
 is entirely lost in this stupid alteration. 
 
 World's-delights is a compound word, equivalent to 
 worldly delights, and may therefore take a plural demon- 
 strative. The distinction is ohvioiLS : there are many 
 delights of this world that are not world's-deKghts. What 
 these are, is explained in the next line : — 
 
 " To love, to wealth, to potnp, I pme and die ;" 
 
 Mr. Collier misleads his readers as to the meaning of the 
 original by printing in the left hand column a possessive 
 apostrophe after uorhh\ 
 
 IL 
 
 \Mien I to fast expressly am "N^lien I to feast expressly am 
 
 forbid. forbid. 
 
 THEOBALD.
 
 «>, 
 
 58 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIERS LIST. 
 
 III. 
 
 If study's gain be thus. If study's gain be this. 
 
 RITSON. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Light, seeking light, doth light Light, seeking light, doth light 
 
 beguile. of light beguile. 
 
 1632. 
 
 V. and VI. 
 
 So you, to study now it is too late. So you, by study now it is too late, 
 
 That were to climb o'er the house Climb o'er the house-top to unlock 
 
 t' unlock the gate. the gate. 
 
 These two items form but one sentence, and must be taken 
 together. The alterations made by the Corrector are chimsj^ 
 and imsuccessful attempts to remedy a passage, corrupt it is 
 true, but not so much so as these corrections would make it. 
 
 No emendation can be satisfactory which does not begin 
 by reversing the meaning of so with which the first of these 
 lines commences. Because there must be, at that point, 
 an opposition to what has just preceded. Biron has 
 described, first his own principle, and then he opposes to it 
 that which he attributes to the King and the rest. 
 
 An amended form of the passage is obtained by the 
 easiest and simplest of all suppositions, viz : — that so and hut 
 had originally belonged each to the other's line, and had 
 accidentally become misplaced, — a very common accident 
 with outside or terminal words. Their transposition gives 
 very satisfactory sense, whether the last line be retained as 
 printed in the Quarto, or as in the Folio of 1623, which in 
 many respects is better, especially in preserving the hypo- 
 thetical meaning. The following is the entire passage as
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 59 
 
 altered by the proposed transposition of two of the existing 
 words : — 
 
 " "Why should I joy in any abortive birth ? 
 At Christmas I no more desire a rose, 
 Than wish a snow in May's new fanglcd shows ; 
 So, like of each thing that in season grows : 
 But you, — to study now it is too late, — 
 That, were to climb o'er the house to unlock the gate." 
 
 Biron says that, In so liking, he likes everything in its 
 proper season (ho having the meaning of thus), which is 
 just and reasonable. " But you," he says, to attempt " to 
 study now it is too late," — now that the fitting season has 
 passed, — that, is the true absurd I Here the opposition is 
 perfect. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Yet confident I'll keep what I Yet confident I'll keep to what I 
 
 have swore. swore. 
 
 Here the Corrector corrects a correction, — marring still 
 worse that which had been already marred. The abomin- 
 able / have swore, originated -vN^th the Folio 1632 : the 
 previous copies, both quarto and folio, ha\4ng " I have 
 sworne." The object of the change was to obtain a better 
 rhyme to " more," at the expense of a gross inelegance of 
 expression ; against which it is the more necessary to protest 
 as it has been adopted in all modern editions. 
 
 The old poets considered an assimilation in the pre- 
 dominant sound of words as quite sufficient for the purposes 
 of rhyme. There is scarcely one in whose works evidence of 
 this fact may not be found. The following pairs of words 
 intended to rhyme together, have been obtained from a 
 cursory glance at such as are at hand. 
 
 In Sylvester, — wine— binde, can— hand, round— down, 
 seem— keen.
 
 60 ANALYSIS or MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 . In Lord Surrey, — some— undone, meane— stream, come— 
 son, dust— first. 
 
 In Love's Leprosie, — sweete— sleepe, wreathe— leave, text- 
 sex. 
 
 In Hutton, — sex— perplext, liang'd — land, times— lines, 
 (besides which, this poet constantly rhjTnes singulars with 
 plurals, as, declares— rare, takes— make ; both of which occur 
 in the same stanza of " Ixion's Wheele.") 
 
 In Rowley, — crown— gro\md. 
 
 In Eoffe, — backs— sack. 
 
 In George Chapman, — light— eighth. 
 
 In Warner, — crowne — ground, fairer— rather, death — bii'th. 
 And in Shakespeare, himself, a repetition in another place 
 of the very same rhjone which occasions these remarks. 
 
 These examples require exactly the same management of 
 voice as the rhyming of more and sivorne ; that is, a suppressed 
 utterance of the supernvimerary or discordant letter. In 
 the examj)le death, birth, the sound of the letter r is 
 suppressed ; and it occurs so often with Warner, that it 
 seems, in him, to have arisen from a physical insensibility 
 to the sound of that letter, to which many people, 
 particularly those born in the metropolis, are subject ; 
 and which, analogically with "colour blindness," may be 
 termed letter deafness. In Warner it amomits to an 
 established mannerism : — in one place, with better flattery 
 than rhjTne, he styles Queen ^Uzabeth a goddess upon 
 earth. 
 
 It has been said above that there is a recurrence in 
 Shakespeare of the same rhyme which occasions these 
 remarks : it occurs in the same play of Lore's Labour's Lost, 
 not far from the place under consideration ; — 
 
 " My Lord Biroon see him delivered o'er : 
 And go we, lords, to put in practice that 
 "Which each to other has so sti'ongly sworn."
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's I,IST. 61 
 
 The first and last lines are manifestly intended to rhjnne : 
 nor does it in the least invalidate that fact that Biron — as 
 he does in other places — catches them up and over-caps 
 them with two other lines : — 
 
 " I'll lay my head to any good man's hat 
 These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn." 
 
 Indeed it is fortunate these last lines were added, as the 
 over-capping with scorn has, pei'haps, saved sworn, in this 
 instance, from undergoing the same elegant transformation. 
 
 The proper correction of the line at the head of this 
 note would be to restore " I have sworn" the reading of the 
 earlier copies ; instead of attempting, as the Old Corrector 
 has done, to remove one corruption by introducing another. 
 
 AVhile on this subject of irregular rhymes, a remarkable 
 peculiarity is worth recording as afi'ecting Shakespeare. 
 All words ending in light were occasionally admitted to 
 rhyme mth those in J^ : the conversion of sound being, in fact, 
 the same as now prevails in coxighed, laughed, roughed, &c. 
 
 But the peculiarity in question is this : that certain other 
 words, with those terminal letters, had that pronunciation 
 or not, at the option of the poet. There is a notable example 
 in Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim which has puzzled 
 some of his editors : — 
 
 " Have you not heard it said full oft 
 A woman's nay doth stand for naught." 
 
 Where the rh}Tne requires that the last word should be 
 pronounced noft. The following examples will show that it 
 was a very common license : — 
 
 " Farewell ! thou hast me taught 
 To think me not the first 
 That love hath set aloft 
 And casten in the dust." . 
 
 Lord Surrey, The Forsaken Lover.
 
 62 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 " Sharper to man is than the swiftest shaft, 
 His eye the way by which his heart is caught." 
 
 Geo. Chapman, Hero and Leander. 
 
 — " Though throned aloft, 
 Of each man weighs yet both the work and thought." 
 
 Geo. Chapman, Hesiod. Georg. 1. 
 
 " Hatred, and strife, and fighting, cometh after 
 Efiusion of blood, and often-time manslaughter." 
 
 Barclay, Eclogue 2. 
 
 A knowledge of these peculiarities of old rhjTning is useful 
 as a guide to the correction of probable misprints. In 
 Love's Leprosie, for example, this couplet occurs : — 
 
 " With finding him my muse hath lost herself, 
 Come hack : for nature's banquerout of her wealth." 
 
 Here self rhymes with wealth. But who would dream of 
 proposing such a rhyme as a restoration of a misprint ? 
 And yet it is obviously the very correction required in a 
 previous couplet of the same poem : — 
 
 — " When as his second self 
 Breathed forth his soul divorst from life and death." 
 
 The last word, death, cannot be right : it accords with 
 neither sense nor rhyme, and most certainly is a misprint — 
 arising, perhaps, from the common verbal association of life 
 and death. The true reading is, doubtless, life and health, as 
 indicated by the couplet first quoted. 
 
 On the other hand — to exemplify with Avhat caution 
 proposed amendments in rhyme ought to be received, 
 however plausible they may appear at first sight — the
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 63 
 
 following stanza, also from The Passionate Pihjrini, is 
 
 instructive : — 
 
 " And when thou com'st thy tale to tell, 
 Smooth not thy tongue with filed talk, 
 Lest she some subtle practice smell — 
 A cripple soon can find a halt." 
 
 Here, on account of the imperfect rh}Tning of tallc and halt, 
 
 it might with some plausibility be proposed to substitute, 
 
 for the latter word, balk, in the sense of stumbling block, or 
 
 impediment ; which, it might be said, a cripple would meet 
 
 with sooner than another. But the context shows that the 
 
 sense of the proverb is, that he who is afflicted with any 
 
 defect himself, can easily discover it in another. Therefore 
 
 halt must stand, to contribute one more example, in addition 
 
 to those already enumerated, of the rhj-me by predominant 
 
 sound. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A dangerous law, against gentility. A dangerous law against garrulifi/. 
 
 Stupidly mistakes the penalty for the crime ! The law is 
 not against speaking, but against coming within the precincts. 
 The penalty is loss of tongue ; just as loss of ears was once 
 the penalty for other crimes than eaves-dropping. Biron 
 means that the enacting of such a law is contra bonos mores. 
 
 A daiujeroiis law, — ayainst yentUity ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Or vainly comes th' admired Or vainly comes th' admired 
 
 princess hither. princess rather. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 X. 
 
 If I break faith, this word shall If I break faith, this word shall 
 
 break for me. plead for me. 
 
 ABANDONED.
 
 64 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 The received correction is " sj^eak for me." But tlie 
 characteristic reduplication of break should by no means 
 be disturbed. The particle it has evidently fallen out : — 
 
 If I break faith this word shall break it for me. 
 
 XI. 
 
 A man in all the world's new A man in all the world-new 
 
 fashion planted. fashions jaunted. 
 
 This abominable alteration is obviously based upon a 
 supposition that "fashion" here relates to dress/ The 
 pluralizing of fashion is especially atrocious. 
 
 XII. 
 
 A high hope for a low heaven. A high hope for a low hearing. 
 
 The preceding adjuration, and the trite association of 
 hope with heaven, sufficiently prove that heaven is a true 
 word. It was Theobald, who, by first changing it to having, 
 gave the hint to the Old Corrector to try another variation 
 upon him. Moreover, heaven is a famiKar metonymy for 
 enjoyment, so that a high hope for a low enjoyment seejns 
 as good sense as any reasonable intellect need desire. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Cause to climb in the merriness. Cause to chitne in the merriness. 
 
 "REV. MR. BARRY" IN COLLIER, 1842. 
 
 The error of this correction is evident in the equi^^oke 
 of style, (composition), and stile, (a barrier). The joke is as 
 old as Chaucer : — 
 
 " Albeit I cannot soune his stile 
 Ne cannot climben over so high a stile." 
 
 " Squire's Tale," 98.
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 65 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Is the manner of a man. It is the mannei- of a man. 
 
 1632. 
 
 XV. 
 
 That shallow vassal. That shallow vessel. 
 
 Another equivoke — unjjerceived by the Old Corrector, 
 who is so old that he does not know that vassall or vassaile 
 meant, in Shakespeare's time, a low, lewd, fellow. Examples 
 might be had by the dozen out of " Folie's Anatomie" and 
 other books of the age. 
 
 XVI, 
 
 Until then, set down, sorrow. Until then, set thee down, sorrow. 
 
 EARLIEST QUARTO. 
 
 Scene 2. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Most immaculate thoughts. Most maculate thoughts. 
 
 EARLIEST QUARTO. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Most pretty and pathetical. Most pretty s.udi jyoetical. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 For your manager is in love. For youi' armiger is in love. 
 
 There are few readers who will not recollect the charm 
 ■vvith which this speech was invested, ou first perusal, by this
 
 66 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLTEr's LIST. 
 
 beautifully quaint epithet " manager." And yet now this 
 wretched Old Corrector would kidnap this and other legiti- 
 mate offspring of Shakespeare and drop his own abortions in 
 their stead. Mr. Collier in adopting this one into his recent 
 edition thinks it necessary to explain that — " Armado was 
 the armiger or bearer of his own sword !" And of his own 
 " drinn," of course ! 
 
 XX. 
 
 I am sure I shall turn sonnet. I am sure I shall turn sonnet-maker. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 The absence of an article before sonnet, is the plea 
 upon which some half dozen various alterations have been 
 proposed. That most in favour is "I shall turn sonneteer, 
 and more recently " I shall turn sonnets ; " the s being added 
 to get OA^er the fancied want of a singular indefinite article. 
 To be consistent, the gentlemen who adopt it should apply 
 the same remedy to " spit," in Much Ado About Nothing, in 
 the passage, — 
 
 " She would have made Hercules have tui-ned spit." 
 
 ACT II.— Scene 1. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Summon up yom' dearest spirits. Summon up your clearest spuits. 
 
 Dearest = choicest. The alteration is inexcusable. 
 
 XXII. 
 His eye begets occasion for wit. His eye begets occasion for his wit. 
 
 1632.
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 67 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 All liberal reason would I yield unto. All liberal reason I m>j7/ yield unto. 
 
 EARLIEST QUARTO. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Though so denied farther harbour Though so denied free harbour 
 in my house. in my house. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 The well-known difficulty which occurs in this scene, in 
 the line, — 
 
 " My lips are no common though several they be," 
 
 Arises from the incongruity of opposing a noun to an 
 adjective. This ought to be amended by adding a final t to 
 no : that letter having most probably dropt out at press. 
 The line would then read, — 
 
 My lips ai"e not common though several they be. 
 
 This slight change, by giving an adjective form to common, 
 removes the incongruity and renders the equivoke perfect. 
 
 ACT III.— Scene 1. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 If you had swallowed love. AsM you had swallowed love. 
 
 THEOBALD. 
 
 Except the word " had,''^ which can only be explained by 
 Mr. Collier himself, as it is not to be found anywhere but 
 in his List.
 
 68 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 By my peime of observation. By nvy paine of observation. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 A message well sympathised. A messenger well sympathised. 
 
 This alteration will require to be treated at more length 
 than it would otherwise deserve, on account of its being one 
 of those pet corrections, which are selected by Mr. Collier, in 
 the Preface to " Seven Lectures," for the especial glorification 
 of his Old Corrector. He there accuses the late Mr. Singer 
 of having pilfered some of the treasures of the margins 
 without due acknowledgment ; adding, " he might have 
 * whispered whence he stole' what undoubtedly is the great 
 recommendation of his edition." And then Mr. Collier 
 introduces the present correction as follows : — 
 
 " Here again a single instance is all I can find space for, or the 
 reader patience for ; it is from the same play, where Armado wishes 
 to send Costard on an errand, and Moth, the page, remarks, as the 
 text has always hitherto been given : — 
 
 * A message well sympathised ; a horse to be ambassador for an ass.' 
 
 Here it is self-evident that ' message' must be wrong, because Costai'd 
 is not the ' message' but the messenger : therefore, the Old Corrector of 
 the Folio 1632 altered the passage to ' A Messenger well sym- 
 pathised,'" &c. — Preface, pp. Ixiii, Ixiv. 
 
 Now, of all the strange arguments that Mr. Collier has 
 from time to time put forth in support of his marginal 
 corrections, this, surely, is the strangest and most incompre- 
 hensible — that because Costard is not the message but the 
 messenger, therefore it must be the messenger that is 
 sympathised ! The important link being wholly wanting 
 of any necessary connexion between Costard and the object
 
 ANALYSIS OF MK. COLLIEr's LIST. 09 
 
 of sympathy. If Costard is the object, who, or what, is it 
 that sympathises ? — "Who is the horse, and who the ass '< 
 Surely some additional information ought to have been given 
 by Mr. Collier (who is the medium of communication with 
 the outer world) as to what meaning the Old Corrector could 
 possibly have had in view by the alteration. To ordinary 
 people the only efi'ect produced is to render a passage, 
 tolerably clear in the original, impenetrably obscure in the 
 correction. "What does Moth say ? — ** A horse to be ambas- 
 sador for an ass." Does not this mean that the more swift 
 and intelligent animal, to 'mi, Moth himself, is about to be 
 sent ambassador to fetch an ass, by which he means Costard, 
 for the purpose of the latter receiving charge of a letter, or 
 message, which himself, the horse, would have conveyed 
 at once, with so much more tact, speed, and certainty ? 
 Therefore, Master Moth, whose vanity is piqued, and whose 
 love of fun is balked by being excluded from the delicate 
 mission to Jaquenetta, vents a little spite by sajdng that the 
 silly love-message is well sjTupathised, or well matched, 
 by the equally silly selection of a messenger. And, 
 therefore, although few will attempt to deny the truth of 
 Mr. Collier's position, that " Costard is not the message 
 but the messenger," there will be still fewer who will 
 be able to perceive the assiimed consequence, that it was 
 the messenger and not the message that was s}Tiipathised 
 in the absurdity of sending " a horse to be ambassador for 
 an ass." 
 
 The foregoing interpretation of the true meaning of the 
 passage — and it really seems the only possible one worthy 
 of reception — clearly shows, that the alteration of "message" 
 to messenger, about which Mr. Collier makes such an extra- 
 ordinary fuss in the Preface to "Seven Lectures," is a 
 stupid mistake that were leell- sympathised, with Costard 
 himself for its proposer.
 
 70 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Voluble and free of grace. Voluble and fair of grace. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 A palpable inversion of corr. xxiv : where fair is the 
 present, and free the corrected readings. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Most rude melancholy, valour Moist-eyed melancholy, valour 
 
 gives thee place. gives thee place. 
 
