LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSJTY OF CAUFORNIA 
 
 BIVERSIDE
 
 THE STILL LION. 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 TOWAUDS 
 
 CIjc llcstDration i:if <^j)ahcspcarc's STcrf. 
 
 C. M. INGLEBY, M.A., LL.D., 
 
 OF TRINITY ( OIXEGE, CAMBRIDGE ; FOREIGN SECRETARY TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF 
 
 LITERATURE, LONDON. 
 
 REriUNTED, WITH ADDITIONS, FROM THE SECOND ANNUAL 
 VOLUME OF THE GERMAN SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY. 
 
 Ssp^9r]9 , o'latg alKiaiaiv 
 StoKratufitvog rov fivpitrij 
 Xpovov dOXtvau' 
 
 PUOMETUEUS ViNCTUS, 93—9-5. 
 
 LONDON: 
 TEiJBNEll & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 187^.
 
 
 JOHN fJIILDS AXU SON, lUUNTEHS.
 
 A COPY OP 
 
 THIS ESSAY 
 
 IS PRESENTED TO EACH MEMBER OF 
 
 xi^ ^au ^Ir;ilir,pit ^unh). 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 7S, line 10, reinove lioiu the same play to the next 
 line, and insert after point 
 
 125 , 16,/'>/- 99 and 153 read 98, 117, and 121. 
 
 „ 135 „ 2, for latter read former.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 
 The following essay origiually appeared in the Second 
 Annual Volume of tlio German Shakespeare Society, where 
 it received as much notice as it deserved. The late Alex- 
 ander Dyce devoted to it three pages of his GJossanj, form- 
 ing volume ix of his last edition of Shakespeare. Of late 
 years the author has received so many inquiries about it, 
 and applications for it, that he has revised and enlarged it 
 for an English edition ; and it is now^ for the first time 
 printed as a separate work. 
 
 The present edition substantially reproduces the ori- 
 ginal essay, 'enlarged to almost as much again as it was' 
 mainly by the addition of seven critical discussions in Chap- 
 ter iv and of nine in Chapter v. 
 
 The short copies which in 1867 were issued for presenta- 
 tion had a special title-page bearing a n\otto from the Fro- 
 mctlicm Viiidxs. This motto is retained, and an excursus, 
 in justificatiou of it, is prefixed to the main work. 
 
 The title of the essay, though eccentric, is significant 
 as well as mysterious, and is sufficiently explained iu the
 
 iv Advertisement. 
 
 ■openiug paragrapli. All the leonine allusions (for the noble 
 beast, like King Charles's head in David Copperfieldj was 
 always emerging) have been sentenced to capital punish- 
 ment ; and the execution will serve the beneficent purpose 
 of a notice-board bearing the warning, Gave Leonein. We 
 have heard that the votaries of the Olympian Sire* (who, it 
 must be known, has in these days taken Mrs Grundy to wife) 
 have been greatly scandalised by the allegorical title and 
 by-play of this work. The mode in which the leonine 
 allusions are hero presented will serve to warn off over- 
 sensitive readers from the offending regions of allegory, 
 which we sorrowfully own — but in the geological sense — to 
 constitute the " great fault " of the ensuing essay. 
 
 * Sec r- X. 1- 1'^
 
 CONTEiSTS. 
 
 JUSTIFICATION OF THE GREEK MOTTO . . . . Vil 
 
 THE STILL LION DISCOVERED 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN RE- 
 LATION TO THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ON THE DIFFICULT PHRASES IN SHAKESPEARE, AND THE 
 DANGER OF TAMPERING WITH THEM 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN EXAMINATION AND DEFENSE OF CERTAIN WORDS AND 
 PHRASES IN SHAKESPEARE, WHICH HAVE SUFFERED THE 
 WRONGS OF EMENDATION . . 
 
 1 
 
 14 
 
 ClIAPTEIl II. 
 
 ON THE CORRUPT AND OBSCURE WORDS IN SHAKESPEARE 33 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 41 
 
 50 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ON THE CONJECTURAL EMENDATION OF SHAKESPEARE's 
 
 TEXT .. .. •■ •• •• .. lO^i 
 
 n •)
 
 JUSTIFICATIOX OF THE GREEK MOTTO. 
 
 Even the few who caie for both the inteijrity and the preservation of Shake- 
 spearcV works will form but a very faint notion of the subject of this preliniiiiary 
 essay from the motto. What can be the outrage which threatens either the one or 
 the other ? Are not his works, like ' the lexicons of ancient tongues,' ' comprised 
 in a few volumes,' of which millions of copies exist .- Yes, indeed ; but are they 
 ' itnmutably fixed?' Nay, more, is it at all likely that they will be immutably 
 fixed? That is the doubt which suggested the following remarks. The works of 
 Shakespeare were manifestly written to serve his own personal ends, or, at most, 
 to serve the narrow ends of his own generation ; and yet, in a higher sense, they 
 were written for all time — to subserve the pleasure and profit of ages to come. 
 Ben Jonson summed this up in the famous line — much staled, and generally mis- 
 quoted — 
 
 He was not oj m\ age, but j'oi- all tiiutj. 
 
 Now Jonson meant to say of Shakespcaic that he wan both /«/• an age and /b?- 
 all time, which the line, as it is often misquoted, is made to contradict,* but 
 also that he was not of an age ; meaning thereby that, unlike his compeers, he was 
 vinconventional and catholic. We have a proverbial saying, ' lie is a nice man 
 for a small tea-party ' — exquisite expansion of the pctil maitre ! A man may be 
 that, ^vithout being of the tea-party ; he may likewise be of the tea-party without 
 being that. The early Christians were exhorted to be in the world, not of the 
 world. St Paul, for example, was not of the world ; yet he was /or the world ; and 
 many a man o/the world lives /or himself, and not for the world. Things more 
 distinct than o/and/o/- it were hard to find. Shakespeare was in the world of his 
 own day ; but he was not of it : he lived in an intellectual sphere above it, and so 
 lived and wrote for it, and for all time. 
 
 Even we of the 19th century, or 4th A.S., hww very little what w\\\ be. 
 "We have great faith in the destiny of Shakespeare's works, and bvlicrc that, if 
 they are preserved entire, they will be a most important element among those 
 farces which go to mould the English of the future ; and that what ^Eschylus 
 
 • The most inexcusable case is that of Mr John Leighton's 'Ofticujl Seal for the 
 National Shakespeare Committee cf lSi>t,' the scroll at the Uisc of whioli bears the mis- 
 quotation — 
 
 Not for an age, but for all time :
 
 viii yustificatioii of the Greek Motto. 
 
 is to us Shakespeare will be to those who speak a tongue as yet unknown, when 
 the Encjlish of Shakespeare is bound in death. 
 
 A living language is like tlie mythic Proteus. It is a fluxion : no photo- 
 graphy is swift and sharp enough to catch and arrest any one of its infinite and 
 infinitesimal phases. But as, in the old iablo, Proteus caught basking on the sea- 
 shore became oraculai-, so when at last a language dies, it not only becomes a dry 
 logical instrument, but an oracle, which reveals the history of a people long 
 
 after every material trace of their existence has vanished from tlie earth. 
 
 (Englishman s Magazine, Jan. 186-5.) 
 
 The language we speak and write is not perfectly identical with that employed 
 bv Shakespeare. English speech has moved on, and is still moving on towards 
 the goal ; and in a period which is incalculable, not for its length, but for want of 
 exact data, it will be as dead as Zend, Sanscrit, Greek, or Latin. It is of no uf,e 
 lamenting this destiny, for it is inevitable. By no other course can a language 
 attain to the rank of a classic tongue. Happily, when a language is dead, its 
 literature may survive. How many literatures have becu swallowed up already is 
 only known to Him who created us. To deal with two only of those languages, 
 we have reason to be thankful that the sentence executed on Hebrew and Greek 
 spared so large and so grand a fraction of their literatures : Job, David, Isaiah, 
 Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Homer, iEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes ! 
 
 ^schylus had a narrow escape. He w;is judged an immortal before his death. 
 The late Mr Cliarles Knight thought Shakespeare was judged so too ; but we doubt 
 if all the evidences that can be gathered from the literatures of the 16th and 17th 
 centuries would prove that he was thought essentially superior to Marlow, Chap- 
 man, Jonson, Beaumont, or Fletcher — all men of the age. Even the most illiter- 
 ate Greeks who were privileged to live and move in the Athens of Pericles knew 
 that thcv had a denii-god among them. Every soul in that miglity auditory knew 
 his ^schylus ' was not of an age, but for all time.' Ivay, more ; iEschylus was 
 twice as industrious a writer as Shakespeare. He created, and published in that 
 vast arena, where from twenty to thirty thousand persons were always found to 
 enjoy a foretaste of immortality, twice as many tragedies as Shakespeare wrote 
 plays. Above 70 dramas were the pledges of their writer's earthly immortality : 
 yet only seven survive. When the first Alexandrine Library was burnt, it is said 
 that nearly 70 single exemplars of his tragedies perished. Happily for us, the 
 immortality of iEschylus was guaranteed by the fact that imperfect co])ies of seven 
 dramas existed in other libraries. Had they been perfect, our Greek scholarship 
 would have been more imperfect; for nothing short of imperfection in such 
 work^ could have called into healthy activity the powers of our best Grecians. 
 But only think what a narrow escape this great writer had I But for tlie extant 
 seven, we could have known nothing of him but at second-hand. At most we 
 might have known tliat flie great Soplujclcs had a contemporary greater than 
 himself; but we could have had no sufficient evidence to estimate the majesty and 
 sublimity of him whose works had fallen a victim to the ambition of Ca>sar. 
 
 Now, against sucli a catastrophe as that Shakespeare is amply secured. Thank 
 God, there are no single exemplars of any work of his. Compared with tlie great 
 Greek his works are not so vast — 37 l)lays, 2 long poems, a noble collection of 
 sonnets, and a small volume of ', Picmains,' constitute our whole stock-in-trade.
 
 yusiiJlcalioH of the Greek Motto. ix 
 
 But of the existing excmpliirs of eacli work tlie name is Legion ! At any price 
 from 1». up to £100 tl>e book-fancier may appnipiiato a comijlete copy of Shake- 
 speare's works. Tlie fount is oprn to all : conic, all ye tliirsty souls — be ye prince, 
 poet, gentleman, artisan, labourer, tramp, or what not, here's the work for your 
 money. Here are Warne's Cbandos edition, 8vo, iu boards, for 1«. ; Dicks's 
 edition, 8vo, stitched, for Is., and in boards, for 2s. ; Lenny's edition, 12mo, 
 for 2a. (Sd., or if you can afi'ord anotlier Vxl. here is Keightley's smaller edition, 
 rirao, and the Blackfriar's edition, 8vo. You had better pay 3*. 6rf., and then 
 you may have a better choice — the Globe edition, 8vo, JIrs Cowden Clarke's 
 edition, 8vo, or liCnny's selected edition, 12mo. Besides these there is Gray 
 Bell's edition, 8vo, 3.v. 10^/., which is now reduced; and when you get up to 4«. 
 or O.V. you m;iy have the pick of a score of one- volume editions, and so forth, till 
 we mount up to tliose costly monuments of human enterprise, Boydell's illustrated 
 edition and Jfr Ilalliwell's folio edition, and, lasliy, the orif^inal first folio edition, 
 accessil)le onlv to princes and nu'ichant-priuces. A thousand Alexandrine con- 
 flagrations would not at this present time burn up Shakespeare. 
 
 Xo : it is from no such danger that we have to rescue Shakespeare; it is from 
 a destruction now in progress, and the cause is latent, insidious, slow, and sure. 
 The mere destruction of copies is more than compensated by new impressions ; but 
 it is precisely because there is this succession, this constant and unstaying process 
 of supphintation and substitution, that the immortality of Shakespeare is in jeopardy. 
 If this cause shall continue, it is demonstrable tliut Shakespeare's immortality can 
 be guaranteed by only one event— the continued practice of reprinting verbatim 
 the First Folio Edition. It makes one tremble to think that but for photography 
 there was a bare possibility (perhaps a very small one) of Shakespeare faring like 
 jEschylus. It is almost certain that after the lapse of ages every copy which was 
 in existence in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19tli centuries, and all which are now 
 extant, will be utterly destroyed. "We say Shakespeare's imnnn-tality is only 
 guaranteed by the multiplication of copies. Isow, from what exemplars are they 
 made ? There is a cause of conniption constantly in operation which must sooner 
 or later revolutionize the whole text, viz., the practice of modernizing the old 
 language, so as to bring it down to the standard of the English of 300 years later. 
 Where is this to stop .^ Clearly, nowhere. I,anguage finds no arrest; it must grow 
 or die. The innocent-looking little moditiealiims which we now introduce into 
 Shakespeare on tiie plea of textual misprinting will sooner or later themselves 
 require modernizing. No part of the text is safe against these well-intentioned 
 pervei-sions ; and in the mean while what becomes of Shakespeare ? The one fact 
 which bids fair to secure him against this fate is tlie multiplication of copies by 
 photogiaphy from the folio of 1623. There is no one deed in the history of 
 Sliakespeare-literature whicli deserves more thanks than the recent reinint of the 
 fust folio by the photolitbograpbic process. Few know (as the writer of this work 
 does) the stupendous dilliculties under which the first promoter of this special work 
 laboured. It were easy to name several gentlemen who were employed in the various 
 departments of this production, to all of whom great credit is due for the con- 
 scientious discharge of their several tasks ; but when the history of that reprint is 
 written, as written it will be, who will stand out as the originator and the finisher 
 of tlie work ? One there was who. at first with little aid and no sympathy.
 
 X yustification of the Greek Motto. 
 
 originated that reprint, and with infinite labour, miscarriage, vexation, and loss 
 succeeded in carrying it to a successful issue ; and his name is IIowAnn 
 Staixton. 
 