 It is impossible to remark in serious language upon this 
 most extraordinary alteration. It is the very quintessence 
 of folly and stupidity. And yet Mr. Collier describes moist- 
 eyed as an " appropriate compound epithet ! " 
 
 XXX. 
 
 No salve in the male, sir. No salve in thein all, sir. 
 
 TYRWHITT. 
 
 This correction might be at once dismissed with this 
 simple reference to its original owaer ; but its incorporation 
 with the text in several excellent editions, — the most 
 eminent of which are those of Mr. Knight, — renders it 
 expedient to enter more at length into an exposure of its 
 fallacy. 
 
 There are few words more legitimately English than 
 "male," which this correction woidd violate. So far from 
 there being any uncertainty as to its existence in Shake- 
 speare's time (as implied in Dr. Johnson's proviso, " if 
 mail, for a packet or bag, were then in use," and in 
 Steevens' and Malone's grave assurances that it was) it is 
 certain that it was a familiar word at least two centuries 
 before Shakespeare was born : being several times repeated
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 71 
 
 by Chaucer in exactly the sense here required ; namely, a 
 budget, or receptacle for relics, nostrums, and the like. In 
 the description of the Pardoxere, in the Prologue to the 
 *' Canterbury Tales," it is said : — 
 
 " His wallet lay beforne him in his lappe 
 Bretful of pardon come from Rome all hote." 
 
 And, afterwards, this wallet is called " male" — 
 
 " I have relics and pardons in my male 
 As fair as any man in Englelond." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " For in his male he had a pilwebere, 
 Which as he said, was ciur lady's veil." 
 
 Indeed so complete is the identity of meaning between 
 male and budget, that we find Chaucer using male in the 
 same metaphorical sense that we moderns confer upon 
 budget : — 
 
 — " Unbokelcd is the male. 
 Let see who now shall tell another tale." 
 
 And the same is repeated in the apocrj'phal " Supplementary 
 
 Tale :"— 
 
 " "Who shall be the first that shall unlace his male 
 In comfort of us all, and gyn some mery tale ?" 
 
 Strange that Tyrwhitt, the tasteful and diligent, but not 
 very acute, editor of Chaucer, should be the very man to 
 propose the destruction of this word in Shakespeare ! The 
 only excuse for him is, that he proposed it long before he 
 became editor of the " Canterbury Tales." 
 
 f2
 
 72 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 Two centuries later than Chaucer, we still find male, iu 
 the same sense, as a common dictionary definition, — 
 
 " Bulga, A male, or bouget of leather ; a purse, a bagge." — Cooper's 
 " Thesaurus," Edit. 1584. 
 
 But the closest illustration of its meaning, as afiecting the 
 present passage, is the explanation by Cotgrave, of the 
 French diminutiye, — 
 
 " Malette : a little male ; a budget, or scrip. Malette de bergier, a 
 SheijheanVs scrip. Also the herb shepheard's purse, pouch, or scrip : 
 called otherwise Toywort, Case-weed, Pick-purse, and poore man's 
 Parmecetie." 
 
 Here " case-weed, ^j/c/c-purse," are names given to this 
 herb from the fancied resemblance of its seed-pods to the 
 leathern pouches carried by shepherds, as depositories 
 for their "picked weeds," their salves, their ointments, and 
 other appurtenances of their calling. Perhaps, too, the 
 same herb may have received the name "poore man's 
 Parmecetie" from its reputation as a heal-all, combining, 
 within itself, all the virtues of the supposed contents of the 
 shepherd's male. Be this as it may, the mention by 
 Costard of male, the shepherd's ambulance, instead of being 
 of doubtful character, is admirably appropriate to the 
 speaker. 
 
 Costard enters, with his broken shin, and hears Armado 
 ordering (as he thinlis) Moth to bring 
 
 " Some enigma, some riddle : come, — thy I'envoy ;— 
 
 and these words, strange to him, sound like outlandish 
 remedies in which he has not half so much faith as in some 
 homely application of his own. Therefore he hastens to 
 decline them, exclaiming, — 
 
 " No salve in thy male, sir. — O, sir, plantain — a plain plantain : 
 No I'envoy, no I'envoy : — no salve, sir, but a plantain !"
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COI-LIER's LIST. 73 
 
 This mode of pointing the last few words is much more 
 intelligible than that foimd in some editions, whereby 
 Costard is made to reject all salves, as if plantain itself 
 were not a salve. He only rejects (half in awe, half in 
 distrust) the abstruse preparations which he imagines 
 Armado is about to try upon him ; and, therefore, " no salve 
 in thy male, sir," is addressed to Armado. 
 
 This is a very different tone of rejection from the clown 
 taking upon himself to pronounce magisterially " no salve 
 in them all, sir." How shoidd he say that, of names he 
 knows nothing about ? 
 
 The old text is " in thee male," which in modern editions 
 is arbitrarily converted into — " in the male." But there 
 is fully as much — nay, more — probability that thee was 
 meant for thy. Thee, on the face of it, is a probable mis- 
 print for thy : and there happens to be an independent 
 example in Drayton's works where that misprint has been, 
 and is still uncorrected : — 
 
 " That with the peasant mak'st thee sport 
 As well as with the better sort." 
 
 A slight study of the context shows that the first of these 
 lines ought to read "mak'st thy sport," as will be at once 
 perceived when all the lines are read together. They are 
 an address to Thalia, the comic muse : — 
 
 " Comic TnALiA, then we come to thee. 
 Thou mirtliful maiden, only that in glee 
 And love's dcccipts thy pleasure tak'st, 
 Of which thy varying scene thou mak'st, 
 And in thy nimble sock dost stir 
 Loud laugliter in the theatre; 
 That with the peasant mak'st tliy sport 
 As well as with the better sort." 
 
 The Muacs' Elyzium, ^ril Xymphal.
 
 74 ANALYSIS or MR. COI.LIEr's LIST. 
 
 Who would imagine that in these few lines, which are here 
 given in a corrected form, there should be three distinct 
 misprints, — as well in the edition of Drayton's Works of 
 1753, as in the reprint by Chalmers in his " English Poets," 
 published in 1810? In the fourth line ''thou mak'st" is 
 misprinted that mak'st ; in the fifth line " dost stir" is 
 misprinted doth stir ; and in the seventh line " thy sport" 
 is misprinted thee sport ; the last being the parallel, before 
 mentioned, to *' thee male" in Love's Labour's Lost. 
 
 The case-iveed or pick-purse was sometimes a small ozier 
 pannier, — as in Drayton's description of the Hermit's life : — 
 
 " His happy time he spends the works of God to see 
 In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty grow, 
 Whose sundiy strange effects he only seeks to know ; 
 And in a little maund, being made of ozier small, 
 Which serveth him to do full many a thing withall, 
 He very choicely sorts his simples got abroad." 
 
 Polyolbion, Song xiii. 
 
 And then follows an enumeration of the different "picked- 
 weeds," and their several virtues, which is almost a herbal 
 in itself. 
 
 This passage in Drayton almost inevitably brings to mind 
 a similar one in Romeo and Juliet, in which, with extra- 
 ordinary blindness — notwithstanding the many editions of 
 Shakespeare with which the press has recently teemed — 
 a palpable misprint remains unnoticed. In act ii., scene 3., 
 Friar Lawrence is made to exclaim, more in the spirit of the 
 poisoning apothecary than of the benevolent recluse : — 
 
 " I must up fill this osier cage of ours. 
 With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers." 
 
 Baleful ! read, by all means, " with haleful weeds" ! And 
 compare another passage in Drayton — 
 
 " And search out simples to procure thy heale." 
 
 1th Eclogue.
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. WLLIER's LIST. 75 
 
 This, again, indicates the proper correction of a line in the 
 opening Scene of the Comedy of Errors, — 
 
 " To seek thy help by beneficial help." 
 
 Read, — 
 
 " To seek thy hole by beneficial help ;" 
 
 which, altering the original word only in a single letter, 
 produces a far finer and more probable reading than all the 
 guesses of entire words proposed as substitutes for " help," 
 including that of our Old Corrector himself, who " assures 
 us" that hojye is the true specific. It is scarcely necessary 
 to say that hele or hale was used for welfare or safety as 
 well as for physical health. Compare 
 
 " Eftsoones, all heedless of his dearest hale, 
 Full greedily into the herd he thrust, 
 To slaughter them and work their final bale." 
 
 Spenser's ^4s<ro/jAe/, 113. 
 
 With respect to ISIoth's question — " Is not I'envoy a 
 salve ?" — it is generally supposed to cover a pun upon the 
 Latin salve. Dr. Farmer " can scarcely think that Shake- 
 speare had 60 far forgotten his little school learning as to 
 suppose the Latin verb salve and the English substantive 
 salve, had the same pronunciation !" And Mr. Knight, 
 even while, with his invariable good taste, he defends 
 Shakcspeai-e from the sneer of this foolish pedant, still 
 admits that " a pun for the eye" was only intended. But, 
 surely. Moth is not dreaming of the Latin verb salve : he is 
 thinking of salve, an emollient ; wliich, with wit far above 
 the pitch of Dr. Fanner, he likens to renvoi/, a propitiatory 
 address. Just as flattery, at the present day, is vulgarly 
 likened to butter ; or as Dumain, further on in this play, 
 calls upon Biron for " somo fattrrt/ for the evil, some salve for 
 the perjury." Bui what will be thought of Dr. Farmer's
 
 76 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 criticism, — who, if lie did not know, ought to have suspected 
 that liatin words might possibly have been pronounced 
 differently in Shakespeare's time ; — what will be thought of 
 the rampant pretence of this shallow critic, when it is 
 proved that the Latin salutation salve was pronounced in one 
 syllable by an undoubted scholar, engaged at the time in 
 translating a Latin author ? 
 
 " Take him aside, and salve him fair." 
 
 Drant's Horace, 1567, bth Sat, Lib. 11. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 staying the odds by adding four. Staying the odds by maliiny four. 
 
 What would our friend Moth say to this correction of his 
 I'envoy ? Would not his lungs crow with delight at its 
 absurd pretence to ink-horn correctness ? 
 
 But there are stronger and graver reasons why it should 
 be rejected : 
 
 1. Because the word proposed to be altered is confirmed 
 
 by subsequent repetition. 
 
 2. Because it is quite possible to understand " adding 
 
 four" in the sense of summing or adding four 
 together. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Sirrah Costard, I will enfranchise Sirrah Costard, marry, I will en- 
 thee. franchise thee. 
 
 The familiar expletive, marry, is totally out of character 
 with the grandiose phraseology of Armado. The attempt to 
 attribute it to him, whether in the shape here recommended 
 or in any other shape, is a tasteless and imwarrantable 
 interference with the text. The sole excuse for it is 
 Costard's reply, — " 0, marry me to one Frances ! " which,
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEK's LIST. 77 
 
 it is assumed, must necessarily be an echo of something 
 Armado had said. Now the echo is not in the word marry 
 but in " one Frances ;" and that, too, in a way which has 
 hitherto escaped notice : " one Frances," according to the 
 old pronunciation of one, becomes on Frances, a palpable 
 imitation by the clown, of the sound of enfranchise as 
 affectodl)' pronounced by Armado. A similar play upon the 
 old pronunciation of one occurs in a subsequent scene where 
 Holofernes quibbles upon it — " Master person, — quasi pcrs-o« 
 — which is the one V^ 
 
 XXXIII and XXXIV. 
 
 And let nic loose. And lot mc he loose. 
 
 Set thee from durance. Set thcc/ree from durance. 
 
 These two corrections, notwithstanding the unwarrantable 
 license of interpolating two whole words to produce them, 
 are certainly no improvement ; for who ever heard such a 
 phrase as " let me be loose," to describe the effect of a 
 purgation — generally supposed to be coercive rather than 
 permissive ? 
 
 Set me loose, let thee from durance, would be infinitely 
 better corrections of the existing text : and they are both 
 obtained b}' the one simple alteration — the transposition 
 of let and set. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 A whitely wanton with a velvet A icittxj wanton with a velvet 
 
 bi'ow. brow. 
 
 If it were necessary to change the original word, whitly, 
 or wliitely, at all, a far more appropriate substitute would 
 be presented in ?r//// — not only as being in much bettor 
 accordance with the spirit of Biron's speech, but more
 
 78 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 easily deduced from the original — all the letters necessary 
 to it being already in the existing word. 
 
 But what reasonable objection can there be to whitely ? 
 Mr. Dyce thinks it is "a questionable reading" because 
 Eosaline is of a dark complexion. The same reason for 
 rejecting it had been previously urged by Mr. Collier in 
 " Notes and Emendations ; " and again in his latest edition 
 of Shakespeare, (1858.) In the latter he even begins to 
 doubt the existence of the word " whitely" — " if," says he, 
 " there were such a word (Richardson in his Diet, can point 
 out no other instance). " Well, but Dr. Johnson, an equally 
 well known lexicographer, can and does point out another 
 instance, from Southern's Oroonoko. And if it shall be 
 said that that instance is valueless as not being previous 
 to, or contemporary with, Shakespeare ; here is another, 
 not open to that objection : — 
 
 " But instantly turned to a whitely stone." 
 
 Referring to the pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was 
 transformed (see Sylvester's Du Bartas, Edit. 1613, p. 417). 
 And there is another "instance" in Cotgrave's Diet. 
 where whitely is one of the meanings to bldnchastre. So 
 that the word seems to have been common enough. 
 
 Then as to the other objection : are not these gentlemen 
 mistaken in supposing that Rosaline's darkness of complexion 
 refers to the colour of her skin ? Did not complexion imply 
 rather the hair, the eyes, the brows ? The blonde, or golden, 
 was the fair, par excellence : so much so, that ladies " not 
 born fair" used to paint their eyebrows; and either wore 
 hair of the approved colour, or used washes to assimilate 
 their own to it. Whence these washes were called hionde, 
 for which see Florio : who, moreover, explains " hiondare, 
 to wash or paint women's haires, — hiondczza, sunne-shine 
 colour, — and '' hiondella, a goldy-locke wench."
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEk's LIST. 79 
 
 In Shakespeare's time fair did not mean white^ so much 
 as beautiful ; in which sense it Avas conventional, e.g. : — 
 
 " In the old age black was not counted fair, 
 Or if it were it bore not beauty's name : " 
 
 The poet feigns that his mistress, being black, will have 
 influence to change the conventional opinion, so as, in future, 
 to make black be called fair. 
 
 This distinction between fair, white ; and fair, beautiful ; 
 will explain many seeming contradictions in Shakespeare's 
 sonnets, as well as in such parts of this play as contain 
 bantering allusions to the absence of fair in Rosaline. 
 
 In the 127th and 132nd sonnets the poet commends his 
 mistress for braving the conventional prejudice by wearing 
 her native black undisguised : but at the same time he 
 thinks it necessary to find excuses for that colour by feigning 
 that her eyes and brows have 2^u( on mourning : — 
 
 " Thine eyes I love ; and they, as pitying me, 
 Knowing thy heart torments rae with disdain, 
 Have put on black, and loving mourners be. 
 Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain. 
 
 Then will I swear beauty itself is black 
 And they all foul that thy complexion lack." 
 
 cxxxii. 
 
 " Therefore, my mistress' brows arc raven black, 
 Her ej'cs so suited ; and they mourners seem 
 At such as, not born fair, no beauty lack — 
 Slandering creation with a false esteem." 
 
 cxxvii. 
 
 (This sonnet is invariably misprinted : it is here corrected 
 by altering " eyes" to hrows in the first line.) 
 
 " Not born fair, no beauty lack" is an allusion to the 
 practice before described, of altering the natui-al colour of
 
 80 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 the hair and brows by f)ainting. And that, too, is what 
 Rosaline insinuates in the 5th Act of this play, when she 
 retorts upon Katherine by "ware pencils;" pencils being 
 paint-brushes. 
 
 From all this it is plain, that fair, when applied to the 
 complexion, did not, in Shakespeare's time, necessarily mean 
 whiteness of skin ; and, conversely, absence of fair did not 
 imply darkness of skin. Therefore Biron's playful descrip- 
 tion of his mistress, — 
 
 "A whitely wanton, with a velvet brow, 
 With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes," 
 
 is by no means inconsistent with Rosaline's dark com- 
 plexion. Indeed there is the very same combination of 
 features in the description of Phebe in As You Like It, — 
 
 " ' Tis not youi' inky brows, your black silk hair. 
 Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream, — " 
 
 Here is a cream-faced lady with inky brows : Biron's is a 
 whitely wanton with a velvet brow : where is the difference ? 
 " Velvet brow" means, of course, the glossy and beautiful 
 hue of black velvet ; equivalent to Phebe's " inky brows," 
 and to "the brows of raven black" of the 127th sonnet. 
 
 It may be questioned whether modern editors are justi- 
 fied, in this same speech of Biron's, in arbitrarily altering 
 " Siguier Junios," into " senior-junior ;" thus destroying 
 half the equivoke for the sake of making the other half 
 plain. Considering that the speaker is a scholar and a wit, 
 and that " tough signior, tender juvenal" are already in a 
 previous scene, with the same equivoke, it would be assuredly 
 safer to leave the words of the original intact. It should 
 be remembered that Junius Juvenalis are combined in the 
 name of the Roman Satirist. The equivoke is undoubtedly 
 more complete where Signior, a title of dignitv, but also
 
 ANALYSIS OF MK. COLLIER's LIST. 81 
 
 fundamentally meaning elder, is coupled with Junius, a 
 distinguished family name, but also fundamentally meaning 
 youthful. 
 
 ACT IV.— Scene 1. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 heresy in fair, fit for these days ! heresy m faith, fit for these days ! 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 When for fame's sake, to praise. When for fame's sake, /or praise. 
 
 1632. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 1 cannot, cannot, cannot. An I cannot, cannot, cannot. 
 
 ROWE. 
 
 Tliere is no edition for a century back in which this cor- 
 rection does not exist. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 For they both did hit. For they both did hit it. 
 
 Respecting this correction, Mr. Collier, in his last edition 
 of Shakespeare, vol. 2, p. 127, makes this extraordinary 
 assertion : — 
 
 " The pronoun is not in the old copies, but is obtained from the corr. 
 folio, 1G32." 
 
 Assiuning that by " the pronoim" (for there are two) 
 Mr. Collier means " ?Y," that word is midoubtedly in the 
 4th Folio of 1685, which is one of the " old copies !" If
 
 82 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER S LIST. 
 
 Mr. Collier obtained it for his second edition of Shakespeare 
 "from the corr. folio, 1632/' where did he obtain it for 
 his first edition in 1844 ? 
 
 XL. 
 
 To see him kiss his hand, and how To see him kiss his hand, and how 
 
 most sweetly a' will swear. most sweetly a' will swear, 
 
 LooMng hahies in her eyes, his 
 passion to declare. 
 
 This is one of the far-famed restored lines, which, 
 according to his admirers, attest the character of indubitable 
 authority upon the Old Corrector ; it is, therefore, necessary 
 to examine it more closely than it would otherwise deserve. 
 
 Since it is pure invention from beginning to end, with 
 no true reading to confront it with, the only way to disprove 
 it is by the test of probabilities, under these three heads ; — 
 by whom spoken ? of whom spoken ? and under what 
 circumstances spoken ? 
 
 1. It is spoken by Costard, with whose character and 
 phraseology the expression "his passion to declare" is 
 entirely at variance. 
 
 2. It is spoken of Armado, who is neither then upon the 
 stage nor has he been lately on the stage : and, furthermore, 
 it is spoken of some female, into whose eyes Armado is 
 " looking babies." 
 
 3. It is spoken under these circumstances : — In the pre- 
 vious four lines of Costard's speech, Boyet, and the scene 
 just then past, are unquestionably referred to; suddenly 
 Costard reverts to Armado, who is not before the audience 
 at all : — 
 
 " Armado o'the one side, — O, a most dainty man ! 
 To see him walk before a lady, and to bear her fan I 
 To see him kiss his hand ! and how sweetly a' will swear" ! —
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 83 
 
 How is this to be explained — this sudden reference to 
 Armado ? In no other possible way than that the speaker 
 is supposed to have just caught sight of Armado, in the 
 distance, escorting one of the ladies of the court with over- 
 strained and ridicidous gallantry : and that the break after 
 "a' will swear" is intended to be filled up by a clownish 
 imitation of Armado's gestures by Costard, then alone upon 
 the stage : after which he resumes his description of what 
 he sees afar — "and his page o' t'other side, that handful 
 of wit," &c. ! 
 
 And it is into this inimitable situation we are asked to 
 interpose — 
 
 " Looking babies in her eyes, his passion to declare .'" 
 
 The manufacture of which is clearly traceable to INIalone's 
 unlucky and silly remark appended to "a' -will swear : " — 
 
 " A line follo-sving this seems to have been lost!" 
 
 On this hint the Old Corrector went to work, and turned 
 out this precious composition ; the folly and impudence of 
 which is only to be equalled by the gidlibility with which 
 it has been received. 
 
 Into whose eyes is Armado supposed to be "looking 
 babies"? — Jaquenetta's, of course. And is the fan he is 
 bearing, Jaquenetta's too ? — The da //-woman's fan ! 
 
 Finally, it may be observed, that the dropped rh}Tne, 
 which is the sole excuse for the addition, was of very 
 common occurrence, even in sustained rhjTnical composition, 
 as may constantly be observed in Sylvester and others of the 
 old poets ; and in this very play two or three other examples 
 might be pointed out which are quite as much in need of 
 a manufactured line.
 
 84 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 And his page o' t'other side, that And his page o' t'other side, that 
 
 handful of wit. handful of small wit. 
 
 This is one of the alterations that swell " the enormous 
 number" of old corrections : — and it seems to have no other 
 object. 
 
 Scene 2. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 He is only an animal. He is only an animal, not to think. 
 
 This correction is explained at page 88 of "Notes and 
 Emendations :" by which it appears that the Old Corrector 
 makes a new rhyme in one place for no apparent reason 
 but for the pleasure of destroying one in another. If it 
 were not for the explanation given by Mr. Collier, (who 
 seems to be in all the secrets of the Old Corrector), the 
 object of the correction would be utterly inscrutable. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Which we taste and feeling. Which we, having taste and 
 
 feeling. 
 
 A mere colourable variation of Tyrwhitt's " we of taste 
 and feeling :" and since having has three times the number 
 of letters, and means precisely the same thing, so is it three 
 times a greater liberty with the text. 
 
 XLIV. 
 To see him in a school. To set him in a school. 
 
 This is another of Mr. Collier's crack corrections, about 
 which he boils over with indignation against the late
 
 ANALYSIS UF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 85 
 
 Mr. Singer for having stolen it for his new edition of 
 Shakespeare without acknowledging he had it from the 
 Old Corrector. 
 
 With reference to vSinger's adoption of it Mr. Collier 
 writes — 
 
 " He simply observes that ' the equivoke rendered the change neces- 
 sary.' To be sure it did ; but neither Mr. Singer nor, I believe, any 
 body else during the last hundred and fifty years, saw that necessity 
 until it was pointed out by the Old Corrector." 
 
 Preface to " Seven Lectures," Ixvii. 
 
 Alas, if poor Singer did adopt this correction it is not the 
 only proof he gave in his latter days of a total waning of 
 mental discrimination. Let us examine it ; the lines are : — 
 
 " For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool ; 
 So were there a patch set on learning to see him in a school." 
 
 Is there not here a clear comparison of appearances ? and 
 how are appearances to be manifest except by being seen ? 
 
 It was Dr. Johnson who unfortunately put the Old 
 Corrector up to this alteration by writing " the meaning is, 
 ■ to be in a school would as ill become a patch, or low fellow, 
 as folly would become me." 
 
 Now to be in a school and to be set in a school, are not very 
 remote expressions : but what principally misled the Cor- 
 rector was the mistake of Dr. Johnson, implicitly followed 
 by him, as to the meaning of patch. It is true that one 
 sense of that word is " low fellow," but that is not the only 
 sense it bears in this passage : an equivoke must have at 
 least two senses. When we talk of setting a patch on 
 anything, we generally mean an unsightly addition : there- 
 fore to see Dull in a school would be to see a jjatek set on 
 learning, and this, surely, is the exact equivoke that was 
 intended. , 
 
 G
 
 86 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 So far, therefore, from its being just to say that " the 
 eqmvoke rendered the change necessary," the converse 
 proposition is true ; the equivoke expressly forbids the 
 change. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Dictisima, goodman Dull, Die- Doctissime, goodman Dull ; Die- 
 
 tisiina. tynna. 
 
 The first alteration, Doctissime, is all that properly 
 belongs to the Old Corrector ; and nothing more is necessary 
 to expose its folly than to give the line in fidl ; when it will 
 be seen that the second half is manifestly intended as a 
 reduplication of the first : — 
 
 " Dictynna, good man Dull ; Dictynna, good man Dull." 
 
 The critics of last century were at infinite pains to dis- 
 cover translations whence the illiterate Shakespeare might 
 have obtained " Dictynna" as a title of Diana : while 
 they overlooked, or were ignorant of, a still more recondite 
 example in the purely Latin sense given so characteristically 
 by the pedant to the word " allusion." 
 
 " The allusion holds in the exchange," 
 That is, the Jeu lies in the change of the moon ! 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Imitary is nothing. Imitating is nothing. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 {But see corr. 90, ad fui. page 114.
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 87 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 The tired horse to his rider. The trained horse to his rider. 
 
 HEATH. 
 [But see page 116. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 Of the party written. Of the party writing. 
 
 ROWE. 
 
 Scene 3. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 The night of dew. The dvtv of night. 
 
 MUSGRAVE. 
 
 This transposition proceeds from an assumed license to 
 reduce to common-place whatever is above common -place 
 comprehension. It is not the dew that is the object of the 
 verb, but the night ; metaphorically predicated in the dew 
 upon the lover's cheek. And it is not until after the niyht 
 has been smote and driven away by the sunny rays of his 
 mistress's eyes, that the dew upon the lover's cheek becomes 
 assimilated to the morning dew upon the rose. The verb 
 to smite is aggressive, signifying here to dispel, and it is 
 in the past tense, " have smote," to assimilate both branches 
 of the metaphor to morning : in the one case night has been 
 dispelled by the golden sun, and in the other by the eye- 
 beams of the lover's mistress ; — 
 
 " So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not 
 To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, 
 As thy cyc-bcams (when their fresh rays have smote 
 The night of dew that on ray cheek down flows.") 
 
 The night (of sorrow) has been dispelled ; but the tears, no 
 longer sorrowful, remain to be gladdened like morning dew. 
 
 g2
 
 88 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 The tasteless, though unfortunately facile, transposition 
 to deiv of night, destroys the poetry and fidelity of this 
 beautiful imago, the text of which was respected even by 
 the commentators of last century ; who rejected this trans- 
 position when proposed by Musgrave, although they con- 
 fessedly did not understand the true meaning of the 
 metaphor. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Dyce adopts the change in his recent 
 edition ! 
 
 L. 
 
 How far dost thou excell. How far thou dost excell. 
 
 Another injurious transposition : by which the interjec- 
 tional force of the line is marred. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Disfigure not liis shop. Disfigure not his slop. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 Mr. Collier now reverts to his former reading, shape. 
 But show is a far more probable substitute. It is obtained 
 by the simple change of a letter ; and not only presents 
 a reading good in itself, but is placed almost beyond question 
 by the rhyme : — 
 
 " Biron. Disfigure not his show. 
 Long. This same shall go : — " 
 
 LII. 
 
 God amend us, God amend. God amend us, God amend us. 
 
 ABANDONED.
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 89 
 
 LIII. 
 By earth she is not corporal. By earth, she is most corporal. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Thou for whom Jove would Thou for whom f/reat Jove 
 
 swear. would swear. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 LV, 
 My true love's fasting pain. My true love's lasting pain. 
 
 CAPELL. 
 
 LVI. 
 Come, sir, you blush. Come, sir, blush you. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 What present hast thou there ? What, peasant, hast thou there ? 
 
 An unlucky shot of the Old Corrector ! He overlooks, 
 in his eagerness to alter, that it is Jaquenctta and not 
 Costard who has the letter, and first addresses the King. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Young blood doth not obey an Young blood doth yet obey an 
 
 old decree. old decree. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 The hue of dungeons and the The hue of dungeons and the 
 
 school of night. shade of night.
 
 00 ANALYSIS OF MR, COLLIER's LTST. 
 
 The original reading of this ill-usod passage woidd have 
 long since appeared if commentators would direct their 
 energies to interpret rather than to substitute. There is a 
 whole family of words — shell, shale, scull, scale, shoal, schoal, 
 — of which such as are spelled with h might, and often did, 
 take a c before it — schell, schale, schoal or school : and, in like 
 manner, those with c took Ji. And, to show how convertible 
 these modes of spelling were, shoe, in old writers, is not 
 unfrequently found spelled scho. Thus a school or scull 
 of dolphins and a shoal of herrings are manifestly the 
 same words differently pronounced — and the same may be 
 said of the several variations above enumerated. 
 
 With these facts premised, we find in Macbeth : — 
 
 " But here upon this bank and schoole of time." 
 
 And, as might be expected, schoole became a fruitfid source 
 of bate among the commentators. Theobald proposed 
 shoal, not from deduction, as above, but from conjecture ; 
 some one else would have shelve ; Mr. Heath contended for 
 school in its Latin meaning, in which he was followed half 
 a century afterwards by Tieck. It is needless to say — what, 
 indeed, is a necessity from the context — that shoal is the 
 right interpretation ; but it ought to be regarded more as a 
 correction of spelling than as a substitute for a misprint. 
 
 We must now revert to the recurrence of the same word 
 in the present correction. Biron's companions are bantering 
 him upon his mistress's complexion ; because her eyes, brows, 
 and hair, are black, (see this point fully discussed ante in 
 correction xxxv) : Biron says : — 
 
 " No face is fair that is not full so black." 
 
 To which the King retorts : — 
 
 " O, paradox ! black is the badge of hell, 
 The hue of dungeons, and the schoole of night, 
 And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well."
 
 ANALYSIS or MR. COLl.lEu's LIST. 91 
 
 Here, as in Macbeth, scltook became the Rtaggeriiig point 
 of the commentators. Theobald, the pioneer of them all, 
 began with stole, then followed scowl, cowl, coil, soil, the array 
 being closed in proud pre-eminence by the Old Corrector's 
 "shade!" 
 
 But the reader who has followed these few remarks, has, 
 doubtless, by this time begun to perceive for himself, that 
 there are two words, in the large family adverted to, for 
 which schoole may stand — cither of which gives excellent 
 sense : — shale, a cortex or envelope ; and scale, an opaque 
 film. 
 
 These two words arc virtually the same, being each 
 resolvable, by the conversion before described, into the 
 common form, schale. But scale is to be preferred for the 
 intei*]3retation of the present passage, inasmuch as it is 
 technically and Scripturally applied to an obscuration of 
 light. 
 
 LX. 
 
 And beauty's crest becomes the And beauty's best becomes the 
 
 heavens well. heavens well. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 Crest here means a topping ; that is, the hair and 
 brows : and beauty's crest, j'jar excellence, was what Florio 
 calls " sunne-shine colour" — which the King very naturally 
 says "becomes the heavens well." 
 
 Biron had shortly before likened his lady's brows to the 
 heavens : — 
 
 " Dares look upon the heaven of her brow." 
 
 And this the King calls a paradox, her brow being as black 
 as night ! How simply all these explanations flow out of 
 one another !
 
 92 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 The fashion of the days. The fashion of these days. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Why, universal plodding poisons Why, universal plodding /??-tso«s 
 
 up. up. 
 
 THEOBALD. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Teaches such beauty as a woman's Teaches such learning as a wo- 
 
 eye. man's eye. 
 
 Since learning is repeated many times in close proximity, 
 it is extremely improbable, had that been the original word, 
 that any other should have been substituted for it. It would 
 be contrary to all experience in such matters, which shows 
 that it is the proximate that is likely to be repeated in 
 mistake. 
 
 The existing word "beauty" has, therefore, so ior, prima 
 facie probability in its favour ; and it is also strictly con- 
 sistent with the context, if properly understood. The lines 
 wherein "learning" is so often repeated immediately after, 
 and which have been adduced by Mr. Collier in support 
 of this correction, militate, in reality, against it ; because 
 they have no reference to this line, but are a distinct second 
 branch of Biron's argument, to show that learning, «s well 
 as beauty, may be found in woman's eyes. 
 
 In the beginning of this long speech of Biron's, these 
 two lines are always printed and punctuated as follows : — 
 
 " And where that j'ou have vowed to study, lords, 
 In that each of you hath fors\Aorn his book :"
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. U-\ 
 
 The meaning of which is not very apparent ! Rut insert 
 in before "that" in the first line, and read thus : — 
 
 And where, in that, you've vowed to study, lords ; 
 In tJiat, each of you hath forsworn his book. 
 
 The two f/iafs refer to two different vows : — the first, to 
 "to study;" and tlie second, to "to see no woman." Biron 
 argues that the last vow, to see no woman, deprives them of 
 ike hook on which the first vow, to study, ought to be 
 performed. 
 
 There is, moreover, a notorious crux in the same speech 
 which has been the subject of more elaborate surmise 
 than almost any other passage in Shakespeare : — 
 
 " And when Louc speakcs, the voyce of all the gods, 
 Make heauen drowsie with the hamionie." 
 
 Make, instead of makes, in the last line, presents no diffi- 
 cidty, because the peculiarity of echoing the concord of the 
 nearest and most prominent noun, instead of the proper 
 antecedent, was very common with the old wTiters, and has 
 been often explained. 
 
 The real difiiculty lies in the phrase " voyce of all the 
 gods," and many have been the attempts to interpret it. 
 Of these, one only, proposed by Heath about a century ago, 
 seems to have survived to the present time. His explanation 
 of the passage is this : — 
 
 " Whenever Love speaks, all the gods join their voices with his in 
 harmonious concert." — Bevisal, •^•c, 1765, p. 138. 
 
 And this appears to be considered the best interpretation the 
 passage is capable of ; since all modern editors have adopted 
 it, either v(>rbally, as Mr. Knight has done, or tacitly by 
 punctuation.
 
 9-i ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEk's LIST. 
 
 And yet, when closely examined, it is really very absurd ! 
 The idea of the voice of all the gods murmuring in cadence 
 ■with Love's, every time he opens his mouth, is ridiculous in 
 the extreme ; and could only have been tolerated so long in 
 despair of a better interpretation. 
 
 There is, however, a better, and a very obvious one : 
 which, although so unaccountably overlooked, is on the very 
 surface ; invohang one of the commonest and most famUiar 
 phrases of every day life. 
 
 For example, — when a person is asked how he likes any- 
 thing, and he replies that he likes it of all things ; we have 
 no difficulty in understanding him to mean that he likes it 
 better than anything else : it is a very common form of 
 implying a superlative degree. 
 
 And is not of all the gods a precisely similar phrase ? 
 
 Is not the meaning of the passage this, — that Love, of all 
 the gods, has the richest and most harmonious voice ? Had 
 the phrase been — 
 
 And when Love speaks, his voice, of all the gods, 
 Makes, &c. 
 
 There would not, perhaps, have been any difficulty as to its 
 meaning : why, then, should any difficulty exist when the 
 supplies the place of his ? 
 
 " And when Love speaks, the voice, of all the gods, 
 Makes heaven di'owsy with the harmony." 
 
 That is, the voice of no other god has so sweet and luscious 
 an effect ! And that this is the true interpretation is con- 
 firmed by the clause in question being of purely paren- 
 thetical construction : if the words (of all the gods), be 
 taken away altogether, the sense of the rest will remain 
 complete.
 