 To that gentleman is it due that Sliakespeare is delivered from one source 
 of destruction. One shoal is weathered : another is imminent ; but it is one that 
 can only acijuire importance in the eventof Mr Staunton suti'eriiig a final check-mate 
 in this new chess-game, i. c. , in the event of all verbatim reprints of the first folio 
 being destroyed.* This source of destruction is contingent only ; but whatever 
 it is let us diagnose it. It is here that Shakespeare appears in the character of the 
 modern Prometheus. He has committed the heinous oflence of endowing men 
 with the TTi/poc o'tkai^ of heaven, the blaze of the fire of genius. For this the 
 Olympian Sire, who seems to represent Persistent Conventionality, is angry, and 
 he sends down on the .Bard two ministers of vengeance. The destinies of Liter- 
 ature are committed to certain publishing coteries ; these rule the Reviews ; and 
 the Reviews forge the thunderbolts of criticism, wliich at one time wound a Byron 
 or a Shelley, and at another kill a Keats ; or pour the vials of vengeance on an 
 oft'euding party ; as once on the so-called Lake Poets. The mischief is, that 
 Frcechm and Poiver, the attributes of Zeus, belong (for a time) to those who have 
 not the genius to appi'eciate the philosophy of mind and language, and thus to 
 integrate the fluxion of written speech. Accordingly these Procustean censors have 
 determined, and seem determined to determine to all eternity, that the text of 
 Shakespeare shall be measured by a standard whicli is hardly adequate to the 
 criticism of Tennyson or Robert Browning. The English of Shakespeare in 
 10,000 places is not what now passes for good English ; therefore say the censors, 
 it must be made good English. In a small percentage of cases they allow the 
 possibility of an obsolete phraseology ; but not at all as to tlie mass. Where they 
 <lo not and cannot understand liim, he is assumed to have fallen a prey to his own 
 impetuosity or carelessness, or to the blundering of a compositor, and it is their 
 task to set him right. The sluice is thus opened, and Shakespeare's language is 
 inundated with words and phrases, some of whicli, indeed, he might have used ; 
 but, so far as Ave know, did not use : the poetry and special sense are concurrently 
 eliminated in every spot where the critic sets his mark ; and instead of ' the text 
 of Shakespeare,' England prints and publishes ' the text of Shakespeare restored.' 
 Restored '. The very word suggests a similar process applied to architecture : 
 indeed, the modern mode of restoring Shakespeare cannot be better illustrated 
 than by comparing him to such an edifice as Beverley Minster. Not only is some- 
 thing put in the place of what has fallen a victim to time and chance ; but much 
 of what remains of the old work is ruthlessly removed to make room for an 
 imitation of the old work by some village stonemason, who has no knowledge of 
 or feeling for his business. 
 
 But the parallel between Shakespeare and Prometheus may be worked out in 
 greater detail. One motive to the persecution of greatness is the jealousy of 
 excellence, a sentiment which is begot between the Sense of Inferiority and the 
 lyove of Power. To be confronted with an author whose works have stimulated 
 in his admirers, for eight or nine generations, a passion of gratitude and worship, 
 
 * Our friend suffered .another kind of 'final check-mate' during the printing of this 
 work. He died on .Junt; 22nd, 1874.
 
 y ustijication of the Greek Alotlo. xi 
 
 and to find his works strange and uncouth, his phrases unusual, if not unintelli- 
 gible, and his allusions obscure, is to suflVr liuniiliution. Tiie critic of conscious 
 intellect and learning is oli'unded that Sluikespeiire sliould have won a world of 
 worshippers by works which he finds but imperfectly intelligible. \l<i naturally 
 seeks to disabuse those worshippers, to convict them of Fetish-worship, and to 
 bring down their idol to their own level, lie will at least show them ultu is it 
 power in the world ; he will explain and correct this writer, and banish to the 
 limbo of oblivion whatever he cannot understand. As to the unfathomable, 
 which some believe to be Shakespeare, he says, ' Away with it to the unfathom- 
 able abyss — like to like ! ' All the while the critic is getting, by a side wind, a 
 considerable reputation for his disinterested, courageous, and sensible conduct. This 
 battered idol is all very well for Buddha ; but he is very ugly, and by your leave, 
 the artist will mend his nose and transport him to the back garden. Or the Olympian 
 plan shall be tried, which is preferable on the whole, seeing that (as Oceanus says to 
 rrometheus) it is not profitable to kick against the pricks,* for in the world of letters 
 the press is exposed to the goad of public opinion, and that Shakespeare is a demi- 
 god, and was an inspired poet, is a part of its creed. It is to be acknowledged, 
 then, that this Promethean Shakespeare is a god ; he had, it is allowed, great genius 
 aud power ; he did give you fire from heaven, and teach you all arts. But look 
 you, he is ungrammatical aud profane, and had no knowledge of the classics, and his 
 geography was very shaky. Ilowever, we think that much of this may have been 
 caused by the blunders of reporters, copyists, and printers. So the god is taken 
 captive by Zeus, the public press, and handed over to the tender mercies of two 
 emissaries, not as of old. Strength and Force, but Duluess and Ignorance, and 
 these have it in charge to manacle him hand and foot to the rock of Pedantry. 
 liut these gentlemen, though very able in their way, are not blacksmiths, so 
 llcpha-stus (Vulcan), the Philologer, is called in to help. A very unwilling and 
 altogether uusympathizing agent is he. He tells them plainly, ' I really have not 
 the heart to bind my fellow-god to this weather-beaten cliff. Yet I must on every 
 account take heart for this business, for it is no trifie to disobey the orders 'of 
 the Sire.' The prejudices of the Press infect him, and we find him clenching manacle 
 after manacle on the suffering god ; like Home Tookc teaching us that French- 
 men arc (according to Shakespeare) hrmjed in a mortar, or at least that iJertram 
 was (Diversions of Purley, 1805, ii. 50) ; or like Mr F. J. Furnivall asserting that 
 Timon's 'wappen'd widow' was merely M-rapt or shrouded in her widow's weeds 
 {Athe)i(eiim, May, 1873), f and many other things quite as absm-d. 
 
 Philology, perverted and degraded, does the work of Conventionality, Dulness, 
 and Ignorance, till at last Didncss gives Prometheus a left-handed compliment to 
 his greatness—' How can mortals ever lighten thine agonies ? By no true title do 
 
 • Tliis expi-eB6iou, wliich occurs in the account of tlic Conversion of Bt Paul (Acts ix. 
 &), is nearly akin to those in the Prometheus and the Agamemnon. It sounds strangely 
 out of i>lace in .sequence v.-ith our Lord's declanition ; for it is evident that l)oth tlic 
 Lord aud the Apostle could not at once bo driver and driven. If St Paul were the 
 liersecutor— the ' inu-suer '- -it would not be in his jjower to 'kick against the pricks." 
 It is a. relief to know that the phrase has little title to its place in the Liitin Vulgate aud 
 our Authorized Version. 
 
 t We are glad to learn that our friend has withdrawn that explaiiation. Dr t-tnitiuann, 
 liowcver, gives the same explanation of Shakespeare's 'wappen'd widow."
 
 o 
 
 xii y Hstificatioii of tJic Greek Motto. 
 
 the divinities call thee Prometheus ; for thou thyaelj wilt need a Prometheus to 
 help thee to escape this uork of craft.' How true that is ! None but the man of 
 genius can really help Sliakespeare. It is only the hero who discerns, and has 
 power to enfranchise, tlie hero. 
 
 The truth is, that tlie Sire, as the Choragus says, is administering new conven- 
 tions, vtoxiioii; vofioiQ- and wiping out those things which men vlsvA to think 
 great, tu. vplv ntXiofjin. Here is, indeed, the gist of tlie crime against Shake- 
 speare. The continual ebb and flow of language, in its growth from the conven- 
 tional to the classic, is the cause of all the evil that has befallen liim. It is to the 
 strong-armed and gentle-hearted Hephaestus that we must look for help. At 
 present he is but lame — we know v.ho lias lamed him — but sooner or later those 
 rivets will be undone ; that transtixing bolt will be withdrawn ; the idiom, idiot- 
 isms, and, above all, the idiasms of Shakespeare will be thoroughly understood, 
 and so much that now goes by the board in all modern editions will be restored with 
 intelligent i-everence. This is the great work that is committed to all who have 
 discernment or faith in the great and suffering bard. 
 
 In this case, the cause of Prometheus is the cause of our Mother Tongue. It 
 is impossible to doubt that a great future is in store for the English language. A 
 time must come when that language will be the language of half the world. 
 Future literatui-es are bound up in its fate. Now, without exception, Shakespeare, 
 of all who have expressed their thoughts in it, knew best how to use it. It is not 
 from a county, a parish, or a household that a language becomes enriched and 
 defined. It is rather from the works of great popular writers. Hence it is that 
 lano-uage acquires healthy growth and development. ^Ye can readily see, then, 
 how large a factor in the future of English will be the works of Shakespeare, and 
 it is now a question for us whether that factor shall be of the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, having Shakespeare's proper impress and power, or whether it 
 shall be a stunted and raodeniised Shakespeare that is to have that influence. It 
 is now a question for us, Avhether we shall take side with ' the Sire ' (the public 
 critic or popular press) or with Vulcan, freed from the tyranny of Zeus — whether 
 tlie Promethean Bard, who has endowed us with so many heavenly gifts, shall be 
 bound and impaled on the rock of pedantry or conventionalism, or whether he 
 shall be free and powerful, as he is god -like and benevolent. 
 
 I say that question is for us. But who are we ? It is little we can do against 
 the tyranny of ' the Sire.' We may at least do our little without fearing his 
 censure, or coveting his praise. Others may cast in their lot with him ; may 
 exalt ^larlow, or even Addison, and depress Shakespeare ; may sneer at the Pro- 
 methean fire as George III. did, calling it 'poor stuff,' or scoff at Prometheus him- 
 self, as a late noble lord did, calling him ' Silly Billy.' We, for our parts, will 
 take our stand with him against the criticasters and the detractors, and will not 
 relax in our exertions to enfranchise Shakespeare ; though it will not be our 
 fortune to proclaim ' Prometheus Unbound : ' 'for he that shall deliver is not yet.'
 
 THE STILL LION. 
 
 THE STILL LION DISCOVKIIED. 
 
 E may say of Shakespeare's text what Tlioiuas 
 
 De Qnincey said of jMiltoii's : 
 
 ' On any attempt to take liberties "with a 
 passage op his, you feel as when coming, in a forest, upon 
 
 AVUAT SEEMS A DeAD LlON ; PKUIIAPS HE MAY NOT BE DEAD, 
 BUT ONLY SLEEPING, NAY PERHAPS HE MAY NOT BE SLEEPING, 
 
 BUT ONLY SHAMMING. * » * * You uiav be put dowu with 
 shame by some man reading the line otherwise,' 
 
 or, we add, reading it in the light of more extended or 
 more accurate knoAvlcd2;e. 
 
 Here Ues the covert danger of emendation. It is 
 true that the text of Shakespeare, as it comes down to 
 us — "the latest seed of time" — in the folio 10:33, as 
 well as in the early quartos, is very coiTU])t. It is cor- 
 ru})t on two accounts. As to the text of tlic quartos, 
 there was no proper editorial supervision, since the edi- 
 tions were intended merely for the accommodation of 
 plav-goers ; the text was therefore unpcrfect in sub-
 
 The SlilL Lion. 
 
 stance as well as in form. As to the text of the folio, 
 the supervision of ^Messrs Heminge and Condell seems 
 to have been confined to the selection of copies for the 
 printers, Messrs Jaggard and Blonnt ; and some of those 
 were play-house copies, whicli had heen curtailed for 
 representation, and certain other were copies of quarto 
 editions ; while the correction of the press was probably 
 left to the ' reader ' of the printing-house,* who certainly 
 could not have exercised any extraordinary vigilance in 
 liis vocation. Accordingly we have imperfect copies at 
 first, and a misprinted text at last. 
 
 The corrupt and mutilated condition in which the 
 Greek and Roman Classics, especially the Greek, have 
 been handed down to modern times is the sufficient 
 reason for that latitude of conjectural criticism which 
 has been brought to bear on the ancient texts. If Ave 
 had to deal with an English text whicli bore like 
 evidences of dilapidation, we should naturally have re- 
 course to the same means for its correction. But such 
 is not the case with the Avorks of anv English author 
 Avho has assumed the proportions of a classic : not 
 Chaucer, nor Shakespeare, nor Milton, is a venerable 
 ruin demanding restoration : though Shakespeare, far 
 more than ]Mihon, lias suffered corruption, by the very 
 nature of the vehicle to which he committed his 
 thoughts ; exactly as the ' Last Su.pper ' of Leonardo da 
 Vinci has incurred an amount of destruction which it 
 
 * Not iinpvobiibly Edward Blount, Isaac Jaggard's partner, See 
 Notes and Qneru-s, 2nd S. iii. 7, ^' 1/'
 
 TJic Still Lioii Discovered. 
 
 might have escaped had it been painted on wood or on 
 canvass. Such coiTU])t ion, liowever, as infects the works 
 of Shakespeare touches l)ut ('onij)aratively small, antl 
 often isohited, jjortions of the text, offering no very 
 serious obstacle to the general reader, who is not exact- 
 ing or scrupulous in the interpretation of his nutlior's 
 phraseology. Patches of indictable nonsense, which have 
 hitherto defied all attempts at elucidation, there are, as 
 we shall soon see, in some of the plays ; but it is no very 
 violent proceeding to regard them as parts of the inferior 
 matter interpolated l)y the players or derived by Shake- 
 speare from the older plays on which he founded his own. 
 But the critical student is naturallv intolerant of everv 
 unexplored obscurity and unresolved difficulty; and the 
 editor who works for students as well as for general readers 
 feels himself bound to apply to the text all available re- 
 sources of criticism. The example of the ancient Classics, 
 and the capital success which rewarded the vigilance 
 and invention of the critics in that field, could not fail 
 to determine the method on which the recension of 
 Shakespeare was to be attempted by the verbal critics. 
 