 ANALYSIS or MK. COIXIER's LIST. 95 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 And plant in tyrants mild Im- And plant in tyrants mild hu- 
 
 mility. VKinity. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 ACT v.— Scene 1. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 It insinuateth me of infamy. It insinuatcth one of insania. 
 
 The original word of the old copies is " iiifamie." 
 Theobald changed it into insanie : Warburton altered that 
 into insanity : and now the Old Corrector strikes an average, 
 and gives insania as something fresh ! The object of his 
 other change, " me" into one, is inscrutable, seeing that the 
 two words, when so used, are absolutely synonymous. Mr. 
 Collier, at page 92, of " Notes and Emendations," tells his 
 readers that this compound correction " clears the passage 
 still more ;" but he does not say in what respect it is more 
 clear, nor what it means now that it is clear. But since the 
 Old Corrector is only at his old game of equiralenfs, without 
 in the least altering the fundamental meaning of the usual 
 reading ; and as the present object is to show that the usual 
 reading is wrong ; the Old Corrector's alterations may be set 
 aside, and their excellence discussed in another shape, — 
 how far does the usual reading of this passage express 
 the sense of the original ? 
 
 There is one valuable pecidiarity attending it, — it is 
 accompanied by a gloss, derived from the best possible 
 authority, that of the speaker himself. Holofernes has been 
 coining some pedantic phrase which he is conscious is a little 
 overstrained ; and, fearing it should be lost upon liis com- 
 panion, he thinks it necessary to explain its meaning : 
 although, speaking to one scarcely less pedantic than
 
 96 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 himself, explanation is less likely to be needed except of 
 something more than commonly ingenious and abstruse. 
 He addresses the parson, and, referring to his phrase, " It 
 insinuateth me of infamie," asks him " Ne mtelligis, 
 Domine ? — to make frantic — limatic." 
 
 There can be nothing clearer, therefore, than that these 
 two conditions must be satisfied in any explanation given to 
 this phrase : — 
 
 1. It must conform to the gloss " to make frantic — 
 lunatic." 
 
 2. It must be more abstruse and out of the way than com- 
 mon, to accoimt for the pedagogue's anxiety to explain it. 
 
 Now, the usual reading, — It insinuateth me of insanie^ does 
 not satisfy either of these conditions. 
 
 First, as to the verb insinuate, its sense is too tame, let it 
 be coupled with what noun it may, ever to imply make 
 frantic : and, on the other hand, it is and was a word too 
 well known and familiar to require explanation : moreover, 
 if capable of any sense at all, it would be a sense inappli- 
 cable to the purpose of the speaker : for the only meaning 
 " it insinuateth me of insanie" could bear is, it hints that I 
 am insane. Next, as to " infamie," its change to insanie was 
 made obviously for no other reason than that there might be 
 some word in the sentence to imply frantic or lunatic, and so 
 make an approach to the prescribed gloss. Consequently, 
 if that gloss can be otherwise satisfied, there would cease to 
 be any excuse for disturbing the original word infamy, being, 
 as it is, a word in every respect suitable for the subject. 
 Ilolofernes is railing against some " abhominable" mal- 
 practices, the infamy of which, he says, makes him frantic. 
 What is there in the least unfit or unlikely in the word 
 " infamy" in such a place ? Do we not hear every day, in 
 sober and ordinary discoui'sc, nuisances or abuses spoken of 
 as infamous ?
 
 AN.VLYSIS OF MR. COLLIEu's LIST. 97 
 
 But if infitmy be restored to the text, how shall wo obtain 
 the insanity ? By diverting the suspicion of misprint from 
 "infamie" and attaching it to "insinuate," the one having 
 been shown to be as suitable to the context as the other is 
 the reverse. 
 
 " Insinuateth" may be, nay must be, a misprint for 
 insaniateth, coined by Holofernes from the Latin insanio, 
 and put into the form of an impersonal verb — it insaniateth 
 me of infamy — or it maketh me frantic \Y\ih. the infamy 
 (of it) : thus literally agreeing with the gloss given by 
 himself. 
 
 And how admirably in character with Holofernes such a 
 coinage would be ! How natural for him, after its achieve- 
 ment, to turn to his rival pedant with the self-satisfied 
 explanation, " you understand ? — to make frantic — lunatic." 
 Demanding admiration, as it were, for the ingenuity of the 
 
 comage 
 
 
 It may be remarked that, supposing such an impersonal 
 did exist, it would, according to Latin construction, have a 
 genitive case ; so that " of infamie," so uncouth to us, may, 
 after all, be but another whiff of the pedagogue, fresh 
 from old Lillie's grammar-rules. 
 
 It may be asked, — supposing this position fully admitted, 
 what has it to do with the Old Corrector ? It has this to do 
 with him. It shows, by his having in this case, as in many 
 others, " confirmed" readings universally received for a series 
 of years, but now likely to prove untrue, that he is nothing 
 but a modern copyist, who adopted such corrections as he 
 found ready to hand, in the blind confidence that they would 
 be safe investments from ha^-ing been accredited so long. 
 
 LXYI. 
 The last of the five vowels. The third of the five vowels. 
 
 THEOBALD.
 
 98 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Do you not educate youth at the Do you not educate youth at the 
 
 charge house ? large house ? 
 
 COLLIER, 1842. 
 
 Large house ! What an expression for the magnificent 
 Armado ! It may be a question whether "charge-house" 
 requires any alteration ; but if it does, most certainly neither 
 Mr. Collier in 1842, nor his Old Corrector ten years later, 
 has been happy in this co-suggestion. If altered at all, it 
 should be to Church house. Church to " Charge" would not 
 be an improbable conversion : and for the association of 
 church with a pedant's school, we have the authority of 
 Shakespeare himself. See Twelfth Night, act iii., sc. 2 : — 
 
 " Cross-gartered — most villainously ; like a pedant that 
 Keeps a school i'the Church." 
 
 In the same speech of Armado's we have 
 " Art's-man prceambula" — 
 
 being a correction by Howe, about one hundred and fifty 
 years ago, of the original word " preambulat." 
 
 Rowe assumed that this word was intended for Latin, and 
 so took upon himself to remodel it according to his own 
 ideas of correctness. Had the speaker been Holofernes, 
 there might have been some excuse for this ; but it is 
 remarkable that Armado, perhaps by intentional contrast, 
 speaks no word of Latin throughout the whole play ; so 
 that if this prccambula, which since Howe's time has been 
 repeated by every succeeding editor, were a true reading, 
 it would form a notable exception to the rest of Armado's 
 phraseology. But, considering that the dialogue abounds 
 with scraps of Latin spoken b}' persons in immediate contact
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 99 
 
 with Annuclo, and that his own phraseology is so grandilcj- 
 qucnt that it offers constant temptation to the same, his 
 freedom from it must be the result of careful design, 
 intended, perhaps, to heighten the contrast of the characters. 
 And yet this marked peculiarity is to be broken through 
 by the officious and ill-judged Latinizing of this word ! 
 
 But a still more serious objection to it is, that when so 
 altered it becomes quite inappropriate to the situation. 
 Armado does not want the pedagogue to march before him — 
 there is neither departure nor entrance to create a question 
 of precedence — ^but he wants him to walk about, apart from 
 the rest, in order that he may confer with him on the subject 
 of his visit. 
 
 This meaning is obtained by going back to the original 
 word " preambulat," in the first syllable of which one of 
 the commonest of all transpositions must be corrected. This 
 will produce peramhulat, or perambulate, which is exactly 
 the word wanted. 
 
 And when this is done, how natural, and how like 
 Armado's phraseology, the speech becomes, — 
 
 "Arts-man, perambulate; we will be singled from the bai'barous!" 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 I do assure ye, very good friend. I do assure ye, my very good 
 
 friend. 
 
 The Old Corrector could not perceive that "I do assure 
 you" is parenthetical, and therefore that there is no necessity 
 for a repetition of the pronoun "my" which had occurred 
 before. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Myself and this gallant gentleman. Myself or this gallant gentleman. 
 
 STEEVENS.
 
 100 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Shall pass Pompey the great. Shall -pass for Pompey the great. 
 
 MALONE. 
 
 But why may not pass be the old form of surpass, used 
 jokingly " because of his great Umb or joint ?" 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 An antick, I beseech you, follow. An antick, I beseech you, to fol- 
 
 low. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 But the received reading cannot be right. The extrava- 
 gantly polite Armado, who apologised to the welkui for 
 sighing in its face, woidd never permit, much less ask, 
 Holofernes to follow ! That word is probably a misprint 
 for fellow : " I beseech you, fellow," addressed to Dull as 
 one who could perform an antic. This reading is confirmed 
 by Holofernes immediately turning to Dull to rally him — 
 " Via, goodman Dull !" &c. ; and by Dull's answer, con- 
 senting to " make one in a dance, or so ; " or " play on a 
 tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay." 
 
 Scene 2. 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Past care is still past cure. Past cure is still past care. 
 
 THIRLBY and MALONE. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Fair as a text B in a copy-book. Fair as a text i2 in a copy-book. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 » 
 
 The stupidity of this alteration is so remarkable that 
 although " abandoned" it must be brought forward as
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEk's LIST. 101 
 
 evidence that the only object of theae corrections was to make 
 as many alterations of the text as possible. Any one who has 
 seen " a text B in a copy-book," that is, in schoobnastcr's 
 text hand, must know that with its double strokes and thick 
 flourishings it is the blackest looking letter in the alphabet. 
 Kathcrine is still harping upon Eosaline's black complexion, 
 and Hosaline retorts by calling Kathcrine a " red Domin- 
 ical," referring, of course, to the Snnday-Letter of the 
 almanacs, which to this day, in " Old Moore's," and White's, 
 is printed in rubrick. Mr. Collier appears to be quite aware 
 of the secret motive for this change. He says it is because 
 R is the first letter of Rosaline's name ! 
 
 " Ah, mocker ! that's the dog's name. R is for the dog ! " 
 
 Rom. and Jul., act ii., scene 4. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 So pcrtaunt-lilcc would I o'crsway So potenthj would I o'ersway his 
 
 his state. state. 
 
 If there ever was a reading which admits of no manner of 
 reasonable doubt, it is the long accredited 2:>ortent-like : which 
 is, in fact, the original, with a slight variation in spelling. 
 
 How happens it that every one in this place, copjnng 
 Malonc, prints the following line as the reading of the 2nd 
 FoHo? 
 
 " And shape his service wholly to my behests." 
 
 Whereas it stands thus in the 2nd Folio, — 
 
 " And shape his service all to my behests." 
 
 thus removing the objection of the redundant syllable. 
 
 Nevertheless the excellent suggestion, frst printed by 
 
 H
 
 102 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 Mr. Kniijht in 1842, but recently revived by Mr. Dyce 
 (*' Strictures," &c., 1859, page 59), is perhajDS better : — 
 
 And shape his service wholly to my hests. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 And mirth in his face. And mirth is in his face. 
 
 EARLIEST QUARTO. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Encounters mounted are. Encounterers mounted are. 
 
 This correction lias evidently arisen from ignorance of 
 the meaning of mounted in this place, which is, arranged or 
 got up : another proof, if more were wanted, that these 
 corrections are framed upon mere conjecture, and conjecture, 
 too, of a very low order. 
 
 Mr. Collier, in his last edition of Shakespeare, says of this 
 correction, — 
 
 " The usual reading has been encounters, but those who support it 
 have not told us in what way encounters could be mounted." 
 
 Mounted ! mounted on what ? is it on horseback Mr. 
 Collier means ? Just the opposite : it means that encounters 
 are on foot ! 
 
 It is strange that not one of Shakespeare's editors has, as 
 yet, seen that " Saint Dennis" in the Princess' answer, must 
 be a misprint for Saint Venus. Saint Cupid is the patron 
 of the King's party, and the princess exclaims, 
 
 " Saint Venus to Saint Cupid ! what are they 
 That charge their breath against us ?" 
 
 It is always printed, " Saint Demm to Saint Cupid!"
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLI Eu's LIST. lU3 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 That charge their breath against That charge the breach against 
 
 us. us. 
 
 This correction is borrowed from The Groves of Blarney, — 
 " And made a breach into her battlement." 
 
 If not intended as a joke, the Old Corrector's perception 
 must be cased in buffulo-hidc ! 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Passion's solemn tears. Passion's sudden tears. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 See page 137. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 And every one his love-feat will And every one his lovc-sint will 
 
 advance. advance. 
 
 Love feat carries on the idea of mimic warfare that per- 
 vades the whole description : — no person of taste would wish 
 to change it. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Will kill the keeper's heart. Will kill the speahe/s heart. 
 
 EARLIEST QUARTO. 
 
 LXXXT. 
 
 With you on the grass. With her on this grass. 
 
 EARLIEST QUARTO. 
 
 In this Scene Katherine's enigmatical exclamation " Yeal,- 
 quoth the Dutchman," must be an echo of something her 
 
 h2
 
 104 ANALYSTS OF Ml(. COLLTER's LIST. 
 
 companion has said. Wliat if Longavile has called his visor 
 his veil ? The dialogue would then stand thus : — 
 
 Long. You have a double tongue within your mask, and would 
 aflford my speechless veil a half. 
 
 KaTH. " Veal, quoth the Dutchman," is not veal a calf? 
 
 Long. A calf; fair lady ? Katii. No, a fair lord calf. 
 
 This hypothesis would at once explain the point of Kath- 
 erine's reply ; which, as the text now stands, is a meaningless 
 contrast to the other equivokes of reply and rejoinder with 
 which the scene sparldes. That visor is constantly used for 
 mask in the same dialogue, is rather in favour of, than 
 against, the hj^pothesis ; for if the reader or compositor 
 found any difficidty in deciphering vayle, he would set down 
 " vizard " at once from the context. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 O poverty in wit, kingly-poor O poverty in wit, liilVcl hy 2wre 
 
 flout ! flout ! 
 
 This epithet, hinghj-jjoor, so far from requiring correction, 
 is a humourous douhle-meaniug phrase quite in the spirit of 
 the scene. In one sense it is supremely poor ; in the other, 
 poor enough to be a king's. It refers to the king's parting 
 flout " Fare well, mad wenches, you have simple wits." 
 
 This is the flout that is called kinglj^-poor. It has stung 
 the young ladies more than all : — to have their wits, on 
 which they pride themselves, called simple wits ! So they 
 retort by a round of sarcasm against the wits of the retreat- 
 ing enemy : — 
 
 " Are these the breed of wits so wondered at ?" 
 
 " Well lyking wits they have, — gross, gross ; fat, fat ;" — 
 
 " O, poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout !" 
 
 *' AVell, better ivits have worn plain statute caps."
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLI Eu's LIST. H>5 
 
 Now the palpable tu quoqne of all tlii« harping- upon aits 
 ought to remove all doubt as to what flout it is that has 
 provoked it. And yet the alteration of the Corrector is 
 based upon a reversal of this meaning, — it makes the king 
 recipient of the flout instead of its utterer. 
 
 The phrase, " well-lyking," which occurs in one of the 
 above lines, has exactly the sense Rosaline says it has, — 
 gross, gross ; fat, fat. See Promp. Parv. in v. 
 
 Ltkinge, or lusty, or craskc. Crassus. 
 
 Whence, well-lyking \vit=piiigi(e ingenimn — crassa Minerva. 
 "^^'^lcnce, also, that sense resides in hjking, and not in tceU ; 
 which last is merely an augmentative, in no way affecting 
 the primary sense : and consequently ^^ poor-lyking,^' wliich 
 has been suggested as a sort of anagram correction of kinglij- 
 poor, would be an impossible contradiction. 
 
 For another example of weU-Iijking, see Drant's Horace, 
 1567, Sig. L. 6. 
 
 " How have you fared loug ? 
 Na veryly, even as you sec 
 "Well-lyking, fat, and strong," 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 Sec where it comes. See where he comes. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 Till this mad man show'd thee. Till this man show'd thee. 
 
 STEEVENS. 
 
 Another pit-fall for the Corrector! inducing him to 
 betray himself once more by "confirming" the errors of 
 the commentators. 
 
 Monck Mason pronounced, ftogmatice, " madman is an
 
 106 ANALYSIS OF MR. OOLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 error of tlic press, the word mad must be struck out." And 
 such having been the course invariably adopted by modern 
 editors, the Old Corrector now pretends to have been before- 
 hand -with them all. But this royal road of getting rid of 
 a difficulty, by excision, has not been always consented to 
 without some effort to retain the original word or some 
 good substitute for it. Mr. Dj^ce, in a book published by 
 him in 1844, (Hemarks tijwn Collier's and Kniglifs editions, 
 8fc.) while refuting a suggestion then made by Mr. Collier, 
 that made-man should be substituted for madman, records 
 his own opinion as follows : — 
 
 " I have some doubt whether mad (although it makes the line over 
 measure) ought to be rejected : an epithet to ' man' seems necessary 
 here." 
 
 Now the right epithet will appear simple and obvious 
 enough when once pointed out : for madman read mode- 
 
 man 
 
 " Behaviour, what wert thou, 
 
 Till this mode-man showed thee ? " 
 
 This epithet fulfils, in a remarkable manner, every requisite 
 of a good restoration : it is extremely near the original both 
 in sound and appearance ; and it is almost a necessity to 
 the context. 
 
 Mr. Collier has not informed his readers what the 
 Corrector understood by " a bare throw at Novum" — which 
 is the amendment in the Folio of 1632 of the original, 
 "a bate throw at Novum" — nor why he passed it over 
 without exercising upon it his valuable resources. 
 
 Malone said, " ' a hare throw at Novum' is to me mimtelli- 
 gible," and so he went back to the original and introduced 
 an article before throw, so as to produce "abate a throw
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLlEU's LIST. 107 
 
 at Novum." And in this shape the phrase is presented 
 to modern readers to make what sense they can of it. 
 
 Let us try if something better cannot be done. 
 