 As the natural result, the text has been subjected to 
 a conjectural criticism whicli owns no restraint and 
 systematically violates every principle of probability and 
 of propriety. 01)Solete phraseology and archaic allusion 
 are treated as cases of corruption : the language, instead of 
 being restored or amended, is modernized and iinjjroved : 
 and the idiom, instead of being expounded and illustrated, 
 is accommodated to the prevailing grammatical stand-
 
 The Still Lion. 
 
 ard. By this means more fatuous and incapable non- 
 sense has been mannfactnred for Shakespeare than can 
 be found in any of the ancient copies of his plays. 
 
 The text of Milton, on the other hand, offers little or 
 no holding for the conjectural critic* One might have 
 predicted that of all English texts it was the least likely to 
 have aifordcd congenial sport to a classical scholar intent 
 on havoc. But it was not so much the promise of the 
 covers, but the solicitations of exalted rank, that induced 
 the combative and tenacious old Master of Trinity, when 
 he had already earned his laurels as an editor of the 
 Classics, and ' won his spurs ' as a verbal critic of match- 
 less resource and felicity, even in the G9th 3'ear of his age, 
 to undertake the recension of Paradise Lost. As some 
 
 * The systematic departure from the ordinary spelling 01 tlie time 
 in the text of the Paradise Lost of 1667 has been noticed by De 
 Quincey. Jlr B. M. Pickering says : 
 
 'At tlie end of the first edition of Paradise Lost we meet with what, 
 to a casual observer, would appear to be a very singular coirection, viz. 
 Lib. 2. V. 4-14, " For we read wee." Even a tolerably attentive student 
 of the early editions of Milton might be at a loss what to make of this. It 
 is certain that ice is to be met with in this edition of Paradise Lost quite 
 as often, or rather much oftener, with a single than with a double e. It 
 occurs as we in the very next line to that referred to in this errata. 
 The explanation is this :— that although in ordinary cases Milton is 
 accustomed to spell the pronouns we, me, he, ye, with a single e, when- 
 ever special emphasis is iutoided to be put upon them he makes a point 
 of writing wee, mee, hee, yee. Many other words are differently spelt 
 to what was then, or is now, usual, and this not in an uncertain man- 
 ner, as is common in old books, but after a regidar, unvarying system, 
 deliberately formed by Milton himself, and adopted upon choice and 
 afore-thought.' (From the Prospectus of A Reprint of the First Edition 
 of Varadisc Lost. )
 
 The Still Lion Discovered. 
 
 sort of self-jnstification he fraiuod the liypotlicsis that 
 Milton's text had suffered througli the carelessness and 
 also the invention of the scril)c to Avlioni it liad been 
 dictated by the blind bard. Bentley was a great man, 
 and this work of his is great in its way. He mars his 
 author with regal splendour, and we admire his learning 
 and talents, while we deplore their misapplication, and 
 deride his performance. 
 
 This reference to Milton, wno is also a Still Lion, 
 
 THRILLING INDEED WITH LIFE, BUT OFTEN DISSEMBLING 
 
 HIS VITALITY, leads me to exhibit the salient contrasts 
 between the two English classics of the seventeenth 
 century. I will first consider the works themselves as 
 intellectual achievements : secondly, the material vehicle 
 of their transmission. 
 
 (1) Dramatic Literature, out of the very reason for 
 its existence, is more within the compass of the ordinary 
 understanding than an epic poem. Its api)cal is to the 
 common mind. If the people fail to catch the meaning 
 of a dialogue or a solilo(piy, it is a mere impertinence, 
 how splendid soever may be its diction, or profound 
 the reach of its thought. Shakespeare is, indeed, very 
 strongly differenced from his contemporaries by tlio 
 fervour of his inuighiation and his knowledge of human 
 nature, as well as l)y the strength and range of his 
 vocabulary ; and certain portions of his works are pitched 
 in as sublime a key as the epics of Milton. Ihit on the 
 whole the language of Shakespeare is more or less 
 amenable to undisciplined good sense.
 
 The Still Lion. 
 
 Milton, on the contrary, ' Hies an eagle's flight,' and 
 is quite out of the bhmk of the general aim. He is 
 ' caviarv to the o-eneral,' and the stronojest common 
 sense, without imagination aud intellect, is quite at 
 fault in the criticism of his greater works. 
 
 With this distinction in mind, the reason of Bentlev's 
 deplorable failure in attempting an edition of Paradise 
 Lont is uot far to seek. The work he had successfully 
 done was in the fleld of the Greek and Latin Classics, 
 the emendation of which, as that of our earlv dramatic 
 literature, is generally within the range of that strong 
 natural sense for Avhich l^entley was so conspicuous : 
 and this, complemented with his vast l)ook -learning, was 
 amply sufficient for his purpose. One almost Avonders 
 that he did not make the experiment on Shakespeare 
 rather tlian on ]\lilton ; and it seems natural to fancy 
 that, liad he known in what relationship of marriage he 
 stood to the Bard of Avon,* he would have been drawn 
 to the recension of his great relative's works, and would 
 have brought to the task that reverential affection which 
 is so conspicuously absent from his notes on Milton. 
 
 (2) The difference in the ' material vehicle ' consists 
 in the difference between Dramatic Art and Literature. 
 We must consider this at somewhat greater length. 
 Disallowing Bentley's pretext, as a mere device for the 
 indulgence of licentious criticism, which especially in the 
 
 * The relationsliip is easily stated, though it is very remote. Shake- 
 speare's granddaughter inamed (secondly) the brother of Mrs Bent- 
 ley's grandfather.
 
 The Still Lion Discovered. 
 
 case of Milton mfjlamuiandnx csl, it is plain that Milton's 
 epics enjoyed the hcnelit of being printed, if not under 
 the eye, at least under the direct superintendence, of their 
 author ; and we know, moreover, that he was fastidi- 
 ously vigilant and accurate. We may he (juite sure that 
 the text contains but very few misprints, and that con- 
 jecture has no luctis standi there. But how different was 
 the case with the dramas of Shakespeare ! S[)eaking of 
 the textual vehicle only, we nniy be equally sure that 
 the conjectural critic would have had 'the very cipher 
 of a function ' if those works had received the final cor- 
 rections and editorial supervision of their author. They 
 would still have been thronged with difficulties, and 
 pestered with obscurities, taxing the utmost erudition 
 and study of the editor, the greater number of which 
 Avould have belonged to the class historical, consisting 
 wholly of allusions to forgotten persons and events, and 
 to obsolete habits and customs. Not a few, however, of 
 those ditticulties would have belonged to the class 
 f/ranii)iatical, demanding on the part of the expositor 
 almost as nuich learning and research as the historical 
 allusions in the text : for since the date of Shakespeare's 
 Jtoruit the English language has suffered no inconsider- 
 able change, though much less than the habits and 
 customs of the English ])eo})le. 
 
 But Shid^espearc died without, so far as Ave know, 
 having made the attempt to collect and print his works. 
 Of this fact an unnecessary difficulty has been made. A 
 nnich more self-conscious genius than Shakespeare has
 
 S Tkc Still Lion. 
 
 himself given us the clue to its solution, a clue of which 
 all writers, save Thomas Carlyle,* have failed to perceive 
 the significance. Goethe confessed to Eckermann that 
 he never reperused any of his poems when once it Avas 
 completed and printed, unless impelled to the task by the 
 demand for a new edition ; and that he then read it with 
 no self-complacency, but rather dissatisfaction. Why was 
 this ? Simply because he felt a IFidcrwiUe, or distaste, 
 towards the offspring of his less matured self, by reason 
 of its inadequacy to express his great ideal — the ' un- 
 bodied figure of the thouglit that gave 't surmised shape.' 
 He had outgrown his own powers, in the grander sense 
 of that phrase : never, like poor Swift, living to look 
 back with wonder and horror on the glory of a genius 
 that he owned no more, but prejudicially contrasting his 
 past self with the greater present. 
 
 \Vs for what I Lave done,' lie would repeatedly say to me, 'I take 
 no pride in it whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time 
 with myself, poets more excellent have lived b(;fore me, and others will 
 come after me.' (Gespriiche mit Goethe, 1836. Vol. i., p. 86. Fch. 
 19th, 18:39. Oxenford's Translation.; 
 
 He had, seemingly, that very contenipt for self-com- 
 placency which he attri])utes to Faust — 
 
 ' Verllucht vorans die hohe Meinung, 
 Womit der Geist sich selbst lunfan'rt.' 
 
 Now Shakespeare wrote and issued under his oAvn eye 
 two poems as literature, and nothing else. The rest 
 of his works, save his sonnets and minor pieces, were 
 
 * ( 'onsult liis Sliooilng Nia/jara, and after ?
 
 The Still Lion Discovered. 
 
 written tor representation oii the boards, and as a 
 simple matter of money-profit. Not faultless even as 
 dramas, thev must have fullv answered his aim, which 
 was purely mercenary, but not that grand ideal which 
 dwelt ' deep down in his heart of hearts.' Hence he must 
 have viewed them with some disaffection, (1) as not being 
 in the best sense Literature ; (2) as being ' mere implor- 
 ators of — mercenary, if not — unholy suits,' designed to 
 catch the penny with the least pains ; (3) as being often 
 hasty and inchoate, and always imperfect, attempts to 
 realize his own ideal. From the effort of recasting and 
 revising them he natm-allv shrunk. If he gave a thoufjrht 
 to the probability of his works becoming his country's 
 crowninp; "i-lorv, it nuLrht verv reasonablv have occurred 
 to him, that no revision would be likely to guarantee them 
 an exem])tion from the common lot which w\as not the 
 due of their oriiiinal merits. Of one thin^: we mav be 
 quite sure, that Shakespeare's good sense and honesty 
 of purpose rendered him ])crfectly indifferent to that 
 vanity of vanities which Goethe, in the speech from 
 which a citation has alrcadv been made, calls ' das 
 Blenden der Erscheinung,' for which so many a man of 
 letters has sacriliced the calm and comfort of his 
 life. 
 
 Be all that as it may, the fact is this, that tlie tirst col- 
 lection of his plays was published six or seven years after 
 his death ; and it is a matter of certainty that the folio 
 of 1623 was printed from inaccurate quarto editions and 
 mutilated stage-copies. This is the ' case ' of those who
 
 10 The Still Lion. 
 
 advocate the rights of unlimited criticism ; and we cor- 
 dially make the concession, that our text needs emenda- 
 tion. But, before they can be permitted to conjecture, we 
 require of them to lind out where the corruptions lie. 
 If a man's bodv be diseased, the seat of the disease can 
 generally be determined between the patient and the 
 doctor : in some cases, however, the malady baffles 
 research and experiment. 
 
 In the case of Shakespeare's text, the diagnosis is 
 infinitely perplexed: (1) from the multitude of obscur- 
 ities and difficulties that beset it : (2) from the close 
 resemblance that often subsists between those obscuri- 
 ties which spring from the obsolete language or the 
 archaic allusions, and those which are wholly due to the 
 misreading or misprinting of the text. Our healthy 
 parts are so like our diseased parts, that the doctor sets 
 about the medicinal treatment of that which needs no 
 cure ; and the patient's body is so full of those seeming 
 anomalies, that his life is endangered by the multiplicity 
 of agencies brought to bear on his time-worn frame. 
 
 What, if there are cases in which those ^.(j^ioi 
 (TovcorxoTai, archalc phraseology and textual corruption, 
 unite their powers against us ? Why, in such cases, it 
 is most likely that the critic v.ould be utterly baffled : 
 that he would be 'unable to restore the lost integrity 
 even by the condjined forces of exposition and con- 
 jecture. Now it so liappens that after all that contem- 
 porary literature and conjectural criticism could do for 
 Shakespeare's immortal works, there, is a residue of
 
 The Still Lion Discovered. 1 1 
 
 about thirty-five to forty passapjcs wliicli liavc defied all 
 attempts to eurc their iiniiiortal nonsense. J)oes it not 
 seem likely that the perplexity in sucli cases is due to 
 the johit action of those two sources of obscurity, and 
 our inability to persevcr or discrhninate the one from 
 the other ? We shall see. The rinffir/c afforded by 
 these remarks may be thus ex[)ressed. Conjectural 
 criticism is legitimate ; for it is needful to the perfection 
 of the text : but no critic can be licensed to exercise it 
 whose knowledge and cvdturc do not guarantee these two 
 great pre-requisites : (1) a competent knowledge of the 
 orthography, phraseology, prosody, as well as the 
 language of arts and customs, prevalent in the time of 
 Shakespeare : (2) a refined and reverent judgment for 
 ai)preciating his genius and Icarnhig. 
 
 The present time seems most fitting for the treat- 
 ment of the question, to what extent, and in what 
 manner, may conjecturjd criticism be safely exercised ? 
 For the last twenty years the text of Shakespeare has 
 been subjected to a process, which for its wholesale 
 destriictiveness and the arrogance of its pretensions is 
 wholly without parallel. The English ])ress has teemed 
 with works, from Mr ,1. P. Collier's pseudo-anti(|ue 
 Corrector down to the late Mr Staunton's papers 'On 
 Unsuspected Corruptions in the Text of Shakespeare,' 
 most of which, in our judgment, have achieved no otlicr 
 result than that of corrupting and beraying the an- 
 cient text. We allow that some of the conjectures thus 
 put forth are invaluable, and certain other may be
 
 I 2 The Still Lion. 
 
 entertained for careful consideration ; but the mass we 
 repudiate as impertinent and barl)arons. AVe deny the 
 need of any wholesale change, and impute great ig- 
 norance to the assailants : — not to insist on matters of 
 taste, which it is proverbially difficult to make matters 
 of controversy. We are fully able to prove the strength 
 of our position, by showing that the passages attacked 
 are proof against innovation by the power of their own 
 sense. We say to the assailants, ' When you propose 
 an emendation, you are virtuallv atfirniino; that the 
 passage under your censure is nonsense, or at least 
 deficient in point or force, or inappro})riate to the 
 occasion. In every case, then, in which we shoAv the 
 passage to be good sense, and sufficient for its place in 
 the text, though possibly its meaning may be veiled iu 
 " an ancient weed," we are challen^-ino- vou to confess 
 your own incompetence, and thus to pronounce your 
 own condemnation.' Now to do this at full length and 
 in com])lete detail would require the dimensions of a large 
 volume : to teach the general truth by the force of par- 
 ticular examples is all that avc now propose to accom- 
 plish. We propose to exemphfy the growth of the 
 written Englisli language in relation to the text of Shake- 
 s})eare : to pcjint out the dangers incident to all tam- 
 pering with special words and phrases in Shakespeare : 
 to examine and defend certain words and phrases which 
 have sufi'ered the wrongs of so-called emendation ; and 
 finally to discuss the general subject of the emendation 
 of the text, and to adduce some examples of passages re-
 
 The Still Lion Discovered. 13 
 
 stored throu^li this means. Iliiving accoiiiplislied tliis, 
 Avc shall gladly leave the old text, with its legions of 
 arehaisnis and corruptions, to the tender mercies of 
 those critics whose object is to conserve what is sound 
 anfl to restore what is corrupt, and not at all to im- 
 prove what, to their imperfect judgment and limited 
 knowledge, seems unsatisfactorv. To the arbitration of 
 such critics we submit the question, whether in any 
 particular case a word or phrase which is intelligible 
 to the well-informed reader, however strange or uncouth, 
 does or does not fulHl the utmost recpiirements of the 
 cultivated mind, regard being had to the context, the 
 situation, and the speaker.
 