 The king has been presented by Armado with a blundering 
 programme of the impending performance, from which, after 
 reading the names of five worthies, he continues : — 
 
 " And if i\\csc four worthies in their first show thrive, 
 These four will cliangc habits and present the other five." 
 
 Biron challenges the mistake bj- exclaiming, — 
 " There i^five in the first show." 
 
 And the king, to carry on the joke, still referring to his 
 paper, replies, — 
 
 " You are mistaken, it is not so." 
 
 Whereupon Biron proceeds to the proof b}' repeating the 
 enumeration, — 
 
 " The pedant, the braggart, the hedge priest, the fool, and the boy; 
 A [better] throw at Novum ! and the whole world again, 
 Cannot prick out five such, take each one in his vein." 
 
 A better throw at Novrun, that is, a better offer at nine, 
 Biron says ; who is upholding hi^fire against the king's yb?^r. 
 Couched under this truism is one of those double equivokes 
 ^-ith which the play abounds. First, between Novum, the 
 game — and nine, the complete number of worthies : Secondly, 
 between five, one of the principal throws at the game, and 
 five, the number of performers just enumerated. 
 
 As to the supposition of the misprint hate I'or hetfer ; it is 
 sufficiently probable of itself, where the difficulty is other- 
 wise so apparently hopeless, the sense given by it so good
 
 108 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLTEr's LIST. 
 
 and so simple, and the equivoke so well sustained. It is 
 more, therefore, to note a singular coincidence, than with 
 any %aew of supporting the correction, that the fact is cited 
 of Chaucer frequently using "bet" for better. See Canter- 
 hury Tales, vv. 7533, 13362. Troilns and Creseide, Book ii., 
 V. 1075, &c. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 To the manner of the days. To the manner of these days. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce Three-piled hyperboles, spruce 
 
 affection. affectation. 
 
 STEEVENS. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 But to perfect one man. But to pur sent one man. 
 
 The stupid Old Corrector has not the wit to perceive 
 that Costard is orerfloiving with the word perfect ! It has 
 eA^dently been hammered into him by injunctions to be 
 perfect in his part. Afterwards, when he has acquitted 
 himself so well before the audience, he exclaims — his whole 
 thoughts engrossed by ambition to be perfect — 
 
 " I hope I was perfect : I made a little fault in great." 
 
 This is exquisite ; but the rustic self-conceit of Costard 
 is admirably sustained throughout: in the same spirit he 
 chuckles at his own fancied cleverness, at the end of the 
 fourth Act : — 
 
 " Lord, lord, how the ladies and I have put him down."
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLMER's LIST. 109 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 Worthy of Pompey the great. Worthy of Pompiun the great. 
 
 A very old suggestion, and, it may be added, a very 
 foolish one. Not to mention its impertinent, because 
 unnecessary interference with the text, it is also bad in 
 itself; because it is far more true to nature that Costard 
 shovdd vary the names from uncertainty, than that he should 
 always repeat the same. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 A heavy heart bears not a humble A heavy heart bears not a nimble 
 
 tongue. tongue. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 Steevens disputed this correction of Theobald's, but upon 
 insufficient grounds. It is true that humble admits of very 
 tolerable sense ; and, had it been opposed to any other word 
 than " heavy," ought, perhaps, to retain its place. But the 
 antithesis of " heavy heart," " nimble tongue," is inevitable, 
 and cannot be resisted. 
 
 Mr. Collier, with strange caprice, repudiates the confirma- 
 tion of this correction by his old authority, and now prefers 
 "bears hut a humble tongue;" a reading that has nothing 
 whatever to recommend it. It is, in fact, a contradiction, 
 because a humble tongue is precisely that which is always 
 associated with the cxpresMon of thanks ; how, then, could it 
 be pleaded in excuse for falling short of thanks ? 
 
 XC. 
 
 The extreme parts of time ex- The extreme parting time ex- 
 
 tremely form. presdy forms. 
 
 The repetition of extremely after extreme is so glaringly
 
 110 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 Shakespei'ian, that no one short of the Old Corrector could 
 have the folly to propose its alteration. The original passage 
 is this : — 
 
 " The extreme parts of time extremely forms 
 All causes to the purpose of his speed ; 
 And often, at his very loose, decides 
 That which long process could not arbitrate." 
 
 There are two ways of correcting the false concord in the 
 first line, — by taking away the s irom. forms, so as to give it a 
 plural termination, — or by taking away the s tvora parts, so as 
 to give it a singular termination. The first is the correction 
 generally adopted, as may be seen in Malone's, Knight's, 
 Collier's first, and many other editions. But it involves a 
 contradiction which has been strangely overlooked ; it leaves 
 another verb *' decides," in the third line, still in the 
 singular, so as to produce the anomaly of two verbs, one 
 singular and the other plural, depending on the same ante- 
 cedent. This, were there no other reason, is decisive in 
 pointing out the second mode of correction as the proper 
 one. "The extreme part of time" (as it becomes when so 
 corrected) is, most probably, an adaptation from " eoctremnm 
 spatium ritae'' — the terminus of existence, — which, according 
 to Juvenal at the close of his tenth Satire, the wise man 
 regards as one of the best gifts of Nature. 
 
 Extreme is a word particularly associated with approaching 
 dissolution ; a person at the point of death is in extremis : the 
 " Extreme Unction " is the holy oil administered to djdng 
 persons : and there can be little doubt that the word is 
 analogically applied in this passage to the near cessation of 
 expiring opportunity. "The extreme part" is, in fact, a 
 direct translation of extremmn spatium, the last moment 
 (which, nevertheless, is always imdcrstood to be of more or
 
 ANALYSTS OF MR. COLLIEu's LIST. Ill 
 
 less duration) ; and the King says that the extreme part of 
 time, in its loose, or expiration, often forces to a decision, 
 questions until then wasted in circmnlocution. 
 
 Now what emendation does such a passage require ? or, 
 who, but an " Old Corrector," or one as bad, woidd have the 
 folly to attempt it ? It may be added that the technical 
 plirase ** loose of an arrow*' is not a happy illustration of the 
 loose of time in this passage. The loose (in old spelling 
 lewse) of an arrow is momentary, and therefore it suggests 
 a wrong idea, from the manifest impossibility of deciding 
 any thing in the twang of a bowstring. The loose here 
 meant has much closer analogy with the eiflux of the last 
 few grains of sand in the hour glass ; or vnih. the egress of 
 a congregation, for which a very common phrase to tliis day 
 in the northern parts of England is " loosing." The words 
 are, of course, fundamentally the same, but different applica- 
 tions of the same word, when presented in illustration, often 
 suggest very different ideas. 
 
 The interpretation of "extreme part" by analog}"" with 
 extremiim spatiutn has one great corroborative, which is, that 
 it accords equally well with the extreme parts, in the plural ; 
 supposing, which is very probable, that to have been the 
 original form in which the word was written ; it then 
 becomes extrema momenta with the same meaning. 
 
 Nor must this explanation be considered " too recondite ." 
 the foolish impertinence of the Farmer school of criticising 
 Shakespeare is fast passing away ; and it is beginning to be 
 admitted that a due appreciation of some passages in his 
 writings is more likely to be limited by the reading of the 
 critic than by that of the poet. 
 
 Some of his plainest allusions have been made difficulties 
 of, and are to this day ignored by his editors, because they 
 will not carry their researches bej^ond the prescriptions of 
 Dr. Farmer.
 
 112 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 There is a notable example in As You Like It. Amiens 
 sings the followang stanza : — 
 
 " Who doth ambition shun, 
 And loves to live i' the sun, 
 Seeking the food he eats, 
 And pleased with what he gets ; 
 Come hither, come hither, come hither ; 
 Here shall he see 
 No enemy. 
 But winter and rough weather." 
 
 Which is parodied by the satirical Jaques as follows : — 
 
 "If it do come to pass 
 That any man turn ass. 
 Leaving his wealth and ease 
 A stubborn will to please ; 
 Due dame, due dame, due dame ; 
 Here shall he see 
 Gross fools as he, 
 An if he will come to me." 
 
 Whereupon, Amiens asks, "What's that due- dame ?" — and 
 Jaques answers, "'tis a Greek invocation to call fools into a 
 circle." 
 
 It is needless to recount all that has been said and written 
 about this duc-ddnie, from Sir Thomas Hanmer's " Due ad 
 me," and Dr. Farmer's old gentleman who used to sing 
 Duck- dame as the burthen of an old rural ditty ; to 
 Mr. Knight's suggestion that it was " some country call 
 of a woman to her ducks." But Jaques himself, who, it 
 must be admitted, was likely to know best, says it is "an 
 invocation to call fools into a circle" — his calling it Greek 
 is a joke almost as fresh now as it was then. 
 
 Surely this description ought to be a sufficient indication 
 to any one who ever read the Satires of Horace, that a 
 solution of the puzzle might probably be found in the
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEk's LIST. 113 
 
 3rd of tlie 2afl Book, which treats exclusively ol' fools 
 and madmen. AVe there read : — 
 
 " Quisquis 
 Ambitione mala, aut argenti pallet amore ; 
 Quisquis luxuria, tristivc supcrstitionc, 
 Aut alio mentis morbo calet ; hue propius me : 
 Dum doceo insaniie omnes, vos oidiiie adite." 
 
 Can any one read these lines and not see that Shakespeare 
 must have had them in view when he wrote Amiens' song 
 and its parody ? Could there be a closer description given, 
 of " hue ])ropms me — vos ordine adite^' — than " an invocation 
 to call fools into a circle ?" Let ad be substituted for propius, 
 in " hue propius me" which stands conspicuous and detached 
 in the fourth line, and it becomes kite ad me, with a much 
 nearer resemblance to "due da me" than many a scrap of 
 Latin, in Shakespeare's plays, now bears to the hotchpotch 
 of misprinting it presented originally. And when to this 
 is added the nearness of such a paraphrase to "come 
 hither," which Jaques is parodying, there cannot be much 
 hesitation in recognizing this passage as the real object of 
 allusion. 
 
 It receives, moreover, curious corroboration from the fact 
 that Sir Thomas Hanmer, without any knowledge of this 
 reference to Horace, should, nevertheless, by a mere guess 
 at probabilities, have arrived at a reading differing from 
 this only in a single letter : and had he only rendered 
 "hither" literalh/, he woidd have hit upon the very same ! 
 Lastly, how admirably appropriate to Jaques — the secluded 
 scholar, the philosopher, the satirist — would be this self- 
 enjoyed classical application, which was so much Greek to 
 his hearers ! What an exquisite contrast to the superficial 
 quackery of Holofernes ! 
 
 But we have not yet done with this 3rd Satire of Horace.
 
 114 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 Recurring to Love's Labour's Lost, wc find Biron ex- 
 claiming : — 
 
 " By the lord, this Love is as mad as Ajax ; it kills sheep." 
 
 The only reference for wMch, in tlie Variorum edition of 
 Shakespeare's works, is "Fuller's Gnomologia," a work 
 printed more than a century after Shakespeare was in his 
 grave. 
 
 But in this 3rd Satire there are no less than three allu- 
 sions to the madness of Ajax and his sheep-MlUng, any one 
 of which, for example : — 
 
 " Mille ovium insanus morti dedit," 
 
 would be a fitter reference for Biron's exclamation than 
 Fuller's Qnomologia ! 
 
 While upon the subject of Shakespeare's capability, when 
 he chose to exercise it, of consulting Latin authors in their 
 own language, the following speculation presents itself. 
 Going back to the 46th of these corrections, page 86, it 
 will be seen that the Old Corrector cobbled the imitary of the 
 2nd Folio — or rather the imitari of Theobald— ^into imitating. 
 Also that the imitanj of the 2nd Folio was itself a correction 
 of imitarie of the older copies. Now so long as the editor 
 of the 2nd Folio supposed imitarie to be an English adjective 
 (it was at that time read in conjunction with invention — 
 invention imitarie), he was only modernizing the spelling 
 in changing it to imitary. But since it is now known 
 that the right reading is the infinitive of the Latin verb 
 imitor, we must go back to the original and derive it from 
 " imitarie," the word in the old copies. 
 
 There are two forms of the infinitive of this verb — imitari 
 and imitarier : one of which has a letter less, and the other 
 a letter more, than "imitarie." Now, inasmuch, as it is 
 more probable that a misprint should arise from the falling
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 115 
 
 out of a letter tluiii from the iutrusioii of one, so it is more 
 likely that imifan'cr would be the true restoration. 
 
 But that likelihood almost becomes certainty when it is 
 found that imitnricr is used by Plautxis, the writer, of all 
 others, Shakespeare has given distinct proof, in the Comedy 
 of Errors, of being acquainted vdih. in the original. 
 
 Lastly, as a question of taste, how capitally pedantic and 
 characteristic it would be in Ilolofernes to pick this word out 
 of Plautus for occasional display ! 
 
 The passage would then read — 
 
 " Imitarier is nothing : so doth the hound his master, 
 The ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider." 
 
 But what is the meaning of imitarier ? or rather, what 
 meaning does Ilolofernes force it into ? It is surprising the 
 editors of Shakespeare should be satisfied with the sort of 
 half sense, or no sense, obtainable from this passage, even 
 after its amendment by the change of " imitarie" into the 
 infinitive of imitor. If that verb is to be interpreted in its 
 usual sense of to imitate, what sense does it give when 
 combined with the rest of the passage ? How can a hound 
 be said to imitate his master ? or, still more puzzling, how 
 can a horse imitate his rider ? Even " Bankcs' horse," that 
 was burned for a witch, coidd scarcely do that ! 
 
 But Holofcrnes must have had some meaning : — he only 
 aimed to puzzle the parson, but he succeeded so well that he 
 has puzzled Shakespeare's editors for two ccntui'ies and a 
 half ! What if it is but another of his learned quiddities ? 
 What if he is conferring a double sense upon imitarier ; 
 namely, to imitate, and, to follow in the footsteps of another, 
 vestigia alicujus prosequi ? Does not Horace give some colour 
 to this double meaning in the well kno^Ti : — 
 
 " O imitatores, servum pecus — 
 
 • • a 
 
 Nou aliena [vestigia] meo pressi pede."
 
 116 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIER's LIST. 
 
 With the latter sense all becomes plain : the hound follows 
 the heels of his master : the tired horse, when his rider 
 has dismoimted, follows in his wake with drooping and 
 dependent neck : and as for the ape and his keeper, there 
 Holofemes revels in both senses — it may be taken in either 
 way. 
 
 But if this view of the passage is correct (and how can it 
 be other-wdse ? ), into what additional slough it casts the Old 
 Corrector ! 
 
 He has burned his fingers in every way ! He has not 
 only clinched the mistaken meaning of imitari, by zealously 
 making English of it and translating it into imitating (see 
 cor. XLVi), — but he has anticipated the floimdering of 
 modem editors as to the meaning of "tired," by repudi- 
 ating its obvious and legitimate sense of fatigued, and 
 confirming, or rather cribbing Heath's alteration into trained 
 (see corr. xlvii) ; an alteration which, being incompatible 
 with the explanation just given, would render the whole 
 passage incapable of any sense whatever. 
 
 XCI. 
 
 I understand you not : my griefs I understand you not : my griefs 
 
 are double. are dull. 
 
 Here the Old Corrector invents a colourable variation of 
 Capell's " my griefs are deaf." But the original word is 
 weU defended by the obvious explanation long since given 
 to it by Malone, that the Princess, with ironical politeness, 
 says her grief is redoubled at her inability to understand the 
 Kino-, an every-day sarcasm which he has brought upon 
 himself by his absurd affectation of obscurity. That Biron 
 so understands it is plain by his immediately coming to the 
 King's rescue, with — 
 
 " Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief ;"
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. (JOLLIER's LIST. 117 
 
 And independently of this capability of explanation, 
 another argument in favour of the oriofinal word may he 
 deduced from " griefs" being in the plural. The news just 
 received is but one grief, but the Princess says her griefs 
 are double. 
 
 XCII. 
 
 As love is full of unbefitting As love is full of unbefitting 
 
 strains. strangeness. 
 
 "Well refuted b)^ Singer at page 27 of his Shakespeare 
 Vindicated, where he does not commit the mistake he or his 
 printer afterwards fell into of printing strai/ings for strange- 
 ness. Mr. Collier makes a great noise, at page Ixv. of 
 his Preface to " Seven Lectures," about Singer's subsequent 
 mistake, but he says not a syllable about the absence of that 
 mistake in this more obvious place, although referring, at 
 the very time he is making the complaint (p. Ixii.), to this 
 identical page of " Mr. Singer's pamphlet," — as he calls a 
 volume of 300 pages. 
 
 XCIII. 
 Full of straying shapes. Full of strange shapes. 
 
 CAPELL. 
 
 In the same page (Ixv.) of the Preface, Mr. Collier says of 
 this alteration, that Singer adopts it, " though ho says not a 
 word to shew from whence he obtained it !" This is rather 
 too absurd of a correction which was made a century back 
 and has long been the common text of every edition. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 In itself a sin. In itself so base. 
 
 This alteration is really so abominable, that it is difficult to 
 speak of it with any degree of patience ! 
 
 " The sense," Mr. Collier says, " is the same, while the 
 
 I
 
 118 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEr's LIST. 
 
 rhjTuc is restored." Is it so, indeed ? What then becomes 
 of the sin that is to be ptiri/ied and turn to grace ? 
 
 T^Hiat becomes of the inevitable opposition of grace to sin ? 
 
 XCV. 
 
 Impose some service on me for Impose some service on me for 
 
 mj love. thy love. 
 
 EARLIEST QUARTO. 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 Oft have I heard of you. Oft had I heard of you. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 Which you on all estates •will Which you on all estates will 
 
 execute. exercise. 
 
 ABANDONED. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 Deaf d with the clamours of their Deaf'd with the clamours of their 
 
 own dear groans. own dire groans. 
 