 H 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN RELATION 
 TO THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 REAT is the mystery of archaic spelling. Let 
 us consider a few caprices of spelling, before 
 proceeding to notice the vitality and conse- 
 quent instability of written words : just as we must 
 consider the symbolizing and uses of words before the 
 grammatical structure and force of phrases. The word 
 (^7j/xa), rightly regarded, is an expressed ens rationis. It 
 is purely a matter of convenience, whether it shall be re- 
 presented to the eye or to the ear. We hold those to be 
 in the wrong who would wholly subordinate the written 
 sign to the sound, as if writing were essentially, as it is 
 historically, a secondary process ; and herein we dissent 
 from the teaching of thorough-going Phoneticians. Be 
 that as it may, the object of writing and speaking is not 
 to impart the inner word {vor,[xa) : for transmission of 
 aught from one man's mind to another is impossible : but 
 to suggest it. Still, in effect, something is communicated, 
 or made common to both minds. In order that we may 
 suggest to another man's mind any word that is in our
 
 The CroiK'th of the Eiiglisli Language. 15 
 
 own, we eiii})U)y u medium whicli Avill stand for it, and 
 lead him to understand it as we do. The written word is 
 simply such a mediatorial symbol. The letters which con- 
 stitute it are used to represent vocal sounds ; and these 
 may be of very variable force and range, while the word 
 so symbolized is invariable. Thus ca and a, or ea and 
 €, may by agreement represent the same vowel-sound ; 
 and / andy, or / and /, may, according to circmnstances, 
 stand for the same consonant-sound. 13 ut further, several 
 written symbols that have Httle or nothing in common 
 may stand for the same inner word : much more may two 
 written symbols, w Inch have grown by habit and custom 
 from one spoken symbol, be regarded as equivalent forms 
 of, or rather terms for, one and the same word. Thus, 
 in the relative literature, we \\Vi\Q jjiirhire undjjo/niraj/, 
 scase and scarce, scarce and scar, inoe and more, icindoe 
 and windore, Icele and coo!, kid and quell, leese and lose, 
 meve and move, ciisse and Jciss, make and mate, &c. Not 
 a shade of difference exists between the words in any of 
 these pairs, unless, perhaps, in scarce and scar, the latter 
 — and possibly not the former — having sometimes the 
 sense of value, while both mean barter. Conversely 
 several written symbols, wliicli in the letter arc identical, 
 may not only stand for as many distinct words, but may 
 be themselves also radically distinct. A\'e have must 
 (new wine), must (stale smell or taste), and must (il faut) ; 
 mere (mare), "f^>'<^ (hdvc), and mere (pure) ; sound (sonus), 
 sound (sanus, whole), sound (arm of the sea;, a word pos- 
 sibly related to xwim, or otherwise to sunder ; sound (the
 
 1 6 The Still Lion. 
 
 swiiiiining-bltiddcr of the cod-fish), sound (sonder, to 
 fothom), sound (swoon). These tAvo classes of word- 
 couples are not to be confounded with words which have 
 onlv the same sound, without either similnritv of sense or 
 identity of spelling : e.g. ougltt, aur/hf, and art : nor yet 
 with those which have only the same spelling, without 
 either similarity of sense or identity of sound : e.g. lead 
 or fear. The main points to keep distinctly in view in 
 this study, are that the orthography of the written symbol, 
 like its vocal expression, may change to almost any ex- 
 tent, and yet the internal Avord signified by such letters 
 or sounds may remain unaltered ; and that the written 
 or spoken symbol may remain unchanged, while the word 
 signified changes, or that symbol may be used for words 
 which have not a common origin. 
 
 Shakespeare has had many ugly charges brought 
 against him. Among others he has been arraigned for 
 bad spelling and bad grammar ! But Avhat Shakespeare's 
 orthography was we have no certain means of knowing. 
 If he had any system of spelling he was a century in ad- 
 vance of his contemporaries. We have no knowledge be- 
 yond the capricious orthography of the compositors who 
 printed his works. At the present day words are spelt 
 according to a standard that is subject to only very 
 slight variations. But even as late as the Common- 
 wealth it mav be trulv affirmed that there was nothing 
 like a standard. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James 
 there was no attempt to ensure uniformity of spelling, 
 nor is it likely that the writers or the readers of that
 
 The GrowtJi of the English Language. ly 
 
 time were conscious of any need or want in that respect. 
 The (juestioii, wliat determined tlie orthogi'apliy of tlie 
 time, is exceedinii:ly puzzHiip;. We can here oidy 
 record our growing conviction that silent reading was 
 then much more tlian at present a purely mental ])ro- 
 cess, and that the handwriters and printers of that dav 
 presented their readers witli nothing incongruous or 
 absurd when th(>v indnl^cd in the most outraircous 
 V(!rsatility of literal construction. That / and /', or // and 
 r, should have been regarded as identical consonants, or 
 that // and tr, or i and j/, should have been regarded as 
 identical vowels (though the least extraordinary of the 
 many anomalies of their spelling), is (juitc enough to prove 
 that readers were not fastidious on such ])oints. One is 
 sometimes disposed to wonder whether particular pro- 
 vinces had not, somewhat earlier, their conventional forms 
 of spelling peculiarly adapted to the pronunciation preva- 
 lent in each province, and that these had become at length 
 confusedly intermingled through the })ractice of engaging 
 handwriters and com})ositors of various provinces to do 
 the work of one establishment. There were, indeed, in 
 Shakespeare's day limits to their vagaries. So far as we 
 have been abk; to settle the point, few words were 
 allowed as many as a dozen different forms of spelling. 
 The word which we write swoo/i (a fainting-fit, or to faint) 
 is a very curious example of Protean versatility. In a 
 Nominale MS. of the 15th centurv, edited bv Mr Thomas 
 \\ right, Y. S. A., the word is figured sicoyne. Chaucer 
 and Lord Bacon ha\e it, furoifu ov 6-iro///u'. In the State
 
 1 8 The Still Lion. 
 
 Trials, 1388, it is swoon ; and so we find it in Milton, 
 Drvden, and all the moderns. But Tabyan, 1304, spells 
 it siooiim or sivowne, and Spenser, 1589, and Walkington, 
 1G07, adopt the same orthography ; North, Shakespeare, 
 and smidry others give it sound ; and in Richard Hyrde's 
 translations it is generally stvoue ! 
 
 Within an assignable limit for each word, we may 
 rest assured that every compositor in a printing-house 
 spelt pretty much as seemed good in his own eyes. 
 That he had just set up a word in one literal form was, 
 perhaps, a reason why he should, on its recurrence, spell 
 it in some other Avay. The spelling of all words, in 
 fact, like that of Sam Weller's surname, depended ' upon 
 the taste and fancy of the writer ' or of the printer ; and 
 just as pedants with us vrill sacrifice the exact render of 
 their best thoughts in order to avoid the repetition of a 
 w^ord (of all pedantries the most contemptible and repre- 
 hensible), so did an Elizabethan compositor sacrifice a 
 just and compendious form of spelling to his love of 
 variety, and his contempt of uniformity. If he had set 
 up foorth, poore, woorse, he v/ould on the next occasion 
 present these words in the more concise style, /or//^, pore, 
 worse. If he had set up hrydde for the feathered biped, 
 that feat of ' composition ' became, if anything, a reason 
 for transposing the r and y ; for omitting a d, or the 
 final vowel, or both ; or for substituting i for y, on the 
 next occasion when he had to cope with that Protean 
 cu3to7iier. To have printed, ' Among the bryddes the 
 blackbrvdde hath the saddest coat, and the moastc;
 
 The Groivth of the English Langitagc. 19 
 
 (liilccatc mellodie,' would liave been an ofFencc against 
 the established economy, which dictated as much pro- 
 digality as \\as consistent with convenience ; for apart 
 from custom, which always has more weight than it 
 deserves, the probability is that the compositor could not 
 have conformed to a stiuidard of orthograpliy (if such a 
 thing liad ever occurred to him as desirable on other 
 grounds) without constant emljarrassment and frecpicnt 
 uusightliness in the make-up of his hues. Obviously, 
 j)octical works, in whicli the lines do not run on and 
 may always be adjusted without dividing the final words, 
 did not impose on him the same limitations as prose 
 Avorks. But even in the latter it does not always appear 
 that the caprices of spelling were due to the necessities 
 of the case ; as in the two following examples, taken from 
 llyrde's translation of Vi\es' Instruction of a Christian 
 iroman (ed. 159;^; sig. 1) 4): the sense is unimport- 
 ant here : — 
 
 and spof'ially if tlierc bee any long 
 space betweene the hollydaies. For tlu'nk 
 not y* holy dales be orduiacd of the eliureh 
 to play on, 
 
 Here it is plain that in the second line it would have 
 made no difference to the compositor had he set up 
 ' holy daies ' as in the third line ; or in the third line 
 ' hollvduies ' as in the second line. Here there was no 
 such necessity as, in a line a little higher on the page, 
 occasioned the composite form ' workingdaies,' instead of 
 ' working daies,' which Ave find in an intermediate line 
 where there was room for the lead or the hunhcn. In-
 
 20 The Still Lion. 
 
 deed it is liard to ima2;ine any reason for omitting tbe / 
 in the second ' holy ' which did not eqnally apply to the 
 first, nnlcss, indeed, the translator intended to exhibit 
 obtrnsivcly the original sense of the componnd word, as 
 sanctiB dies. In a word, variety in spelling was not 
 always due to the condition of making up the lines 
 without unsightly breaks; but is, at least sometimes, 
 referable to chance or to preference. Again, sig. G 4, 
 
 Let her bee content witli a niaide not 
 faire and wanton, fayre. 
 
 Here ' fayre ' is the catch-word at the bottom of one page, 
 and ' faire ' is the first word on the next page. So like- 
 wise in Edward Phillips' Tlteatnim Podarum, 1675 
 (The ^Modern Poets, p. 34-3), we have 
 
 being for great Invention and Poetic 
 heiglith height 
 
 Avhei'e ' height ' is the catch-word at the bottom of one 
 page, and ' heighth ' the first word on the next page. 
 Again in The Tico Aiigrie JFomcn of Ahin(jton, Mistress 
 Barnes savs, 
 
 ' I am al)usde, my sonne, by Gpurseys wife.' 
 
 On which Philip exclaims, 
 
 ' By Mistressc Goursie ! ' 
 
 How are we to account for the change of orthography in 
 the second example from Yives, unless we suppose that 
 the j/ was thought as good an i as i itself? llow, in 
 the other examples, for the omission of the h from the 
 catch-word, and the change of cy into ic, unless the
 
 llic Gjvz^'//i of the E)iglish Laiii^uagc. 21 
 
 ortliogniphy Avas thought a matter of little, or at least 
 of scconilaiy, importance? That it was so is proved by 
 the fact that y was coiniiionly used for i in manuscript : 
 c.f/. in a letter from Sir AValter Cope to Viscount Cran- 
 horne, dated 1004, preserved at Hatfield House, Herts, 
 we read : ' I have sent and bene all thvs morninji: 
 hunt\ng for players Juglers & Such kinde of Creaturs 
 but fijnde them harde io fin de,' &c. Similarly, I doubt 
 not // was thought no worse than 7, and / as good as // 
 in such a word as liolydajf, where the was not made 
 long as in huh/ : the ear being then, in most cases, the 
 arbiter of spelling. 
 
 In fairness it must be allowed that in some few 
 printed books of the Elizabethan era some approach to 
 uniformity of spelling is occasionally discernible ; but 
 there was nothing like a standard of spelling till nearly 
 n century later. In the work from which we took the 
 first two examples (book i. chapter 3), in the course of a 
 single page ?wo/ is spelled wolf and icooll ; in the next 
 page, icoolh' ; in the next, icolle : but /rool is only found 
 in compounds ; and ?rook' not at all ! 
 
 In order to bring these remarks to a focus, in ap})ly- 
 ing them to Shakespeare's text, let us confine ourselves 
 to words of one initial letter, say H. In Lupton's ' Too 
 (iood to be True,' 1580, /lair is spelled twice /lairc, and 
 once hcarc. ' It is also spelled hoarr in TvvngcsmvU's 
 Comforts in JJ/iclioii.^, 1585. The latter is the less 
 usual form. It occurs, however, in earlier books than 
 those. It is used, for instance, in Drant's translation of
 
 2 2 The Still Lion. 
 