 Another colourable variation, — this time of Dr. Johnson's 
 dere. At least half a dozen examples of dear in the sense 
 here used might be cited from other places in Shakespeare's 
 plays. Let this one suffice, — 
 
 " Consort with me in loud and dear petition," 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, iii., 3. 
 
 where dear is obviously used in the sense of earnest. 
 
 But has the Old Corrector himself never had cause to 
 utter a groan in the shape of '' Oh ! dear?"" If not, it
 
 ANALYSIS OF MR. COLLIEll's LIST. 119 
 
 is quite time lie liad, if only in requital of those perfor- 
 mances. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 Will hear your idle scorns, con- Will hear your idle scorns, con- 
 
 tinue then. tinue them. 
 
 Undoubtedly this alteration, last come, but not least 
 deserving, cannot be denied. And if it really originated 
 with the Old Corrector, he must be allowed the credit of it. 
 
 But does not Mr. Collier himself throw a doubt upon its 
 originality when he says of this and the preceding cor- 
 rection, — 
 
 " Dire for ' dear,' and them for ' then' are slight changes, but editors 
 have hitherto been unwilling to make them in the face of the old 
 impressions." — " Notes and Emendations," — 1st Edition, p. 97. 
 
 a remark which would seem to imply that editors had known 
 of them, but had hitherto not vcntm'ed to adopt them. 
 
 But although the present slight change of " then" to theniy 
 be doubtless a necessary restoration, it does not confer a new 
 sense : — it only supplies by a change of word, that which 
 was formerly understood in addition to the existing word. 
 
 Of this there cannot be a clearer proof than the sense 
 given to the passage upw^ards of thirty years ago by a 
 French translator, M. Duport (Essais Litteraires sur Shak- 
 speare. Paris, 1828, tome ii., ]). 423), 
 
 — " alors contiuuez sur cc ton." 
 
 Here " continuez sur cc ton," is the exact prefiguration of 
 " continue them." 
 
 Was this the oracle that inspired the Old Corrector ? 
 Perhaps so : — but he shall have the benefit of the doubt. 
 
 i2
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 RESULTS. 
 
 Mr. Collier attributes the opposition his marginal cor- 
 rections have met with from the few persons whose taste 
 and pursuits lead them to a study of the difficulties of 
 Shakespeare's text, to a mixture of envy and despair. 
 Envy, at the unapproachable excellence of these corrections ; 
 and despair, at their comprehensiveness, which destroys all 
 hope of finding anything in future to do in the way of 
 improvement. Speaking of his book called Notes and 
 Emendations (or of his "corrected folio, 1632," — it is not 
 easy to determine which, for construction points to one 
 and inference to the other) Mr. Collier says : — 
 
 " There certainly never was so provoking a book as that to a 
 commentator : it not only anticipates almost everything that could 
 be done in the way of speculative suggestion, but it absolutely puts 
 it out of the power of an editor to deny not a few of the proposed 
 alterations." — Preface to " Seven Lectures," &c., p. Ixviii. 
 
 Assuming that the latter part of this sentence, a study in 
 itself, imjjlies that there are many of these proposed altera- 
 tions of which the truth is too manifest to be denied, how is 
 that assertion borne out by the foregoing investigation into 
 the merits of those in Love's Labour's Lost — chosen, as it were, 
 by Mr. Collier as his champ de hataille ? How, also, is the 
 first clause of the assertion borne out, that these marginal 
 corrections anticipate almost everything that coxdd be done 
 in the way of speculative conjecture ? In answer to the
 
 RESULTS. 121 
 
 first question, out of ninety-nine suggested alterations, there 
 is but one, properly, or rather presumptively, belonging to 
 the Old Corrector, of admitted usefulness. Aiid in answer 
 to the second question, the asserted anticipation may be sub- 
 divided into two kinds, — J^rsf, of readings already proposed 
 by other persons long before the margins came to light ; 
 and, socondh/, of "almost cveiy thing" that could afterwards 
 be devised. Now, as to the first, whether the anticipation is 
 real or only pretended, is altogether a question of belief : 
 even Mr. Collier seems to have his doubts about it, since 
 he rejects several of these coincident readings (see corrs. 
 53, 89, &c.), notwithstanding the extraordinary confirmation 
 he has declared they receive from their presumed anticipa- 
 tion bj' the Old Corrector. And, as to the second kind 
 of anticipation, it has been seen in the preceding analysis, 
 that even in this book, not specially devoted to the purpose, 
 there have grown out of the subject in hand, many 
 new readings and much " speculative suggestion," not 
 only independent of the Old Corrector's anticipations, but 
 directly opposed to them. So that, so far from contracting 
 the field of inquirj^, or forestalling research and speculation, 
 these false and unseemly corrections, deri^nng importance 
 from the credulity with which they have been received, 
 enormously extend the work to be done ; and, like 
 other threatened invasions, become the means of calling 
 new resources into action and arousing for investigation 
 many a slumbering defect. There are few things so 
 entirely evil but some good may result from them — 
 even pestilence, in its periodical visitations, tends to 
 sanitary improvements — and this present infection of the 
 margins^of Shakespeare has already done some good, and 
 will, no doubt, carry away with it, in its final expiasion, a 
 good deal of the ancient and modern misreading and misin- 
 terpretation that still oppress and obscure his printed text.
 
 122 RESULTS. 
 
 The following synoptical retrospect of the ninety-nine 
 corrections in Lore's Labour's Lost, presents the result of 
 the investigation in a convenient form : — 
 
 1. Hestored to various owners 21 
 
 2. Restored to the old copies 12 
 
 3. Abandoned by Mr. Collier 25 
 
 4. Condemned for reasons stated 40 
 
 5. Admitted (conditionally) 1 
 
 99 
 
 Whence it is seen, that before the investigation can be 
 considered as strictly applicable to the merits of the MS. 
 Corrections, they are reduced, by recantation and restitution 
 in the three first classes, to considerably less than half their 
 original nmnber : and that after a fair and impartial exami- 
 nation of the remainder in their new character of purely 
 conjectural suggestions — impartial, except in the natural 
 indignation every true lover of Shakespeare must feel at 
 seeing his text so desecrated — one only is foimd of sufficient 
 merit to justify its recommendation to the text. 
 
 Recurring, then, once more, to the notable admission in 
 the Atherucum of the 9th of July, 1859, that the old folio 
 " has no tittle of authority, as a Shakespcrian gloss, beyond 
 the felicity of its hints and emendations ;" — before the value 
 of that admission can be duly estimated it must first be 
 settled where these hints and emendations are to begin. 
 Are the 33 restitutions, for example, comprised in the two 
 first classes of the foregoing list, and amounting to a third 
 of the whole, to be included in these felicitous productions, 
 or not ? — and if not, where is the line to be dra^^, seeing 
 that these classes extend from A.D. 1598 to A.D. 1844 — 
 seeing also that class 1. must remain indefinitely open for 
 the reception of fresh discoveries from the holes and corners
 
 RESULTS. 123 
 
 of forgotten literature ? It must next be settled wLether 
 the elass of unfortunates marked ^^ abandoned,'^ and amount- 
 ing in itself to one fourth, is to be included? — or whether 
 Mr. Collier is not to be at liberty to do what he likes with 
 his own, by withdrawing from competition those which even 
 his partial eyes cannot regard with approval ? 
 
 If this weeding is to take place, it would of itself destroy 
 that completeness of excellence which could alone create 
 the internal authority spoken of by the Athettoeum ; 
 if, indeed, it is not a misnomer altogether to call that 
 authority which even in its most complete state coidd only 
 amoimt to presumption. Presmnption of excellence might 
 attach to any individual member of a class from acknow- 
 ledged excellence in the whole, but it would still be amenable 
 to opinion, whereas authority is something with power to 
 over-ride opinion. Theobald effected more for the amend- 
 ment of Shakespeare's text than any other single corrector : 
 he had a rank plot to begin upon and his progress was 
 proportionately great : but it never obtained for him the 
 prestige of an authority ; his decisions are now and have 
 always been as liable to challenge and reversal as if he had 
 never made a happy emendation. Ilis sagacity entitles him 
 to respect, but he is never cited to support a correction 
 weak and objectionable in itself. But in these marginal 
 corrections, in which there is no merit established at all, we 
 hear anthority boldly proclaimed, and said to be provable 
 from that very quality which the asserted authority is 
 brought forward to establish, — the felicity of their hints 
 and emendations ! Such cscamotaye of cause and effect 
 is absurd and ridicidous. 
 
 Assuming that the preceding analysis of the corrections in 
 Love's Labour's Lost presents a fair average of the whole, 
 the general resiJt would be one j^or cent, of felicity ; or ten 
 suggestions of possible value out of every thousand guesses.
 
 124 RESULTS. 
 
 In which, if there is anything remarkiible, it is that the 
 proportion of felicity should be so minvite ! It seems to 
 require a sort of skill to miss so often, since even a blind 
 man, if his face were set for him in the right direction, 
 must sometimes hit the mark from the mere roving of the 
 missile. And it must be remarked that even this small pro- 
 portion of felicity is the result of an estimate that turns 
 upon a hair. For in the single correction in this play, 
 admitted to possess some merit and originality, the latter 
 important element is more than doubtfid. It seems difficult 
 to account for M. Duport's correct version of the meaning 
 that correction would confer upon the passage (see corr. 99, 
 p. 120), if he had not been previously advised of it by 
 the explanation of some English critic. Because in its 
 original state the passage is open to this more obvious inter- 
 pretation, — that continue then is only a repetition of the same 
 proviso which had been expressed by all the other ladies, 
 namely, that the gentlemen should continue in the same 
 feeling at the expiration of their year's probation. This 
 assuredly would be the more apparent meaning of Rosaline's 
 " continue then" when compared with these answers of the 
 other ladies, — 
 
 The Princess. If this austere insociable life, 
 Change not your offer, &c.. 
 Then at the expiration of the year, &c. 
 
 I^at''. Come when the king doth to my lady come, 
 
 Then, &c. 
 
 3Iaria. At the twelvemonth's end 
 
 I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. 
 
 Rosaline. — continue then 
 
 And I will have you and that fault withal.
 
 RKsui/rs. 125 
 
 M. Duport's translutiou of tlie entire passage in Rosaline's 
 speech is this, — 
 
 "Ainsi done, si Ics orcillcs dcs maladcs, assourdics par Ics clameurs 
 que leur arraclicnt lours tourmens, vcuknt se pretcr a entendre vos 
 vaincs railleries, alors cuntlnucz stir ce ton, et jo eonscns a vous accepter 
 avec ce defaut." 
 
 Now it docs seem to require a much deeper study of the 
 verbal probabilities of the context than M. Diiport would be 
 likely to bestow upon it unassisted, to induce him to receive 
 and translate Hosaline's coniiiiue then in a sense so different 
 from her companions ; when even native readers, with their 
 attention dra\Aii to the phrase by the suggested alteration of 
 " then" to them, will probably take some time to consider it 
 before they will be quite convinced that the correction is 
 right. 
 
 It is not contended that M. Duport changed then to them : 
 on the contrary he expresses then in the word ahrs, but 
 he clearly gives the effect of the change by the addition 
 of " sur ce ton." It is by no means improbable that 
 M. Duport's English authority' for this intci'prctation of 
 Rosaline's meaning may yet turn up. 
 
 "With respect to the disclaimer of authority, on the score 
 of the antiquity of the corrections, so unequivocally made by 
 the Athenmim, of course it may, and probably \^^ll, be said 
 that it is not binding on the Old Corrector : that the case 
 against his antiquity has failed : and that he once more 
 relies upon the authority derived from that alone. Such is, 
 of course, his natural and original position ; for if he has 
 not antiquity to back him, he has nothing. He was no such 
 fool as to trust to the " felicity" of his suggestions. He 
 well knew that quackery is of easier attainment, and far 
 more successfid than honest merit : and, consequentl}-, he 
 cleverly assiuncd a semblance of antiquity on which might
 
 126 
 
 RESULTS. 
 
 be built a presumed access to sources of mformation iudepen- 
 dent of merit. AVithout that, he well knew his corrections 
 would have no chance in establishing any authority; nor 
 indeed would authorit}', without that, have ever been heard of. 
 
 But if merit would not do wdthout antiquity, so neither 
 ought antiquity without merit. For if the antiquity were 
 imquestionable, if it were even quite certain that these cor- 
 rections were written within a generation after Shakespeare, 
 that fact, abstractedly, would be no assurance that they 
 might not then as now be the offspring of tasteless and 
 spurious botchery. But there is one peculiarity attaching to 
 the antiquity in this particular case, which, if that antiquity 
 were true, would undoubtedly confer upon it one acknow- 
 ledged element of authority, viz., the miraculous ! If the 
 antiquity were real, it would show, in this play alone, 
 twenty-one anticipations by one person of the combined 
 thoughts of fourteen other persons living at various times 
 subsequent to himself. They, therefore, who are caUed upon 
 to believe in the reality of the antiquity, have to weigh in 
 their own minds whether they find it easier to believe that 
 one ingenious person might surreptitiously copy the sugges- 
 tions of fourteen other persons, to all of which he might 
 have ready access ; or that these fourteen should concur in 
 repeating one, to whose suggestions it is not even suspected 
 they could have had access ? The first is a common occur- 
 rence, of which there have been examples in all ages : the 
 second would so nearly approach the miraculous that to him 
 who can bring himself to believe it, the rest must be com- 
 paratively easy ! 
 
 But it is said that if these repetitions are, on both sides, 
 true restorations of one common text, they must of necessity 
 coincide. Well, but in many cases they are not true resto- 
 rations ; but are acknowledged to be wrong by the Old 
 Corrector's visible representative, Mr. CoUicr himself.
 
 RESUL1"S, 127 
 
 During the eight years that liave elapsed since these mar- 
 ginal corrections were first communicated to the public, many 
 singidar coincidences have been fi'om time to time pointed 
 out between the suggestions of the Old Corrector and those 
 of Mr. Collier. But amongst them all there is not perhaps 
 one of such curious literary interest as the following : 
 
 At page 250 of " Seven Lectures," &c., begins the list of 
 emendations in the play of Timon of Athens ; and the third 
 upon the list is " In a wide sea of wax," a phrase which 
 occurs in the opening scene of that play, and is corrected to 
 " In a wide sea of verse" an alteration in which even the 
 Athenceum will scarcely recognise any great felicity. The 
 original phrase " sea of wax," is finely appropriate to the 
 context, if understood in the sense publicly explained by Dr. 
 Ingleby, of Birmingham, in " Notes and Queries," of 18th 
 September, 1858, namely, an overtopping sea, a sea waxing 
 to an acme and so becoming a sea of wax. This application 
 of the w^ord wax is well illustrated in a quotation introduced 
 by Coleridge in one of his political letters to The Courier, in 
 1809, (Essays, Vol. 2, page 60.) 
 
 " 'Tis the high tide that moves the stranded ship ; 
 And eveiy individual's spirit waxes, 
 In the great stream of multitude." 
 
 An illustration not only of the verb to wax, as applied to the 
 surging of many increments in one great sea, but also of the 
 confomiduig of individuality in the great stream of multitude. 
 Every particular in the passage in Timon consistently 
 demonstrates that this is its true interpretation. The poet 
 declares that his " free drift" does not pause at individuals, 
 but chooses its subject in the great stream of nudtitade. 
 
 " You sec this confluence, this great flood of visitors — 
 
 — my free di-ift 
 Halts not particularly, but moves itself 
 In a wide sea of wax."
 
 128 RESULTS. 
 
 It is quite certain that there was no verb more commonly 
 used than to wax in the sense of to augment ; and that it 
 was often used with reference to an increasing sea or con- 
 fluence of waters. It is also certain that this verb had, like 
 most others of the same signification, a corresponding noun- 
 substantive. There can, then, be no valid or even colourable 
 reason why the substantive form should not be applied in the 
 same sense as the verb itself, so as to produce the phrase sea 
 
 of WOiC. 
 
 At some future day, when the force and truth of this 
 interpretation shaU be at length acknowledged, the present 
 received explanation of this phrase, which assimies that the 
 POET talks of his "free drift" moving itself across the 
 waxen tablet on which he is supposed to be writing, wiU be 
 looked back to with a smile. 
 
 That the substantive wax was used in the sense of full 
 growth, or development, is apparent in the old phrase " man 
 of wax," where it means fulness of pith, vigour, manhood. 
 And there is an independent example in Ben Jonson's 
 plays, in one of which it is used in the metaphorical but 
 strictly analogical sense of aggrandizement : — 
 
 " At what a divers price do divers men 
 Act the same thing ! another might have had 
 Perhaps the hurdle, or at least the axe, 
 For what I have this crownet, robes, and wax." 
 
 These lines are in the opening of the fragmental tragedy of 
 Mortimer's Fall, where Mortimer is exulting in his newly 
 attained greatness. The editors of Jonson do not in any 
 way notice this extraordinary word tvax, so that it is impos- 
 sible to know in what sense they understood it, or whether 
 they tried to understand it at all. But that Jonson, when 
 he wrote it, had this very sea of wax passage in Timon 
 present to his mind is almost certain from the further
 
 RESULTS. 129 
 
 shuiluriiy of tlit- images wliich iiniaoJiatcly I'uUuw ihu word 
 in both : — 
 
 " There is a fate that flies with towering spirit 
 Home to the mark, and never checks at conscience." 
 
 Mortiincr's Fall. 
 
 — " No levelled malice 
 Infects one comma of the course I hold, 
 But flies an eagle flight — bold and forth on." 
 
 Timon of Athens. 
 
 The concurrence of these images, which though differently 
 applied are substantially the same, the towering eagle-flight 
 checking neither at conscience in the one case, nor with 
 levelled maHce in the other, — a certain similarity, too, in the 
 manner of expression, — all combine mtli the occui'rence of 
 the same remarkable word immediately before, to create a 
 coincidence which could scarcely be accidental. 
 
 But whether this be admitted or not, there can, at all 
 events, be little doubt that Jonson uses wax in the sense 
 of personal aggrandizement — the substantive accomplishment 
 of the verb to wax great. 
 