 ' Horace's Satyres,' 1506 ; Avhcre we read, ' I have shaved 
 of his heare : ' as to which passage it must be noted that 
 of and off (like to and too, on and one, the and tliee^ 
 are not always distinguisha])le in this literature, save 
 by means of the context. Accordingly the participial 
 adjective haired, being written and printed hearcd, 
 heard, and heard, is sometimes presented in a form 
 identical with the past participle of hear (audire). Here 
 is an example from Shakespeare's King John, v. 2 : 
 
 This un-heard sawciuesse and boyisli Troopes, 
 The king doth smile at. 
 
 where ' un-heard sawcinesse ' is the sauciness of those 
 striplings Avhose faces are hairless, and ' whose chins 
 are not yet fledg'd' (2 Hen. IV., i, 2). Theobald, 
 who must have been ignorant of the fact that unheard 
 was merely unhaird under an earlier orthography, pro- 
 posed unhair d as an emendation. This is merely an 
 example of those orthographies, so fertile in confusion 
 and mistake, which coincide Avliere they should diverge, 
 and diverge where they should coincide. WicklifF spelt 
 hard{^\\x\\%) /^^/y/, both forms being a departure from the 
 A. S. heard. The Elizabethans, who inherited and 
 retained the former style, spelt herd (armentum) heard ; 
 and heard (auditus) hard ; and this last they pronounced 
 as we do hard (durus) ; a fashion wliich is presupposed 
 in The Taming of the Shrew, ii. 1: 
 
 Well havo yo\i J/card, 1)ut something Jiard of hearing !
 
 The Groivth of Ihc English Language. 23 
 
 and in parts of (lambridgcsliiro and Suffolk \\q mav still 
 lioar the same pronunciation. 
 
 Accordinp;ly, tliose who would contend that tlicsc 
 various forms of spelling aiTord evidence of a rutle 
 attempt at discrimination and jjer.s-evera?/cc', must needs 
 admit that the attempt was wholly abortive ; for what 
 was gained l)y distinguishing heard, /^<'^/Y/(auditus) from 
 kcdi'd (comatus), was lost by confounding it with kard 
 (clurus) ; and what was gained by distinguishing hard, 
 heard (armentum) from herd (durus), was lost by con- 
 founding it with heard (auditus). 
 
 Heard (armentum) occurs in Coriolanufi i, 4, Avhere 
 it has been the occasion of an emendation. 
 
 Enter IVIartius, ciivsiiiii^. 
 All the contagion of the South light oii you, 
 Vou shames of Jlouie : vou Heard of ]5vlcs and Plajrues 
 Plaister you ore, that you may be abliorr'd 
 "Farther than seene, and one infect another 
 Against the W inde a mile : you Soules of Geese, 
 That heare the shapes of men, &c. 
 
 The Johnsonian editors read, after Johnson himself, 
 
 you herd of — Boils and plagues 
 I'laster you o'er, ^e., 
 
 making a break after ' of,' as if the violence of Martius' 
 passion left him no time to complete his abusive epithet, 
 through the urgency of the imj)recation. Prom John- 
 sou to Collier every editor understands by J [card, arnicn- 
 tiun, save the latter, avIio reads ' unheard-of for ' a herd 
 of:' a conjecture which, like so many other candidates 
 i'or admission into the text, is good per w as a f)robal)le
 
 24 The Slill Lion. 
 
 misprint, l)iit had in this place as a substitute for the 
 suspected words. The reason is this. Passion takes con- 
 crete forms, and avoids generalities. Martins would, in 
 the hands of a master, have been made to denounce a 
 specific malady on the Romans, rather than have weakened 
 the force of his substantives by the prefix ' unheard-of.' 
 But there is yet another reason. We cannot part with 
 Heard in the sense of armentum. Twice in this play the 
 people are so designated, and once in Jidiiis Ccesar : in all 
 with the same contemptuous usage as in the passage under 
 consideration. We adduce this passage, not because the 
 difficulty admits of removal, but because it does not. It 
 is just one of those which we must be content to take 
 and leave as we find it. A score of suppositions may be 
 made to account for the presence of the preposition ' of.' 
 We might treat that preposition as governing ' boils 
 and plagues,' with the sense of with ; or as governed by 
 ' you herd,' followed by an aposiopesis : or we might 
 make ' of an adverb, equivalent to ' off! ' and so forth : 
 all these expedients being about equally misatisfactory ; 
 and there are still other possibilities to consider. But in 
 such a case it is not decision that is required, but faith. 
 We must stand by the text, and wait. 
 
 In a similar maimer the male deer was symbolized 
 by hart and hcrt ; but om* heart (cor) was generally spelt 
 hart, and still earlier hcrt, so that the alternative was no 
 security against confusion. 
 
 The passage quoted from CorlolanuH resendjles one, in 
 Timon of Athens, Act iii. last Scene: . ""iviu^ii.iji kj;
 
 TJic Groivth of the English Language. 25 
 
 Of iium and beast tlic infinite malady 
 Crust you quite o'er ! 
 
 and it might be thought that the hitter woiihl l)c of serv- 
 ice in construing or correcting the former. This led our 
 friend Mr Perkins-Ireland of Knowc-Ware to propose a 
 new expedient for restoring the passage in Corlolanm ; 
 viz. the supposition that aline is lost ! He would read : 
 
 You shames of Home ! you lievd of 
 
 An infinite malady of boils and plagues 
 I'laster vou o'er, Sec. 
 
 He argues that the compositor's eye wandered from ' of ' 
 in the first line to ' of ' in the second, whereby he omitted 
 the first Avords of that line ; and he supposes that the 
 dotted portion was originally furnished with such words 
 as ' timorous deer,' or ' heartless hinds.* All which we 
 must allow to be very ingenious. But to such a method 
 of dealing with a line which is ccrlaiuJi/ corrupt — and 
 the one under consideration is far from being that— 
 there is one serious objection, viz. that the supplied 
 portions rest on no evidence whatever, presenting but 
 one out of a great many equally plausible shifts. If, 
 however, it be argued that such phrases as ' infinite 
 malady,' ' timorous deer,' ike., are more likely to be the 
 missing words, because they are used elsewhere by 
 Shakespeare, it is sufficient to reply, that is a strong 
 argument against them : e. g. forasmuch as ' infinite 
 midady ' is used in Thiion of Jl/icihs in a precisely 
 similar passage, it is most improbable that Shakespeare 
 would have cmploved that iihrasc in Coriolanns. It 
 
 ^ " .'II In
 
 2.6 The Still Lion. 
 
 will bo helpful to know thai Shakespeare's text cannot 
 he emended in this fashion; for he never repeats himself 
 in repeating the same thought or sentiment.* 
 
 To return from this digression : UeJj:) and heal (or 
 h'lc), though two distinct words, mnst, ages ago, have 
 had a common origin, and are often used by Elizabethan 
 writers indifferently. Thus, in Phloravantes Secrets, 
 15S2, the second chapter is headed thus : ' To helpe the 
 Fallin'T; Sicknesse in vonj>" children.' But in the table 
 of contents the same chapter is referred to as having the 
 title, ' To heale the Palling Sicknes : ' thus showing that 
 one and the same sense was attached to both verbs. 
 This use is common enough in Shakespeare : 
 
 Love cloth to her eyes repair 
 
 To help him of his blindness. 
 And being Jidjrt inhabits there. — 
 
 Two Gsnt. of Verona, iv. 2. 
 
 a conceit frequently found in the Avriters of this time, 
 but never more beautifully expressed than here. Again, 
 
 Not helplnff, death's my fee. 
 But if I /«'//;, what do you promise me ? — 
 
 AlVs Jfcll that Eiids TFdl, i. 2. 
 though what it doth impart 
 Hdp not at all, but only ease the heart. — RicJi. III., iv. 4. 
 Turn giddy and be /i«//»e by backward turning. — Romeo and Juliet, '\. 2. 
 
 Helena, in AWs Well that Ends Well, undertook, not 
 what we mean by help, but the perfect cure of the 
 King. AVe take one example from Milton : 
 
 * Our friend, seeing this in proof, indignantly disclaims the in- 
 tention to affirm that the missing words in the second line Avere, totidem 
 verhifi, ' an infmite mahuly ' ; but he does not tell us what the exact 
 words were. Why augment the mass of indefinite conjectures?
 
 The Gnm'tJi of I he English Language. 27 
 
 Jli-lphu; all iiiTliiii Itlasts, and ill-luck sipiis 
 
 That tlu; shrewd meddling elt'e delights to make, 
 
 Whieli she with precious vial" d liquors //m/». — Comns. 845-7. 
 
 and vet one tVoiu Dr John llairs Select O/jKcrrations 
 ^ ■. 
 
 NjioH Enfjlhh Bodies, 1657 (translated by James Cook), 
 
 and so she was suddenly Iielpt, p. 223. 
 
 That this means perfectly cured is shown by his habit 
 of concluding his successful cases in this fashion: 
 'and so was cured,' p. 170, 'and in ii short time l)c- 
 camc well,' p. 207, 'by which he was wholly de- 
 livered,' p. 23"?. Here, then, we have Jtc/j), cure, deliver, 
 used synonymously. 
 
 It is remarkable that this sense of Iielj), used by 
 every old English Avritcr on Medicine, should have been 
 unknown to the commentators on Shakespeare. Yet 
 unknown to them it must have been ; for otherwise 
 they would not ha^c proposed the emendation of the 
 word in some htilf-dozen passages which almost force 
 upim it the medical sense. Let us briefly consider 
 these. In the Co}nedij of J'irror-s, i. 1, I he word occurs 
 twice in one line : 
 
 To seek thy Jif^^J^ 1h' beneficial Jielp. 
 
 Thoudi the custom of using the same word in dif- 
 ferent senses twice in one line, or even twice in con- 
 tiguous lines, is not to be conmicnded, it was common 
 at that day. A better exam])le of this could not be 
 found than the line just quoted, or one in Macbel/i, v. 3, 
 
 Cleanse the stnff'd bosom of that perilous sliijl', 
 
 or one in A'. JTenn/ J'., v. 1 ;
 
 2 8 The Still Lion. 
 
 To Eng-land will I ntcal, and there I'll al&d. 
 
 The late Rev. A. Uyce (J Few Notes on SJiakespcarc, 
 1853, p. 1-9) gives a large collection of instances : and a 
 further instaUnent is contributed by Mr Marsh, in his 
 Lectures on the Ejh/HsJi Language, Lect. xxv. We have 
 given a few Inore in a foot-note/ Such instances must 
 not be confounded with those which constitute Section 
 -xliii. of the late W. Sidney Walker's Critical E.vam. of 
 
 1 I'll take my leave 
 
 And leave to vou the heariiitr of the eause, — 
 
 Measure for Measure, ii. 1. 
 Sound 
 
 Their watches on to mine cares the outward watch. — 
 
 Rich. II., V. 5. 
 If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash 
 For his quick hunting. — Othello, ii. 1. 
 
 O give it me, lest thy hard heart do steel it, 
 
 And'being steel'd, soft sighs can never grave it. — 
 
 Venus and Ado)iis. 
 
 Rain added to a river that is rank 
 
 Perforce will force it overflow the bank. — Venus (nid Adonis. 
 
 If I could write the beauty of your eyes, 
 And in fresh numbers number all your graces, 
 The age to come Avould say, this poet lies, -y 
 Such heavenly touches ne'er toucht earthly faces. — Sonnet 17. 
 
 Yet some there were, the smaller summe were they. 
 That joyed to see the summe of all their joy. — 
 
 Our Savior s Passion, St. 78 (attributed to Nicholas Breton). 
 
 In many places there is the play or the jingle without tlu^ repetition : e. 
 
 Cousins indeed, and by their uncle cozcn'd 
 Of comfort. —Rich. Ill, iv. 4. 
 
 Why tender'st thou that paper to me with 
 A look untender. — Chjinhdine, iii. 4.
 
 The (iKOicth of iJic liiiglish I.anoiiaoe. 29 
 
 the Text of Shakespeare, 1800, i. j). 270. Tii the face 
 of so larf2;e an iiidiictioii one would tliink tliat 110 
 critic of judjjjmcnt Avonld venture ou emendation in 
 the passage from the Comedy of Errors. It must be 
 taken tliat the first help means de/iveranee, the second, 
 succour. Yet the line lias been tampered with by Pope, 
 Steevens, Jackson, Collier, Singer, and Brae. We spare 
 our readers an account of the nn.sfrini>>^ of the first five. 
 Mr A. E. Brae, in his admirable tract, entitled Collier, 
 
 Haply that name of chasto uiihapp'Iy set 
 
 This bateless edge 011 his keen appetite. — Lacrece. 
 
 Lean penury within his pen doth dwell, 
 
 That to his subject lends not some small glory. — Sonnet 84. 
 
 This mist, my friend, is mystical. — Arden of Fever sham. 
 
 I swcarc, Aurora, by tliy starrie eyes, 
 
 And by those golden loekes, whose locke none slips. ^ 
 
 Stirling's Aurora, Sonnet x. 
 
 Still finest wits are stilling Venus' rose. — 
 
 Southwell's Saint Peter s Complant. 
 
 I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, 
 And only live by gazing. — Whiter a Tale, iv. 3. 
 
 Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries, 
 
 And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves. — Hen. /'., i. 2. 
 
 Me as his abject object, his eye rcvil'd. — Hen. VIII. , i. 1. 
 
 My Amen to't. All men's. — Hen. Fill., iii. 2. 
 
 Aftection is a coal that must be cool'd. — Venus and Adonis. 
 
 Making their tomb the wouib wherein they grew. — Sonnet 80. 
 
 That we may praise them, or themselves prize you. — 
 
 lierrick. To Mildmai/, Earl of IVurtcick.
 
 30 The Still Lion. 
 
 Coleridge, and Shakesjjeare, ISGl (pp. 75 and 150), dis- 
 cerning with his usual penetration the sense which the 
 passage ought to carry, proposed to sul)stitute hele for 
 the first hc/p, w^liich woukl be acceptable enough, but 
 for the fact that /iclp means hele {Jieal) already. It is 
 somewhat curious that heljjfid and healthfid occur be- 
 fore, in the same sense ; and that Rowe changed the 
 first into helpless; and the editor of the Tolio 1682 
 changed the second into help/id : so great a fatality 
 seems to have invested this family of Avords, all occurring 
 in one scene ! Why ' hrqdess vEgeon ' was not converted 
 by some one into ' hopeless /Egeon', and hopeless (on its 
 first or second occurrence in that scene) was not 
 converted into hrqjless, may well excite our wonder ; 
 that they escaped, our gratitude ! 
 