 But the Old Corrector, as before mentioned, would alter sea 
 of wax, in Timon, to sea of verse — and thereby hangs the tale. 
 
 In the 3rd volume of the "Camden Miscellany" there 
 are certain " Ancient Biographical Poems, edited by 
 J. P. Collier, Esq.," and amongst them, at page 25 of 
 that portion of the voliune, these lines arc found : — 
 
 " Pentissillia she did devise 
 The ax whearwith yow hewe, 
 Tritonia for waxc so wyse 
 As syus ther wer but fewc." 
 
 The poem is in praise of women, showing in how many 
 ways they excelled ; and Tritonia being *' 2^ra>ses bc/li," as 
 might be learned from an}' classical dictionary, it required
 
 130 RESULTS. 
 
 no great amount of sagacity or research to discover that 
 warre is the proper and obvious correction of the misprint 
 " waxe" in the third of the above lines. 
 
 But what is the correction suggested by their editor ? — 
 "V\"^hat but the very same that is applied with congenial 
 felicity by the Old Corrector in the margins of Shakespeare ! 
 Dilr. Collier prints the line as follows : — 
 
 " Tritonia for waxe [verse ?] so wyse." 
 
 And what renders this correction the more remarkable is, 
 that, with the exception of one other correction almost as 
 bad, it is the only attempted explanation in a poem brimful 
 of obscure allusions, and mythological names distorted in 
 the most outrageous manner, that might well have exercised 
 the ingenuity of a competent editor, 
 
 Now let it not be assumed — as a subject for "triumphant 
 refutation" — that this circumstance is related with any 
 intention of grounding upon it an additional allegation 
 of suspicious coincidence. No such allegation could be 
 sustained : — because the 3rd volume of the " Camden 
 Miscellany" was not published to the world until after 
 "Notes and Emendations" had been out some time; so 
 that Mr. Collier, having reserved to himself the copy-right 
 of the marginal corrections, was, of course, at liberty to 
 apply them to the same words elsewhere whenever he could 
 find them. But his doing so in this particular case — where 
 the true correction is so different, and yet so obvious — is a 
 curious proof that Mr. Collier's imagination had become 
 so overladen with the stores of his Old Corrector — his 
 judgment so completely swamped by them — that he must 
 go out of his way, in a poem otherwise almost unassisted 
 by his editorial labours, to catch at a word which had been 
 amended in the margins, and apply to it the same correction, 
 and with a somewhat similar result in point of felicity !
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON, 
 
 It would have been almost impossible to have given Love's 
 Labour's Lost the long and close consideration necessary 
 to the foregoing investigation, without speculating upon the 
 often mooted question of the possible identification of its 
 lost companion in name, Love's Labour's Won. 
 
 It is admitted on all hands that some play, now known 
 by another name, must, in 1598, have borne that title when 
 alluded to by Meres in his approbative mention of the plays 
 then kno'wn as Shakespeare's : — 
 
 " For comedy, -witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love 
 Labours Lost, his Love Labours Won, his Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 and his Merchant of Venice." — Meres' Wits Treasury, 1598, page 282. 
 
 All these are now extant under the same titles except Love's 
 Labours Won, and the question is, to which of the comedies 
 now extant, but not included in the above list, coidd that 
 title have been applied, either in lieu of, or in addition to, 
 the name it may now bear ? 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well was singled out about a century 
 since by Dr. Farmer — afterwards supported by Malonc — 
 and since then almost universally adopted as the probable 
 representative of Meres' title. But, in 1844, that opinion 
 met an able dissentient in the Hev. Joseph Ilimtcr, who 
 espoused the cause of The Tempest and endeavoured to prove 
 that it alone ought to be recognized as the true original.
 
 1132 love's labour's won. 
 
 But while most persons will concur in tlie justness of the 
 objections urged by Mr. Hunter {New lUn^trntions, Vi. 1, 
 p. 132) against the probability of AWs Well that Ends Well 
 being the representative of the extinct title, few will be 
 con\4nced by his reasoning that The Tempest has any better 
 claim to it. 
 
 So long as Mr. Hunter admits — whether rightly or 
 wrongly shall not be here discussed — that The Tempest 
 was partially indebted to the translation, by Florio, of 
 Montaigne's Essaj^s, and, consequently, that it must have 
 been written subsequently to that translation, he sets an 
 impassable barrier to the dating of the play earlier than 
 1600. His assimaption, that Florio's translation, although 
 not printed mitil 1603, might yet have existed in MS. 
 previously to 1598, is certainly erroneous : because it may 
 be gathered from the introductory notices to Florio's book 
 that, with the exception of one chapter, which there is good 
 reason to believe was the 25th of the 1st Book, no part of 
 the translation was executed until after 1599. The prefatory 
 lines headed " A reply upon Maister Florio's ansiccre to 
 the Ladij of Bedford's invitation to this tvorke,'" are dated 
 " anno 1599," and distinctly declare, that Florio, although 
 invited to the work by Lady Bedford, had not even then 
 commenced it. And this external evidence is confinned 
 by the internal evidence of the translation itself, which, 
 when compared with the several editions of the original 
 published in France up to 1603, shows by numberless 
 verbal indications that the edition used for the translation 
 coidd not have been an earlier one than that of 1598, but 
 in all probability was the Paris octavo of 1600. 
 
 One of these indications consists of a remarkable misprint 
 so early in the work as the 19th chapter of the 1st Book, 
 but which is not found in any French edition earlier than 
 1600, except in a few spurious impressions of the preceding
 
 love's labour's won. 133 
 
 edition of 1598. This misprint occurs in a quotation from 
 Virgil, which is thus correctly printed in the Paria folio 
 of 1595— 
 
 " Mancnt (clit il) opera interrujjta minnoque 
 Murorum ingcntes." 
 
 The first word is misprinted maneant in Florio's translation. 
 
 Now, with respect to the first appearance of this misprint 
 in the French editions. Dr. Payen, to whom the question was 
 referred, and who is, unquestionably, the best authority in 
 France upon the subject, has been so obliging as to give 
 the following note : — 
 
 " Le mot maneant n'est pas a 1595, il y a manent. II y a dcs exem- 
 plaires, 1598, purs sang, et des exemplaires adulterins : Ics purs sang 
 portent manent, les adulterins manent et maneant : IGOO portc numeant." 
 
 There is evidence, too, that the quotation passed through 
 Florio's own hands as part and parcel of the translation ; 
 inasmuch as, although the Latin translation was executed by 
 another hand from a correct edition, Florio himself Englished 
 the French parenthesis in the body of the quotation, in this 
 way— 
 
 " Maneant (sayth he) opera, Sfc." 
 
 evidently coppng one of the misprinted impressions. 
 
 This sort of identification, arising from the repetition of a 
 misprint which exists only in certain editions, is the most 
 conclusive of all, — because it cannot be explained away by 
 the supposition of subsequent alterations after the book had 
 been completed. Had Florio ever written the correct word, 
 he assuredly would not afterwards alter it in conformity with 
 a misprint. 
 
 One of these two positions, therefore, must of necessity 
 be admitted, — either Shakespeare coidd not have consulted 
 Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays in the composition 
 
 K
 
 134 love's labour's won. 
 
 of The Ti'»)pesf, or that play could not have been in exis- 
 tence in 1598 — still less in 1596, to which Mr. Hunter 
 assigns it. 
 
 But the difficulty of date is not the only one that renders 
 The Tempest an improbable, if not an impossible original for 
 Meres' allusion. The log-piling by Ferdinand, which is 
 represented by Mr. Hunter as the Love Labour of the title, 
 is not self-imposed for the love of Miranda, but is set out 
 for him by a severe task-master whom he finds it impossible 
 to resist : — 
 
 — " I must remove 
 Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up, 
 Upon a sore injunction : My sweet mistress 
 Weeps when she sees me work ; and says such baseness 
 Had never like executor. I forget : 
 But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labour's 
 Most busy hest, when I do it." 
 
 [The emendation in the last line, although in possession of 
 the writer of this book for several years, is now printed for 
 the first time. It simply consists in the change of the 
 initial letter / for Ji (the confounding of which is a misprint 
 of the commonest possible occurrence), and yet it does not 
 leave one single point of the original difficulty imsatisfied. 
 Thus "lest" or "least" becomes hest or heast (for, by a 
 singular coincidence, both words were spelled both ways), 
 and the s in labours, becomes the sign of the possessive case. 
 Hest must be miderstood as a task, or imposition, a sense in 
 which it occurs in a previous scene of the same play.] 
 
 But if neither All's Well that Ends Well, nor The Tempest, 
 can be considered with any likelihood to be the original 
 of Meres' title, is there any other of Shakespeare's known 
 Comedies to which it seems more applicable ? 
 
 Certainly there is, — one in favour of which so many 
 probabilities, external and internal, concur, that it seems the
 
 love's labour's won. 135 
 
 strangest thing possible that it should have been so long and 
 so unaccountubl}^ overlooked, and that it should be resers'ed 
 to the latter half of the nineteenth century to suggest 
 Much ado about Nothing as the true representative of 
 Love's Labour's Won. 
 
 First, as to date of production : — 
 
 Much ado about Nothing is usually stated to have been 
 written in 1599, and the reason assigned for that year is, 
 that while on one hand there is extant a copy of the play 
 printed in IGOO, on the other hand it is not mentioned by 
 Meres in 1598 ; and within these narrow limits, of a year 
 on either side, the middle is fixed upon as the date of the 
 play. 
 
 But it must be observed that while one limit is fixed 
 and certain, namely, the printed copy of 1600, the other is 
 based upon a pure assumption of the very question at issue : 
 and that question being yet to try, the limit dependent 
 upon it of course ceases to exist. 
 
 Wlience it follows, that while there is direct proof that 
 Much ado about Nothing was certainly in existence within 
 two years after Meres' publication, there is nothing whatever 
 to bar it in the other direction ; so that its existence may be 
 assumed at any indefinite time previous to the date of the 
 printed co^y. There is even presumptive e^-idence, on the 
 title page of that copy, that the play had been previously 
 some considerable time before the public : — 
 
 " Much adoc about Nothing as it hath been sundrie times publikely 
 acted by the right honourable Lord Chambcrlaiue his servants. Printed 
 for A. Wise and W. Apslcy. 1600." 
 
 Now when it is recollected that almost all the plays of 
 Shakespeare were many years on the stage before their 
 publication in a printed form, it is surely not too much to 
 assume that "sundrie times publikely acted" implies a 
 
 k2
 
 130 love's labour's won. 
 
 previous existence of at least two or three years. There are 
 more early printed copies of Hamlet extant than of any 
 other of Shakespeare's plays : the earliest is dated 1603, 
 and bears on its title-page nearly the same words — " as 
 it hath been diverse times acted;" and yet Hamlet is 
 supposed to have been in existence ten or a dozen years 
 before the date of this, the earliest printed copy known. 
 Even supposing, therefore, that the 1600 copy of Much ado 
 about Nothing is the first that was printed of that play, to 
 believe that it was produced by Shakespeare only the same, 
 or the previous year, is to ignore the analogy of almost all 
 his other plaj's. 
 
 Another external probability arises from the fact, reported 
 by Malone (on the authority of " Mr. Vertue's MSS."), that 
 Much ado about Nothing formerly passed iinder the title of 
 " Benedick and Beatrix." Every reader of the play must 
 feel that these two are the principal characters ; and that 
 Hero and Claudio, like Bianca and Lucentio in the Taming 
 of the Shrew, are of only subordinate interest. But Much ado 
 about Nothing is a title that can have reference only to the 
 accusation of Hero, and therefore there is a strong probability 
 — directly confirmed by the above quotation from Malone — 
 that the present title of the play was not always adhered to. 
 
 So much for the external probabilities. 
 
 Of the internal, the first and most prominent is the 
 similarity of the two principal characters in Much ado about 
 Nothing, to Biron and Rosaline in Lore's Labour's Lost. 
 So striking is the resemblance of design and treatment in 
 both pairs, that without any view to the present question, 
 they have long been spoken of as Jirst sketch and finished 
 portrait. But by the present hj^othesis, which assumes that 
 these two plays were designed for companion pictures, under 
 titles differing only in denouement, the judgment is at once 
 relieved from the necessity of regarding them as repetitions,
 
 love's labour's won. 137 
 
 or of supposing that the inexhaustible Sluikcspearc would 
 recur to his old materials for re-working in another form. 
 
 But there is also apparent design in the contrasts, as well 
 as in the similitudes presented by these two plays. In one 
 the prevailing feature is rhyme, in the other prose : in one 
 the phraseology is obscure and euphuistic, in the other 
 remarkably plain and colloquial. Even the same sentiments 
 are repeated in both with such a beautiful variation of 
 expression and application, that the contrast cannot have 
 been other than intentional. One example of this is as 
 follows, and it will also serve to place in a true light the 
 foUy and irrelevancy of corr. 78, (a)ife p. 103,) by showing 
 that "solemn" for which sudden is therein proposed to be 
 substituted, is in the same opposition to " laughter," in the 
 first passage, as "joy" is to " bitterness" in the second : — 
 
 — " laughter so profound, 
 That in this spleen ridiculous appears, 
 To check their folly, passion's solemn tears." 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost, act v., scene 2. 
 
 — " there appears much joy in him, 
 even so much that joy could not show itself 
 modest enough without a badge of bitterness." 
 
 Much ado about Nothiuy, act i., scene 1. 
 
 The following are for the purpose of sho"\\ang that the two 
 plays were probably written about the same time, when the 
 same ideas were afloat in the author's mind : — 
 
 " Welcome, pure wit ! thou partest a fair fray." 
 
 Love's Labour, act v., scene 2. 
 
 " Welcome, signior ; you ai'e almost come to part almost a fi-ay." 
 
 Muck Ado, act v., scene 1.
 
 138 love's labour's won. 
 
 — " I remember the style" — 
 
 " Else your memory is bad going o'er it erewhile." 
 
 Lovers Labour, act iv., scene 1. 
 
 — " Write a sonnet." — 
 
 " In so high a style that no man living shall come over it." 
 
 Much Ado, act v., scene 2. 
 
 " Costard. There an't shall please you ; a foolish mild 
 man ; an honest man, look you, and soon dash'd ! He is a 
 marvellous good neighbour." — Love's Labour, act v., sc. 2. 
 
 " Dogberry. A good old man, sir ; he will be talking : — 
 an honest soul, i' faith sir; all men are not alike; alas, 
 good neighbour." — 3Iuch Ado, act iii., sc. 5. 
 
 The next feature of internal probability depends upon the 
 interpretation of Love's Labour in the title. In both the 
 plays first mentioned as supposed originals of Meres' title, — 
 namely, All's Well that End's Well and The Tempest, 
 the interpretation given to Love's Labour is the same, 
 viz., labour of love. That is, it is referred to some acts 
 or conduct on the part of tlie 2)ersons of the Drama. In the 
 first, it is the pursuit by Helena, of her revolted husband, 
 until at length she wins him — not by gaining his love, but 
 by overreaching him in stratagem. And in The Tempest, 
 the love labour is interpreted by Mr. Hunter to be the literal 
 labour of log-piling imposed upon Ferdinand by Prospero. 
 
 But it seems to have escaped notice on all hands that the 
 mythological sense of Love's Labour would be much more 
 consonant with the age in which Shakespeare wrote, than 
 the sentimental sense. That is, that Lore's Labours in the 
 dramatic writing of that time, would be much more likely to 
 be understood as the gests or exploits of the deitf/ Love, in 
 the same sense as the fabled Labours of Hercules.
 
 LOVE S LABOUR S WON. 1'39 
 
 That such is really the intention of the title in the case of 
 Love's Labour's Lout, must become apparent to any one who 
 will attentively read the play with that pre^^ous notion. He 
 will then perceive abundant e\ddcnce, all through, that it is 
 the mythical exploits of the blind god that are alluded 
 to : — in overcoming the apparently insurmountable diffi- 
 cidties opposed to him ; in setting at nought the vows of the 
 king and his courtiers ; and in bringing to the feet of the 
 princess and her ladies the very men who had forsworn all 
 women. After scattering human resolves to the winds, and 
 reducing to subjection the hearts that had presumed to set 
 him at defiance, Love at length succimibs to a still more 
 absolute deity than himself. Death steps in to frustrate his 
 designs, at the very instant of fruition, and so his labour 
 becomes Labour Lost. 
 
 The mji^hological allusions are immistakable. Biron ex- 
 claims, when the king enters love-stricken, " Proceed, stceet 
 Cujiid ; thou hast thump' d him with thy bird-bolt under the left 
 pap." In another place, Love is " a Hercules still climbiiuj 
 trees in the Hesperides," a direct reference to the mytho- 
 logical labours of Hercules ! And when the whole " mess 
 of fools" yield themselves, rescue or no rescue, the king per- 
 sonifies Love and invokes him as his patron, — " Saint Cupid, 
 then ! and soldiers to the field." ! 
 
 Now, according to the interpretation the title of this play 
 has hitherto received at the hands of Shakespeare's editors, 
 the mythological sense is ignored. The love's labour which, 
 according to them, is lost, is not Love's labour, but that of 
 the king and his fellows, " i)i their endeavours," as Mr. 
 Knight explains, " to ingratiate themselves with their mis- 
 tresses." But surely such an explanation excludes the most 
 prominent labour of all, the conquest of the men themselves ! 
 They, so far from being partakers in the labour, are un\\il- 
 ling victims, — each ashamed to acknowledge liis defeat to
 
 140 love's labouk's won. 
 
 his fellows. This was the triumph, this was the exploit, — 
 and, being attributable to Love alone, it is of itself almost 
 sufficient to establish the true meaning of the title. 
 
 It has been justly remarked that the attribute of valour, 
 in the line — " for valour is not Love a Hercules," — is not of 
 any obvious fitness ; and Theobald and Heath would have 
 changed it to savour, under the idea that it belongs to 
 the previous enumeration of the senses, from which that of 
 smelling bemg omitted, savour they thought would supply 
 that omission. 
 