 In 2 lieu. IF., v. 4, help again occurs, and is again 
 supplanted. Lord Say thus pleads his cause with Jack 
 Cade : 
 
 Long silting to determine poor mnn's cniises 
 Until made uie full of sickness .iiid diseases. 
 
 To wdiich Cade replies, ' Ye sliali have hempen caudle 
 then, and the helpe of hatchet.' Better sense could not 
 be wished : nor do we see how^ it could be improved in 
 any respect. Cade promises that his Lordship's diseases 
 shall be administcred-to ; he shall have hemp-caudle 
 and hatchet-cure : and if it be thought that Cade's snudl 
 wit intended a poor (piibble here, here it may be found 
 for the seeking ; cord may be suspected under caudle, 
 and helre under helpe, Avith a side-glance at the saying
 
 The Groicth of tJic E)iglisJL luiuguage. 
 
 31 
 
 ' to throw tlie helve after the liatchet.' But thefe is no 
 occasion for this rcfiiicincnt of jest to he found in tlie 
 j);iysage. Now let us see what the critics have said 
 about it. Farmer, \\\\\\ an eye to the hitter pini, i)r()- 
 l)0sed to read pup for hdi), and adoi)ts ' of a hatchet ' 
 from tlie lolio 1(');32 ; which reading Steevens and 
 Ivitson admiringly ap[)rove, the former saying, 'The 
 help of a hatchet is little better than nonsense.' But 
 the sense, notwithstanding, is perfect. Cade proposed to 
 cure Lord Say's sicknesses by the aid of ' the sure phy- 
 sician death', by giving him the rope or the axe. 
 Tiie article inserted by the editor of the second Folio 
 is an impertinence. In the cliti. Sonnet, we have : 
 
 I, sick withal, the liclp of hatli dfsircd. 
 
 How poor were the sound had he written, ' the helj) of a 
 bath.' lie meant there bath-cure : so in the former 
 case he meant hatchet-cure. Finally, ^Ir A. E. Brae (in 
 the work lately cited, p. 150) proposed to substitute liele 
 for help in this place also. Pap, helve, and heJe agree 
 in this : they carry double : each may refer to ;i part of 
 the hatchet, as well as to Lord Say's regunen. But they 
 also agree in being impertinent, inasmuch as help in the 
 sense of healing is a perfectly satisfactory reading. 
 
 The fatality spoken of is not confined to the Coniedg 
 of Error.% and 2 llenrg IT. In All's Well I hat Enti^ 
 Well, i. 3, we read. 
 
 He and his j)hysicians 
 Arc of a iiiiiid ; lie, that they caiuioL htip him, 
 Thev, that Ihev cannot JtcJi).
 
 32 The Still Lion. 
 
 W. Sidney Walter suggests (with considerable doubt, 
 however,) that heal should supersede the second heljy ; 
 and the late Mr Samuel Bailey, in contravention of a 
 recognised and accepted canon, would abolish it in 
 favour of cure ! Once again in 2 Ileurj/ VI., ii. 1, w^e 
 have : 
 
 Come, offer at my shrine, and I will help thee j 
 where both Walker and Bailey read heal for heljj.
 
 33 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ox Tlir, COHUUPT AND OBSCURE WOUlJS IN SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 T will he perceived tliat //<"//;, and //fal, or 
 hcdllli, are not mere alternative forms of 
 spelling one "vvord ; that in fact we have 
 passed from the case of two such forms to that in 
 which the orthographies belong to two words, coincident 
 in one, at least, of their several significations. Help and 
 heal are twim, separal)le as distinct words, yet having 
 the features of a common parent. In Shakespeare we 
 lind hk'cih^W'X bleat (balare) ; hreak and hreaeh (ruptio) ; 
 mnlce and mate (consors) ; plait and pleac/i (intevtus) ; 
 and ill other writers attach and attack (nianuni inicere); 
 bak and bat (vespertilio); moke, mote, and moth (hlatta) ; 
 ([iiilk and quilt (culcita) ; reckless and retchless (temerari- 
 us) ; where each pair or set of symbols are equivalents 
 of one and the same word. But words which had once 
 a strictly equivalent usage sometimes grow into sv- 
 nonyms having differences, or even to become the signs 
 of distinct words :' e.g'.' bleak, black, and bleach ,• dole and 
 deal : list and lifst ; marrow and marry, kn. ; to which 
 with qualitication may be added such pairs or sets of 
 
 3
 
 n 
 
 4 T/ic St ill Lion. 
 
 words as laikc, trafc/i, and icail ; ward and guard, &c. 
 Then, to crown the work, they may receive some 
 modification of form by association with cognate, or 
 even incognate signs. In this way is the balance of 
 change maintained ; for otherwise the loss, through the 
 inaccurate or careless use of words, would soon enfeeble 
 
 and debase the lan2:naQ:e to such an extent, that its 
 literature would corny to aii end, through failure of the 
 very means of expression. 
 
 Such considerations, Vith a multitude of others 
 which wc cannot set forth in this essay, are of the 
 greatest importance in the criticism of the text of 
 Shakespeare, particuUirly where Ave have to determine 
 whether a word Ije interpretable as it stands, or a cor- 
 ruption demanding emendation. 
 
 The risk of applying conjectural criticism to the 
 Still Lion increases as Ave proceed Avith our subject. 
 Under apparently nonsensical Avords and phrases often 
 lurk a sense and intelligence tlie most ' express and 
 admirable.' Scarcely a year passes over our heads but 
 ncAV light, radiating from Elizabethan lore, shines into 
 some ' dark passage ' Avhich the commentator Avith his 
 * farthing candle ' has carefully shunned, or the con- 
 jectural critic, Avith his ingenuity and felicity, has tinkered 
 again and again, and still in vain. An old author, 
 Avriting of the latter, says, ' Hee is the Surgeon of old 
 Authors, and heales the Avounds of dust and ignorance ' 
 {J\Ucro-Comio(jraphic, 1628, § 35). If he did, it AA^ould 
 be hard to denounce him for probing them. The com-
 
 Corrupt and Obscure Words in Shakespeare, ^ih 
 
 plaint, liou'cver, is just this, tliat he docs not lieal tlieni. 
 His surgery not unfre([ucntly is butcliery ; hut of tliu 
 healing art he knows as little as a harljer-surgeon. 
 There is an old 'jeast' ot" such a one wiio, having to 
 shave a customer, fell to cursing, because he cut his 
 thumb, which he had put in his ])atient's cheek to 
 force it out tense and tirm. Happily Shakespearian 
 barber-surgeons sometimes do this too, and, sadder 
 or wiser by experience, handle their author with more 
 feel in*]; for the future, or leave him alone. But though 
 some notable cures have been performed, notwithstand- 
 ing, by the regulars of criticism ; there yet remain, 
 after all, a number of corrupt places which have per- 
 sistently failed to profit by the expurgation of criticism. 
 Of single words thus situated there are some thirty 
 which thus get referred to the category of imiuorlal 
 nonsense. These, like the finest passages in Shake- 
 speare, receive their share of homage. 
 
 rirst, as to textual difhculties atfecting single words. 
 Here are a sheaf of these ' ugly customers,' with most of 
 whom every conscientious editor has had a mortal 
 struggle, in which he was usually defeated. 
 
 AU'heires, Merry Wives of ^^ill(l- C/itiiuje-honse. Love's Labours 
 
 sor, ii. 1. Lost, v. L 
 
 *Ann-gnu»t. Antony and Cleo- Cars. 'J^welftli Night, ii. 5. 
 
 patra, i. 5. Ci/me. Macbeth, v. 3. 
 
 Aroint Macbeth, i. 3. Lear, l^Kcdaute. As You Like It, ii. 5. 
 
 iii. 4. ' JJmiy. Antony and Ck'opalia, 
 
 liarlfL Macbeth, i. (5. v. 2. 
 
 Bone. Timon of Athens, ill. 5. EiiqurickquticI,: ronokmis. ii. L
 
 36 The Still Lion, 
 
 Esil. Haiiik't. Scamels. Tempest, ii. 1. 
 
 Land-damn. Winter's Tale, ii. 1. Skams-mates. Romeo and Juliet, 
 Onci/e):s. 1 lien. IV., ii. 1. ii. 1. 
 
 Paiocke. Hamlet, iii. 2. Struchi/. Twelfth Niglit, ii. 5. 
 
 Frcnzie. Measure for Measure, Vllorxa. Tiraon of Athens, iii. 
 
 iii. 1 4. 
 
 Jiimaicays. Romeo and Juliet, iii. 2. Yaiighan. Hamlet, v. 1. 
 
 From the penultimate word we will call the entire 
 class Jjllorxah. 
 
 AVe must allow, at the outset, that few of these 
 strange words are utterly hopeless ; that one or two will 
 trouble no one's peace any longer ; and that some bid 
 fair to justify themselves, or to reveal, through their cor- 
 ruption, the true words which, owing to the blunder of 
 reader, writer, or compositor, suffered this perversion. 
 One can hardly doubt that aroint is a true word, though 
 it has been often attacked and defended with great 
 pertinacity, ingenuity, and learning. But, though a tnie 
 word, its exact sense or root-meaning has not been 
 ascertained. It has been thought to mean, he off, from 
 the A. S. : and either ^^^Z" thee heJiind, or break thy back, 
 from the French. But anyhow, the phrase, rynt thee, 
 occurs in an old proverb.* Barlet was corrected by the 
 editor of the folio 1632 ; it is a press-error for martlet. 
 Cyme seems to be a misprint for ceve, an obsolete form 
 of senna. Arm-yaunt is assuredly a misjorint ; for if such 
 
 * Mrs Brow 11 ill ti^ has, 
 
 ' Whisker'd cats arointed floe,' 
 and we obseiTe in the Animal World, vol. v., p. 2.3. 
 
 'What wonder that the vermin fled aroinled.' ■
 
 Corrupt and Obscure words in SJiakcspeare. 3 7 
 
 a word was ever applied to a horse in the sense o^ (jai//if 
 in the forequarterx, such a liorse woukl be in Sliake- 
 speare's phrase, Hlmiddrr-xlioflcn -. and most certainly An- 
 tony's high-bred cliarger could not have been that, Surely 
 firrof/anf, ran/pdinil, or tanuaf/atnit is a more likely correc- 
 tion than arm-f/trt, which has been confidently j)r()pose(l : 
 but /Kj.stro jttdlcio, termaf/ant would be a poor, it" n(jt an 
 ina[)pro{)riate ei)ithet for the charger. Cliarye-liome is, 
 almost certainly, C/inrcti-Iio}/-se, and the mis-spelling mav 
 be intentional to indicate the pronunciation, just as, in 
 Mucli Ado About Nothing, Dogberry's tosses may liave 
 been intended for taw-mits. On the other hand, was 
 there ever such a word as cJiart/e house, for domns nitra- 
 tionls ? Scanicls has hitherto presented an irreducible 
 crux, and ten substitutes for it have been proposed. But 
 we are happy to be aljle to state tliat at length it has 
 proved its title to its prescriptive place in the text. In 
 Norfolk, a scauwl is the nauie for the female yj/r/: .- this 
 being the male of Limosa rufa, or the Bar-tailed God wit. 
 (See Stevenson's Birds of Norfotk, vol. ii. p. 260.) Still, 
 we are not aware of such birds frequenting the rocks for 
 breeding. Esd is either Eijsetl (i.e. vinegar, or worm- 
 wood-wine), or the name of a Danish river (Ysset). Bone, 
 one of the most senseless corruptions in all Shakespeare, 
 escaped unchallenged, strange to say, till Mr Staunton 
 made two guesses at it in his edition of Shakespeare. 
 It appears to be a misprint for bed, the termination one 
 (instead of ed) having been caught from onidii or IVom 
 none in the same line. Assuredlv it was lliere^ and there
 
 38 The Still Lion. 
 
 only, tliJit Alcibiades would liave wislicd to prolong the 
 lives of the senators, -who were already prepared by their 
 servile imbecility for being put away out of sight. Of 
 r/inaica?/s we shall have somewhat to sav hereafter. 
 Guesses enow have been made at the words for which 
 the rest in our sheaf may have been press-errors : but 
 with tlie exception of Empiricliqntick, skains-mates, 
 and Yaiifjliav, they all remain to this day shrouded in 
 hopeless o])scurity. As to these three, Yaur/haii may 
 be a proper-name ; and if such a name be not found 
 in records of the time, it may well be a misprint for 
 Vaughan : which w^ould be the tapster's name. Hkain, 
 Mr Staunton tells us, used to be heard in the Isle of 
 Thanet, in the sense of scapegrace ; but we do not 
 agree with him that this fact removes all difficulty 
 with the word. .Empirickqufick till the advent of 
 the Perkins-imposture, was always turned into evijriric 
 or enipirick, and, we think, rightly so. It seems clear 
 that EiiipiricJcq/click belongs to a very definite class 
 of misprints, which we may call (hiplicative. Here 
 are a few examples of the class, observed by the 
 writer : — Jicspectivective iov respective, in the office-copy 
 of a will : axioniomata for axiomata, in Whewell's Fhilo- 
 wjyJi// of Discoveri/, 1860, p. 1 14 : puriritie ior puritie^ 
 in the first folio of Shakespeare. And still more to the 
 purpose is the following : ' the whiche * * they ad- 
 judged for prono^tiqKyJni^ and tokens of the Kynges 
 deth : ' in Fabyan's Chronicle, vol. i. c. 240 : where the 
 woviX prono8iiqi/pkf/!>; is a misprint ior pronoHfiqnes. This
 
 Co}-nipt and Obscure luords in Sliakcspcare. 39 
 
 is an error of near kin to Empiru-l-qafick ; and exein{)li- 
 tics tlie tendenrv of wi-iters and compositors to repeat 
 some syllabic in a word which is susccptil)lc of two forms 
 of spelling: as, in this case, witii a ([11, or a ck. Jn prac- 
 tice we have often found ourselves anticipating the term- 
 inal consonants of the next word, in the one we happened 
 to be writing : as make work for may work ; make fijjcak 
 for may yjcak ; and so forth : and in the first edition of 
 The Still Lion, at p. ~()9 of the JaJrrbiic/i, the former 
 error of writing was actually made in the copy, and set 
 up, without being subsequently detected : whereby a 
 second misprint was grafted upon a line in the Tempc-sf, 
 as if in compensation for losing the one v.'e had it in 
 hand to expose and correct. So it came to pass that the 
 very page containing our remarks on duplicative errors, 
 presented an example of the very kind. Of the residue of 
 the words in our sheaf, all of which are mere printer's 
 sphinx-riddles, d/icdamc (which, like aroint nnd prenzie, 
 has the distinguished honour of occurring several times 
 in the text of Shakespeare) has been regarded as a 
 nonsensical refrain ; and in support of that view j\Ir J . 
 (). Phillips (Ilalliwcll) cites, from the burden of an old 
 song, dusadam-me-me. But such refrains are connnon 
 enough ; and if one could oidy be sure that dncdame is 
 no more than such a refrain, one Moultl not be solicitous 
 about its pedigree. Allowing it to be such a refrain, 
 and therefore one in which no meaning would be looked 
 for, is it likely that Amiens would ha\ e been made to 
 show such solicitude about it ? Had it l)ccn, for instance.
 