 But to attribute the sense of smelling to Hercules, as 
 aiding his pursuit of the golden apples, woidd border so 
 fatally upon the ridiculous, that the suggestion has never 
 been adopted. 
 
 It is far more probable that the true reading would 
 be labour, and that the preceding line should close the 
 enumeration of the senses. A new clause would then 
 commence which should be pimctuated as follows : — 
 
 , " For labour, is not Love a Hercules, 
 
 Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ! 
 Subtle as Sphynx ! As sweet and musical, 
 As bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair ! " 
 
 Tliere can be no question that SphjTix is as much a proper 
 name as Hercules or Apollo, and should be recognised as 
 the great mythological enigmatist by being printed with a 
 capital letter, and not with a small initial as is always done. 
 The other alteration of "valour" to labour, which is little 
 more than a transposition of letters, would give a strikingly 
 appropriate sense, and prefigure in the text the title of 
 the play. But whether this last alteration be admitted or 
 not, there can be no doubt that this allusion to one of the 
 labours of Hercules strongly confirms the mythological sense 
 of the title Love's Labour's Lost.
 
 love's lauouk's won. 141 
 
 In mythological language, a labour was an achievement 
 of great and supernatural difficulty, to be undertaken only by 
 Gods and Heroes : from the analogy, then, of the assumed 
 meaning of that word in Love's Labour's Lost, something 
 of the same character must naturally be looked for in what- 
 ever play may have borne the companion title of Love's 
 Labour's Won ; and it is now to be shown tliat in no other 
 available play is there so much of that character as in Much 
 ado about Nothing. 
 
 In it, the same difficulty is encountered in bringing 
 together sworn enemies to Love, who profess to set him 
 at defiance ; the same forced subjection of unwilling victims 
 who are confidently boasting of their freedom. 
 
 So completely is this recognised as a labour, that Don 
 Pedi'o, the match maker, who must meddle with every body's 
 love afiairs, and fancy them his own doing, exclaims : — 
 
 " I will undertake one of Hercules' labours, which is to bring Signor 
 Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one 
 with the other." 
 
 Ilere, then, in Love's Labours Won (?), is the same literal 
 reference to the Labours of Hercules as that before noted 
 in Love's Labours Lost ! 
 
 But it is in the nimierous allusions to the deity Love, 
 and to his exploits, that the most conclusive similitude 
 exists : — 
 
 " Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice thou wilt 
 quake for tliis shortly." 
 
 Beatrice, in the very opening, says of Benedick : — 
 
 " He set up his bills here in Messina, and challenged Cupid at the 
 flight : and my uncle's fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, 
 and challenged him at the bird-bolt." 
 
 Cupid's bird-bolt ! see parallel phrase p. 139.
 
 142 love's LAbOUll's WON. 
 
 Then, again, where Don Pedro is pluming himself upon 
 his clever stratagem to lime Benedick, he exclaims : — 
 
 " If wc can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer : his glory shall 
 be ours, for we are the only love-gods." 
 
 But, as if in contrast to this foolish assumption, Hero, who 
 plays off the same trick upon Beatrice, takes no part of the 
 credit to herself : — she is one of the initiated ; she has her- 
 self felt the power of the bird-bolt and knows well who sent 
 it:— 
 
 " Of this matter is little Cupid's crafty arrow made that only wounds 
 by hearsay." 
 
 And again — 
 
 " Some, Cupid kills with arrows ; some, with traps." 
 
 One more of these allusions need only be added, and that 
 principally for the sake of explaining an expression which 
 has been much misunderstood. In the opening scene of the 
 third act, Don Pedro says of Benedick : — 
 
 " He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bow-string, and the little hang- 
 man dare not shoot at him." 
 
 Here hangman, notwithstanding the infinite deal of nonsense 
 that has been written about it by Farmer, Douce, and others, 
 who cannot for their lives separate hamjman from the gallows 
 at Tyburn, plainly means slauglderer ! a very appropriate 
 epithet for Cupid. 
 
 There is no metonymy more common with the old writers 
 than hangman for executioner in any form : the heads-man 
 was often so called. From hangman, in this general sense, 
 to slaughterer, the transition is easy, and there is a remark-
 
 love's labour's won. 143 
 
 able example in Sylvester's Du Bartm, where the term 
 hangman is applied to a beast of puey ! — 
 
 " The huge thick forests have nor bush nor brake 
 But hides sora Hangman our loath'd lives to take." 
 
 The Furies, v. 136. 
 
 [Here, then, an obvious explanation presents itself of an 
 ill-understood phrase in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv., 
 scene 4, where Launce tells his master that the pet dog he 
 had sent him with to Sihaa had been stolen from him by 
 
 " The Hangman's boyes in the market-place." 
 
 So it stands in the first folio, and, from ignorance of its 
 true meaning it has been variously altered. The immaculate 
 Old Corrector, Mr. Collier says, — 
 
 " Gives us ' a hangman boy,' meaning what Shakespeare elsewhere 
 calls ' a gallows boy,' and that, we have no doubt, is the true reading." 
 
 and Mr. Dyce says : — 
 
 " The true reading is evidently ' the hangman boys,' i.e., the rascal 
 boys." — Strictures, 1859, p. 27. 
 
 But why not let the original alone ? One woidd suppose 
 that " market-place" might have suggested that " the hang- 
 man's boys" are the butcher^s hoys, or the slaughterer's boys, 
 as explained above ; and not " gallows boys," or " boj^s 
 dedicated to the hangman," as various editors have it : 
 particularly as butcher's boys are as noted dog fanciers in our 
 own days as they appear to have been when making free 
 with poor Launce's " other squirrel."] 
 
 Thus the epithet " little hangman" designating, as it does 
 when properly explained. Love as the slaughterer of hearts, 
 directly corroborates the general hypothesis, that " Love's 
 Labour," in the titles of these two plays, has mythological 
 reference to the exploits of the god.
 
 144 . love's labour's won. 
 
 The arguments, then, in favour of Much ado about Nothing 
 being the true representative of Meres' title, may be recapit- 
 ulated as follows : — 
 
 1. There is extant a printed copy of that play, which 
 
 proves its existence within two years, at most, of 
 Meres' publication ; whereas no printed copy of either 
 of the other proposed plays is within a quarter of a 
 century. 
 
 2. So far from there being anything to disprove its 
 
 existence at the time of, or before Meres' publication, 
 inference and analogy are directly favourable to that 
 presumption. 
 
 3. There is no other play which in similitude and contrast 
 
 forms so apt a companion to Lovers Labour's Lost; 
 while in its happy denouement it exactly fulfils the 
 idea of Love's Labour's Won. 
 
 4. If " Love's Labour," of the title, be supposed to mean 
 
 the achievement of the god of love, there is no other 
 available play which in every respect is so favourable 
 to that interpretation. 
 
 It is no part of the design of the present notice to propose 
 emendations in the existing text of Much ado about 
 Nothing : by the existing text being meant, not the old 
 printed copies, but the present text, as amended and inter- 
 preted in modern editions. But to show that there is ample 
 opportunity to do so, even after what Mr. Collier declares to 
 be the final adjustment* of the text by the Old Corrector, 
 
 * It is amusing to compare a similar announcement of finality by another 
 great and congenial luminary of correction, Zachary Jackson, who writes, — 
 " I shall bo enabled to say, what Mr. Mnlone too hastily advanccfl : ' The text 
 of the Author seems now to be finally settled.'" — Zachary's Preface, p. xiii.
 
 love's labolr's won. 145 
 
 one or two examples .sliall be given, — of mistaken alteration, 
 mistaken pmietuation, and mistaken interpretation. 
 
 Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 " Myself would on the rearward of reproaches 
 Strike at thy life." 
 
 This is the reading of the second Folio : the previous copies 
 having " reward of reproaches" (except that the quarto redu- 
 plicates the first syllable) : and the Old Corrector further 
 altered "rearward" with his usual felicity to ''hazard" 
 
 But the true word lies within a hair's-breadth of the 
 original : for " reward," read re-tcord. 
 
 Re- word was a favourite with Shakespeare. 
 
 Independently of the well-known use of it in ILamht, it 
 occurs in the opening of A Lover's Comjjhiint : 
 
 " From oflF a liill whoso concave womb reworded 
 A plaiutful story from a sistering vale." 
 
 It is true that both here, and in Hamlet, re-icord is used as 
 a verb ; but there can be no reason whatever, nor the shadow 
 of a reason, why the compound should not be a noun as 
 weU as its radical ; especially as there are several such 
 compounds — ^bye-word, nay-word, catch-word, &c. 
 
 Then, as to the sense it confers on the passage — bearing 
 always in mind that the present reading rcaricard, if capable 
 of any sense at aU, is a most forced and improbable one, 
 and that it was evidently suggested by the accidental 
 reduplication re-reicard, of the old quarto. 
 
 Leonato, who is writhing under the cruel and shameful 
 reproaches publicly uttered against his daughter's honour, 
 exclaims, as if unable to live under the disgrace, — 
 
 " Hath no man's dagger here a point for me ?"
 
 146 love's labour's won. 
 
 He then turns to his daughter : — 
 
 — " doth not every earthly thing 
 Cry shame upon her ?" 
 
 * * • • * 
 
 " Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, 
 Myself would, on the re- word of reproaches. 
 Strike at thy life." 
 
 AVhich means, that if he thought she would survive this 
 open shame ; he would, upon the re- word, or repetition, 
 of the reproaches she had been subjected to, himself 
 strike at her life. 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 — " Like the shaven Hercules." — 
 
 " Shaven, to look like a woman, while in the service of the Lydian 
 Omphale."— Steevens. 
 
 And this absurd explanation has been suffered to remain 
 without contradiction ! 
 
 Warburton had said that the shaven Hercules was 
 Sampson : to which Steevens objected that Sampson had 
 no club ! — forgetting that the very same objection might 
 be urged against his own suggestion. For when Madam 
 Omphale wore the . . . lion's skin, she took good care to 
 have the club also. And, indeed, the club, in any case, 
 would be a singular appendage for Hercules when " shaven 
 to look lilce a woman ! " Besides, the shaving, which is 
 the principal point of resemblance to the text, was pure 
 invention by Steevens to give a colour to his note. 
 
 The real allusion is evidently to the Hercules Gallus, 
 about which there is a long description in one of Lucian's 
 minor treatises. This, the French Hercules, was an emblem 
 of eloquence, and was represented as a bald old man with 
 a huge club !
 
 love's labour's won. 147 
 
 And although Lucian does not exactly say that he saw 
 it in old tapestry, yet he does dcscrihe it from having seen 
 it in a 2}ictiire. 
 
 Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 — " die in thy lap." — 
 
 This impossible abomination is still suffered to disgrace 
 Shakespeare's text ! — Unquestionably it is a misprint : 
 read — 
 
 " Bene. I will live in thy heart, die on thy lip, and be buried 
 in thine eyes ; and, moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle's." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 2. 
 
 " Verges. Let them be in the hands." 
 
 Here a humorous touch of nature is spoiled for want of 
 proper punctuation. The sexton (Francis Seacole ?), the 
 sensible but subordinate clerk, is secretly looked up to by 
 the worthy pair of executives ; although they wovdd fain 
 hide that fact even from themselves. Verges, throughout, 
 plays second fiddle to Dogberry, but tries to edge in a word, 
 now and then, to show that he is a partner in authority : — 
 
 " Doffb. Flat burglary as ever was committed. 
 Ver(/. Yea, by the mass, that it is." 
 
 But he must not presume too far, — Dogberry reminds him 
 that — 
 
 " An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind."
 
 148 love's labour's won. 
 
 It is necessary to enter into the humour of these relations 
 to appreciate the situation in question : — 
 
 " Sexton. Master Constable, let these men be bound. 
 Dogh. Come, let them be opinioned. 
 Verg. Let them be — in the hands." 
 
 Verges, to assert his share of authority, repeats the order ; 
 and that he may originate something from himself, he tacks 
 to it the superfluous addition — " in the hands." 
 
 These few suggestions are thrown in without selection or 
 design, to show that, let us take what play of Shakespeare's we 
 may, there is yet in its text a great necessity for amendment. 
 
 It is the opprobrivmi of the present age that, notwith- 
 standing the wide spread of cultivation in every other 
 department of literature, so little shoidd have been efiected 
 towards a better interpretation of the greatest poet a lan- 
 guage was ever blest with. General admiration of his works 
 is prevalent enough, but as for the critical fidelity of his text, 
 not one reader in a thousand cares a jot about it, or has any 
 just perception of what is, or is not, consistent Avith it. Had 
 it been otherwise, it would not have required a decade of 
 years in the middle of the nineteenth century, to extricate 
 Shakespeare from the knee-grip of the old-man-o'the-sea, 
 known, as yet, by no other name than the " Old Corrector." 
 Had it been otherwise, the press of England, instead of 
 favouring the dejjreciation of Shakespeare's text by the base 
 alloy of the margins, would have acted by it more in the 
 spirit of these words of Seneca, — 
 
 " Agamus bonum patrem familice : faciamus ampliora quae aocepimus 
 — ^major I ST A HEKEDITAS ad posteros transeat. Multum adhuc restat 
 operis, multumque restabit : ncc uUi nato post mille sajcula prcecludetur 
 _ occasio aliquid adjiciendi." Senec. Ep. Ixiv.
 
 ^ISr INDEX, 
 
 &c.
 
 EllKATA. 
 
 Page \M, lilies 21 &; 2'-i, for .S);//y/tx, read ,'Sp]ii)ix. 
 
 Page 150, (Index) line 11, tor thy mistress', read my mistress'.
 
 AN INnEX 
 
 OF NEW READINGS INCIDENTALLY PROPOSED IN THE COURSE OF THIS WORK. 
 (Various Intcrpretatloun not Involving litcml altcrutlon itre oniltted.) 
 
 By rentarcUioiui arc meant absolute returtia to ttio orii^nal. 
 
 approxloiatloDs. 
 
 Marked thus (") are near 
 
 In LovE't Labour's Lost. 
 
 Page. Present RcadiiKj. 
 
 58 But like of each thing 
 
 58 So yoi . to study 
 
 59 — wh at I have swore 
 63 — sh all speak for me 
 67 My "lips are no common 
 73 — m the male, sir 
 
 77 And let me loose 
 
 77 Set thee from durance 
 
 86 Imitari — 
 
 '^J7 [various readings) 
 
 87 — dew of night 
 
 88 [various readings) 
 91 [various readings) 
 
 93 — where that you have 
 
 94 — voice of all the gods 
 97 — insinuateth 
 
 97 — insanie 
 
 98 — charge-house 
 
 99 Arts-man praambula 
 100 I beseech you, follow 
 104 — my . . . visor half 
 
 106 Till this man 
 
 107 Abate a throw at novum 
 140 For valom", is not Love — 
 
 In Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 74 — baleful weeds 
 
 In Comedy of Errors. 
 
 75 [various readings) 
 
 In As You Like It. 
 112 Due dame 
 
 Proposed Ueiidin;!. 
 So like of each thing 
 But you to study 
 
 — what I have sworn 
 
 — shall break it for mc 
 My lips are not common 
 
 — in thy male, sir 
 And set me loose 
 
 Let thee from durance 
 Imitarier — 
 
 — tired horse (fatigued) 
 
 — night of dew 
 Disfigure not his show 
 
 — the scale of night 
 
 — where, in that, you've 
 
 — voice (of all the gods) 
 
 — insaniateth 
 
 — infamy 
 
 — church-house 
 Arts-man perambulate 
 T beseech you, fellow , 
 
 — my . . . veil a half 
 Till this mode-man 
 
 A better throw at novum 
 For labour, is not Love — 
 
 baleful weeds 
 
 — seek thy hele 
 
 Hue (id nie 
 L 
 
 Character. 
 
 ■ Transposition 
 
 Restoration 
 •Restoration 
 Emendation 
 Emendation 
 
 Transposition 
 
 •Restoration 
 
 Interpretation 
 
 Restoration 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Interpretation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Restoration 
 
 Emendation 
 
 •Restoration 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendation
 
 150 AX INDEX OF NEAV READINGS, ETC. 
 
 Page. Present Reading. Proposed Reading. Clmracter. 
 
 In The Tempest. r 
 
 134 [various readings) — labour's most busy best Emendation 
 
 In Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 143 {various readings) — tbe hangman's boys Restoration 
 
 In Much ado about Nothing. 
 
 145 — rearward of reproaches — re-word of reproaches 
 147 — die in thy lap — die on thy lip 
 
 147 — be in the hands — be — in the hands 
 
 In Shakespeare's 8onnet cxxvii. 
 79 — thy mistress' eyes — thy mistress' brows 
 
 In Powell's Love's Leprosie. 
 62 — life and death — life and health 
 
 In Drayton's 3L(ses' Ehjzium. 
 
 74 — that mak'st 
 74 — doth stir 
 74 — thee sport 
 
 — thou mak'st 
 
 — dost stir 
 
 — thy sport 
 
 * Restoration 
 Emendation 
 Interpretation 
 
 Emendation 
 
 Emendai*ion 
 
 Emendation 
 Emendation 
 Emendation 
 
 NOTE TO Page 75. 
 
 The same misprint, " help" for hele, has probably occurred 
 in the 2nd Part of Henry VI., act iv., scene 7, where Lord 
 Say complains of his bodily infirmities, and Jack Cade 
 replies, — 
 
 " Ye shall have a hempen caudle then , and the help of hatchet ;" 
 
 in which, at the suggestion of Dr. Farmer, an alteration 
 has been permanently made that for wide departure fi-om the 
 original is almost without parallel: — "help of hatchet" 
 is altered to "pap of hatchet." ! 
 
 Alliteration, if nothing else, might have suggested — 
 Ye shall have a hempen caudle then, and the heal of hatchet. 
 
 EDWARD BAINES AKD SONS, rlUM'ERS, LEEDS.
 
 I If l.ru.Ti.r,.. 
 
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