 40 The Siill Lion. 
 
 ■iIaH-di/n/-ciUii-(/(ni, thrice I'epcated, would Shakespeare 
 have made liiiii ask Jacques, ' Wliat's that ckm-dyry- 
 cmii-ilcui?' Surelv not. ,. , 
 
 To conclude this chapter, Ave add five petty Ullorx- 
 als, which demand and admit of a simple remedy : 
 
 ' weaiit damnable.' — AU'h Well fliaf EihIh WcU,\w. 3: 
 read, with Hanmer, most (moast). 
 
 'path thy native semblance on.' — J/rlitfs Casar, ii. 1 : 
 read, with Coleridge, put. 
 
 ' As thick as talc.'' — Macbeth, i. 3 : read, with Howe, 
 liail. 
 
 'pith and moment.' '^ Hamlet, iii. 1 
 
 ' When our dee}) plots do pall: \ and v. 2 : 
 read, with the 4tos, /;//r// uud faJi.
 
 41 
 
 CIIAPTEK III. 
 
 ON THE Ull I'lClLT PIIUASKS IN SHAKESPEARE, AND 
 THE DAN(;ER <)V TA:\rPKUTN(! WITH THEM. 
 
 IT t]w critic is in {]aHi!;cr of nssHHiino:, on in- 
 snfficient evidence, tluit not a word onlv, 
 l)ut an entire sentence, owes its obscnrity to 
 the corruption of words by scribes and printers. It is 
 convenient to consider j)]n'a^es under three heads : 
 ?r//ow.s% idiot i.s 11/ ■•<, and idin.sntx : Avhich may lie l)rief]y 
 explained as follows : — 
 
 All livinp; languages are in a state of continuous 
 change. Not only do words fall into disuse, and others 
 accrue to the general stock, not only do the orthographic- 
 al forms in which thev are i)rcsented to the eve nTideriro 
 change, but each several word is ever more or less 
 changing its meaning, both in scope ;nul in force. 
 Some words (like -v////, ficmrc) ohtiin a signification 
 directly contrary to their former meaning ; or (like lei, 
 prevcnl) retain two conti-fu-y meanings at once. Others 
 (like k/iarp, piece, leird) pass from a respectable to a 
 disreputable sense ; while of Ir-i's (liki.' I/hertf/, jjraclur.
 
 42 TJie Still Lion. 
 
 occupy,^^ conveij) tlirow off' tlicir disreputable association, 
 and become honourable symbols of speech. The literal 
 sense of some gives way to the figurative, and, perhaps 
 more rarely, the reverse ; and a word which has done 
 duty as one part of speech becomes another. But not 
 only do words thus change ; but all kinds of expression 
 Avritten and spoken change also. The normal affinities 
 of parts of speech constitute the idiom : the singular 
 phrase, v.hich does not conform to the idiomatic con- 
 struction, is the idiutiism. There remain phrases and 
 "words peculiar to some creative writer ; these we call 
 idiasms (1^)10.0- ixo'i). Thus it appears that the idiom is 
 a regular, the idiotlsm a proverbial, and the idiasm. a 
 private and peculiar mode of phraseology. At present 
 we shall confine our remarks to complete sentences, and 
 the changes and corruptions of sentences ; passing by 
 that intermediate class of corruptions which involve 
 several words, but not an entire phrase. 
 .. ,The idioms of a language change, but slowly, under 
 dialectical and colloquial influences ; and apart from 
 those influences, scarcely change at all. But idiotisms 
 are constantly slipping out as pedantries, and creeping 
 in as slang. Shakespeare's works, like all the literature 
 of his day, as might be expected, contain many idioms 
 which bv this time have become obsolete or dead. The 
 worst of it is, that we read him so much, and with so 
 
 * ' A captain ! TIipsr villains will mako the word " captain " as 
 odious as the word " occupy ", which was an excellent good word before 
 it was ill-sorted.' — 2 Jlen. IF., ii. 4. This word is now restored to 
 its old respectability.
 
 Difficult Phrases I'ji Shakespeare. 43 
 
 little Jipproprinte knowledge and stendv rcflertioii, that 
 We get habituated to the look and souiul (^f his ])hi-asc- 
 ologv, and come at last to think wc understand it, inis- 
 taking the familiar I'or the intelligii)le. The same has 
 come to pass of the Authorised A'ersion of the Holy 
 Scriptures. Such an idiom as is involved in the sen- 
 tence, ' I do the [thee] to wytene [uiulcrstand] that it 
 is made be [by] enchauntement,' in Maundevile's VouKje 
 and Travaih (.\.i). 132~-4G), is as dead as a door-nail : 
 yet we liave the same, ' We do you to Avit of the grace 
 of God,' in the A. V. ; and we read this over and over 
 again, and get so used to it, that it comes upon us as 
 the voice of an old familiar friend, while it is as unin- 
 telligible as iHi unknown tongue, and was obsolescent 
 when King James' Bible was first printed. How often, 
 too, have we read the lines in Hamlet, v. r2, 
 
 Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon, 
 
 * *> * * ist not perfect conscience, 
 
 To quit him with tliis ann ? 
 
 but to how many readers is this idiotism intellis-ible ? 
 For one thing, tluit passage is absurdly pointed in most 
 editions of the play ; the true construction being, that the 
 idiotism in question governs the iniinitive, ' To quit (re- 
 quite) him with this arm.' The same expression is em- 
 ployed in three other places in Shakespeare : x'vl. Rich. 
 II. ii. 3 ; Ricli. III. iv. :2 ; and Anloui/ and Cleopatra, ii. 
 1. See also Boniro and Juliet, ii. 3 (' I stand on sudden 
 haste ' — but Avhicli is not identical with the expression 
 in question). It is usually explained correctly in ;m-
 
 44 The Still Lion. 
 
 Rotated editions ; but the editors satisfy themselves by 
 ([noting from other parts of Shakespeare in ilhistration 
 of it. AVe give two contemporary examples from other 
 works : .,.,,.. 
 
 Then t.liey are worthy to be haiiged eternally in Hel, tliat will not 
 most gladly, * * * come to heare the eternall God the King of 
 heaven hiniselfe speake, who doth pronouuee, &c., Sic. . . . which to 
 heare, marke, remember, and observe, it stands us upon. — Lupton's Too 
 good to be trite, 1580, p. 25. 
 
 It was concealed, and therefore stands upon, 
 Whether through our advice you will be saved, 
 Or in his beastly entrails be en-graved. 
 
 Cupid and Psyche, by Shakerley Marmion, 1637. 
 
 Again, how often have we read that inimitable scene 
 in 2 Heji. IV. i. 2, where FalstafF says of his mercer, 
 
 A wlioreson Achitophel ! a rascally yea-forsooth knave ! to hear a 
 gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security. 
 
 This idiotism also occurs in six other places in 
 Shakespeare : viz. The Taming of the Shrew, iv. 2 ; 
 Much Ado About Nothing, iv. 1. ; Measure for Measure, 
 i. 5 ; (hjniheline, v. 5 ; Macbeth, iii. 1 ; Hamlet, ii. 2, 
 Examples of this are commoner m Elizabethan literature, 
 than of the former. Here are five : 
 
 There be many diseases in the bodies of men and beasts which he 
 [the Devil] seeth will breake foorth unto lamenesse or unto death, he 
 bearetli the Witches in hand he doth them. 
 
 Gifiard's Dialogue Concernintj TFitcJtes and Witchcraft, 1603. Ep. 
 
 jAnd yet much worse is it to make them to mary by striving and 
 hate, threatning, and sute : as when they goe to lawe together, the man 
 tior the woman, bearing her in Jiand that shee is liis wife : — Vives' In- 
 struction of a Christian JJ'onian (R. Hyrd), 15!)2. Sig. N 2.
 
 Difficult Phrases in Shakespeare. 45 
 
 And as for the manner of bis Apostacv or backslidinfr, the priest 
 hiniscUV, nay the partiu himselfe, nay we our selves know to be faiTe 
 otherwise then they wouUle faine here beare us in hand. — Kacster, 
 1598, hist page. 
 
 And againe, those which being hitlierto borne in hande that men's 
 soules returne againe on earih, * * * will confesse the like. — 
 Of Ghontes and SpiriteH, 1596. To the deader. 
 
 Salomon teacheth us to chasten children with the rod, and so to 
 make them stand in awe : he doth not say, we must beare them in hand 
 they shall be devoured of Bugges, Hags of the night, and such like 
 monsters. IbnL, p. 21. 
 
 (It also occurs at pp. 27, 31, 32, 53, 187, 210, and 
 211 of this curious and instructive treatise, which is a 
 translation of the AvcU-knou'n work, De Lemurihm, of 
 Lavaterus ; and it is connnon in Ben Jonson, Heywood, 
 and the early dramatists.) The ])hrase is of great an- 
 tiquity. The earliest example that has come under our 
 notice is in Drant's Horace s Sat. (Sig. A ii.) 15GG, but 
 is there in the form to hold one in hand, in the sense of 
 permade, simply. As to the meaning of these idiot- 
 isms, To stand upon is to be incumbent on. To bear in 
 hand is to inspire misplaced confidence or belief. 
 
 It were easy to multi})ly to any extent examples of 
 obsolete idiotisms : for further illustration take these 
 four : to die and live tjij a thing ; to remember one's 
 courtesi/ ; to cr// on a thine/ ; to cri/ game ; all of which 
 have been mercilessly handled by the editors and com- 
 mentators. In cases where a few examples of the phrase 
 have been discovered in contemporary literature the 
 love of emendation has vielded to the force of evidence.'
 
 4-6 -;■ ^^^^' Still Lion. 
 
 AVliere that evidence cannot be adduced the suspected 
 phrase falls an easy prey to ' conjectural felicity,' i.e. 
 to barbarous innovation. 
 
 The slow and comparatively slight changes Avhich 
 the true idioms of the language have undergone, do, in 
 fact, occasion the critic no difficulty. The expression 
 No is? (for Is nof ?), No did? No have ? is a totally 
 obsolete idiom ; one instance of which occurs in Shaker^ 
 speare, viz. in King Jului, iv. 2, where ' No had ' of the 
 Polio has been usually altered into Had none. (See 
 Notes and Queries, 1st S. vii. 520 & 598.) The use of 
 the relative absolute (with active or neuter participles) 
 was in use as late as Locke : at least three instances of it 
 are in Shakespeare : viz. two in Tlie Tempest, i. 2 (' JF/i(i 
 havinn, &c., he did believe,' &c, , ' A, ,Boble Neapolitan, 
 &c., icho being, &c., did give us '), and one in Loves 
 
 Labours Lost, i. 1 (' Who dazdlncj so, that eye shall be,' 
 &c.), in the first of which the seeming solecism has given 
 occasion to several emendations. The suppression of the 
 relative as subject was almost as normal a usage as its 
 expression ; and in some half-dozen places in Shaker 
 speare, where such is the construction, the text has been 
 conjecturally altered./. But, above all other peculiarities 
 of the Elizabethan idiom was that of inflectional conjuga- 
 tion, e.g. the use of the third person plural in s or thy 
 which in the case of Shakespeare has been almost always 
 regarded as a grammatical inaccuracy ! Some pritics 
 have gone so far as to reflect on Shakespeare's imperfect 
 education, and to attempt the poor joke, that if, as Mr
 
 DiffuiiU Phrases in Skakcspearc. 47 
 
 Hjilliwell asserts, he did go to Stratford Grunimar 
 School, he must have learnt anything but grammar! 
 Another explains the apparent irregularities in Shake- 
 speare by the supposition that ' the thought blew the 
 language to shivers', which, it appears, is a natural cha- 
 racteristic of literary Genius I Accordingly it has been 
 deemed an act of kindness to cure him of those defects. 
 So it has happened that the editors have corrected his 
 grammar, as well as modernized his spelling; but in 
 doing this they have betrayed an amount of ignorance 
 for which thev would not otherwise have had the dis- 
 credit. The Still Lion has been amply avenged 
 
 ON HIS FOES. 
 
 After all that a sound knowledge of English Lite- 
 rature and of the evolution of tlic English Language, 
 with the concnrrence of conjectural skill, can effect in 
 vindicating and restoring the genuine text of Shake- 
 speare, there still remain a number of corruptions which, 
 like the Ullorxals, are mere printers' Sphinx-riddles. 
 These, however, unlike the Ullorxals, consist of several 
 entire words, and are cases not so much of corrupt 
 words as of corru})t phrases ; and, while it is possible 
 that some of these are pure idiasms, it is nuich more 
 probable that they are idiotisms of the time or textual 
 corruptions. Among this nuiiierous family are the fol- 
 lowing, which will serve as samples of tlie class : 
 
 1. T see that meu Jiiak'; ro])os in such a ^searrc 
 
 That we'll forsake ourselves. 
 
 AlVs TFtll that Ends TFell, iv. 2.
 
 4^ The Still Lion. 
 
 2. It is as lawful, 
 For we would count give much to as violent thefts 
 
 And rnh in X\w l)chali"()t" rliarity. — Trailiis aiirl Crcssirla. v. 3. 
 
 3. luosl luonslcr-likc, be shewn 
 
 For poor's! diminutives, lor doUs ; 
 
 A)d<Jiii) and (Jkojjutra, iv. 10. 
 ...,.t;! ■ 
 
 4. The dram of ealc ' 
 
 Doth all the noble substance of a doubt 
 To his own scandal. — Ilamlel, i. 4. 
 
 5. That I had no angry wit to be a lord, 
 
 Tiiiion of Atli-('us, i. 1. 
 
 6. I Avould they would forget nie, like the virtues 
 "Which our divines lose by 'em. — Coriolauus, ii. 3, 
 
 Prom the first of these examples, I call the family 
 liojje-scarres. In dealing with these the success of the 
 critic has been infinitesimallv small. We are indebted to 
 the collations in the Cambridge Edition of Shakespeare 
 (supplemented by two conjectures, one by the late Rev, 
 Dr Wellesley, and one by ourselves) for the nimibers in 
 the following table. If these numbers do not fairly repre- 
 sent the relative difficulty of these passages, they will at 
 least testifv to the absolute difficultv of all, and of the 
 ill success that has rewarded criticism. It should be 
 borne in jnind here, that to the obscurity of the passage 
 must be added the dulness of the critic. The difficultv 
 may lie, as it often does in fa(;t, as much in the percep- 
 tions of the recipient, as in the obscurity of the phrase- 
 ology to be received. 
 
 •iO conjectures.. 
 
 1, 
 
 19 conjectures. 
 
 4, 
 
 •iO 
 
 3, 
 
 15 
 
 5, 
 
 1.5 
 
 3, 
 
 •^ 
 
 6, 
 
 6
 
 DiJficuU Phrases ul S/iakcspcarc. 49 
 
 It would l)c a tliaiikless task to specify the actual 
 nuinhcf of Kope-scarres in the entire text of Shake- 
 speare. The list is considerable : l)ut to our mind, the 
 wonder is that tlie te\t is, on the whole, so free from 
 misprisions and dislocations. Wlien we consider the 
 misprints which disliy;ure modern Ijooks, even those 
 which have received tlie most vigihint and jealous super- 
 vision, l)oth of Editor and of l\ca(k'r, it is to he expected 
 that, at a time when printing was not conducted on so 
 iiietiiodical a plan as at present, and when important 
 works were generally issued without any regular edito- 
 rial supervision, the first Edition of Shakespeare should 
 exhibit a harvest of typographical casualties. On the 
 whole we are disposed to regard that edition as being 
 quite as free from typographical errors as the majority of 
 dramatic works of that time. ]Moreover, we are con- 
 vinced that much of the obstinate intractability of these 
 Kopc-scarres is due to the intermixture of obsolete 
 ])hrases, Shakespearian idiasms, or forgotten allusions, 
 with certain typographical errors; so that it is not sur- 
 prishig that the mere conjectural critic should find him- 
 self unable to set thcni right bv the mere exercise of his 
 ingenuity and taste.
 
 50 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN EXAMINx\TION AND DEFENSE OF CERTAIN WORDS AND 
 PHRASES IN SHAKESPEARE, WHICH HAVE SUFFERED 
 THE WRONGS OF EMENDATION. 
 
 HE three foregoing chapters are hitencled rather 
 for warniHg than for the value of the criticisms 
 which they contain. Let iis now apply our- 
 selves to a selection of passages, which have received- 
 the doubtful benefit of conjectural emendation. Our 
 Avarning has been somewhat prolix ; but our best excuse 
 ^vill be found in the treatment to Avhich portions of the 
 text of Shakespeare have been subjected at the hands of 
 his censors and critics. So capricious arc the objections 
 preferred against particular words and phrases, that it is 
 a sheer impossibility to anticipate them. Accordingly 
 tlie antiquarian of the English Language, v>ho essays the 
 vindication of the old text, labours under an immense dis- 
 advantage. To learn the acknowledged peculiarities and 
 difficulties of that text is a labovu- of love ; and to store 
 them up and retain all the salient points of Shakespeare's 
 l)hraseology in an ever ready and ]i\e\\' memory, is but 
 a liglit prelude to the business that is to follow. With
 
 Defense of Coiaiii Words and Phrases. 51 
 
 these matters ever consciously befoi-e him — ' full of eyes 
 before and behind' — the critic wades through a huge 
 store of the literature of the Kith and 17th centuries, 
 notin{^ down every word, ])hrnse, and allusion, which 
 can by any possibility throw light on the text of his 
 venerated author. This is the toil which has been 
 achieved by all the leading editors fi-oni Steevens to 
 Dyce, with w few exceptions, which it is as well to for- 
 get. Fit propcnedcutic is such a course of study and 
 discipline to the more genial and graceful duties of 
 verbal criticism ! The labour achieved, the prelindnary 
 requirement complied with at the cost of much time and 
 effort, some vain reader, of blissful ignorance but of 
 lively fancy, conceives a liking for what he pleasantly* 
 regaixls as the (jamc of critieism, and rushes into the^ 
 columns of some periodical, sueli as the AihenceimK or 
 Nofes and Queries, to proclaim with flourish of trum- 
 pets a new reading. His conjecture is, as a matter of 
 course, described as ' an undoubted restoration of a 
 passage which has for two centuries and a half defied 
 exposition or correction I ' Then follows, equally as a 
 matter of course, the discovery of a mare's nest. The 
 Avould-bc critic has mistaken the sense of a passage both 
 well known and perfectly understood ; whei-eupon he 
 proposes whnt he takes for a }w\\ conjecture, but which 
 in many cases is an old and not very creditable ac- 
 quaintance, whose familiar features may be seen recorded 
 in some Variortnu fiorfus S'icc?/.?, midcr the sanction of a 
 venerable name. In a few of such cases it is no great
 
 .■)- 
 
 2 The Still Lion, 
 
 tax ()\\ tlic antiquarian to produce his autliority for 
 adherinu: to the old text -. hut wliere there are so many 
 ' Richnionds in the fiehl ', one naturally and reasonably 
 grudges the superfluous labour of vindicating what had 
 never been injuriously assailed. He rightly feels that 
 faith in the prodigious learning of a AVulker or a Dyce 
 is a simple duty with learners ; and that for them to 
 put a word or phrase on its trial merely because they 
 ' don't seem to see it ', is an impertinence, against which 
 every well-informed and competent editor would jea- 
 lously guard his columns. In some cases, however, the 
 vindication of a challenged expression in Shakespeare is 
 inconclusive, bv reason of the verv absurditv of the 
 challenge. We have more than once seen an expression 
 denounced as senseless, which assuredly had never occa- 
 sioned the slightest difficuhv witli anv one ; and for this 
 very reason, no critic had ever thought it worth while 
 to register the instances of its use which had occurred 
 in the course of his reading. AVe ourselves have noticed 
 a peculiarity of language occurring over and over again, 
 of which we did not stop to record a single example, 
 because its employment b\ Shakespeare had never pro- 
 voked remark, and seemed unable to afl'ord a foothold 
 for suspicion. Yet we have lived to see the passage in 
 which it occurred obelized as an ' nnsus])ected corrup- 
 tion ', and to find ourselves incapacitated, through the 
 want of superhuman prescience, for the work of vindi- 
 cation. It is impo.ssible to stop every cranny against
 
 Defense of Cerlain ]Vords and Phrases. ^-^ 
 
 tli(> jiggression of n mis])l;ico(l ingenuity, which ' infects 
 unseen', and coi-iiipts ihc text it seems to ivstore. 
 
 As tlie inquiry we are about to institute is 'of t]:c 
 (hist dusty' in its extreme (h-yne^s and in the anticiuity 
 
 t ( 1 *- 
 
 of th:.' literature wliici) will illustrate it, we will pre- 
 iaee it with ii couple of relevant anecdotes. As both 
 are derived from the store of our forgetive friend Mr 
 J'erkins-Ireland, we will not vouch for their literal 
 truth. ]le tells us that a literary bore of his acquaint- 
 ance came to him one day with a [)ocket edition of 
 Shakespeare, in which a well-known line in Kinq John 
 thus stood : 
 
 ' ]>ell, Bookc, and Caudle shall not coxme ine back.' 
 
 The bore was swelled with the importance of a critical 
 discovery: his ' business looked out of him'. 'A re- 
 storation!' he trium])hantly exclaimed, pointing to the 
 line, in which over the antepemdt lie had written the 
 word, cKi'se. ' Course,' said he decisively, ' is a misprint 
 for ctirsc' Mr Perkins-Ireland was taken aback by the 
 apparent felicity of the conjecture; but promptly asked 
 his friend for his ])roofs. Thereupon the bore produced 
 an extract from page 17 of Lupton's Too /jood to he irve 
 (an ominous title I), which ran thus : 
 
 'The best thiiij,' (he Pope can do is to curse hira out again, with 
 15(1, Bookc, aiul Candle.' 
 
 This he followed tq) with another from i)age .0:3 of 
 Armtus Seven Pif/nef-^ Govcrnhx/ ffalle.
 
 54 ^'/^<" Sfil/ Lion, 
 
 ' Then roares the bulles worse then tlvc Basan host, 
 "Whilst Belles and bookes and caudles curses boast.' . 
 
 This he was following up with others : when Mr Per- 
 kius-Ireland stopped him, and pointed out that one thing- 
 was yet unproved, that curse was ever spelt course. Ttije 
 bore was indignant at so discomforting a requisition, 
 which he naturally regarded as unreasonable -. for if 
 course was just curse under an archaic orthography, the 
 credit to l>e awarded to the bore was of a very different 
 kind, he thought of an inferior kind, to tliat he clainied : 
 he would be no longer the emender, but the exponent 
 of the word in the text. But Avhethcr he would or uo, 
 the thing was virtually done for him: for Mr Perkins- 
 Ireland himself found course spelt curse in Leland, 
 scourge spelt scur/je in Richard Hyrde, so he frankly 
 owned that his friend had, at least, invested the passage 
 in Kh)f/ John with a new and most admirable sense. 
 Their tiiumphal rejoicings, however; were of very shoi-t 
 duration. Fortunately, before breaking u]) the confer- 
 ence, Mr Perkins-Ireland, with his well-known caution, 
 had the prudence to turn to his Variorum. There, to 
 his and his friend's astonishment, he found the line in 
 King John printed thus, 
 
 ' T)f'll, I'ook and Cntidlc shall !!f)t flrirp. inc bark ; ' 
 
 and so it stood in lialf-a-dozcn otlicr editions at hand. 
 Obviously his friend's pocket-edition was, at least in 
 that line, raispi-inted ; and he departed chap-fallen at 
 this new discovery, tluit he had been bringing his
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases, 55 
 
 eritical resources to hcnr 011 a word ^v]li(■ll was not in 
 Shakespeare's text ! 
 
 That's not a l)a(l anecdote : l)iit here's a l)etter. 
 Both eiitbrce the lesson, * k)ok before you leap'. It 
 is as dangerons to criticize a passage without consulting 
 the context, as it is to do so withont vei-ifving it. Mr 
 l^erkins-Ireland was the critic in this case, lie was 
 reading Much Ado About Nothiuf/, ii. 1 (another ominous 
 title !), when he came upon the passage, 
 
 'and then comes repentance, and, with liis bad h'g's, falls inlo the 
 ciuqne-pace faster and faster, till he sink [apace] into his grave.' 
 
 The addition of apace was made hy his cousin, Mr 
 Thomas Perkins, of Folio IfiS.^ celebrity; and ]\Ir 
 Perkins-Ireland thougjht it eminently ino;enious. ' But,' 
 
 O I/O ■' 
 
 said he to himself, ' What is the meaning of cinque- 
 pace ? Surely it must be some sort of disease : in fact 
 the Avhole passage reminds one of FalstafF's def/rees of 
 sickness and wickedness, which \\\y cousin Thomas so 
 rashly altered into diseases.' Thereupon he took down 
 his copy of Andrew Boord's Breviarie of llecdih, and to 
 his delight found a disease called the Sinkopis, the de- 
 scription of which accorded admirably with the descrip- 
 tion of Repentance ' with his bad legs ', sinking into his 
 graye. It is not to be wondered at that he believed 
 himself to have hit upon a capital emendation. But 
 ""for all that his caution did not desert him; and he 
 once more applied himself to the text, this time reading 
 it with the context ; luid on percei\ iiig that Beatrice 
 had just said, 'Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a
 
 56 The Still Lion. 
 
 Scotch jiii:, !i measure, and a cinqite-pacc' began to be 
 ashamed of his precipitation, if not of his ingenuity. The 
 •fact is, that emendation is always a tickUsh business. The 
 
 CRITIC CAN NEVER TEl-L WH ETHER THE LlON IS DEAD, 
 ASLEEP, OR ONLY SHAMMING SLEEP. He TAKES A DEAL 
 OF WALKING-ROUND, AND TICKLING WITH A LONG STRAW, 
 AND POKING WITH A STICK, BEFORE ONE CAN BE REASON- 
 ABLY SURE THAT IT IS SAFE TO COME TO CLOSE QUARTERS 
 WITH HIM. 
 
 AVe will now proceed to consider in detail a dozen 
 selected cliaracteristics of Shakespeare's text. 
 
 I 1. It is remarkable that it is not the most difficult 
 passages in Shakespeare that have occasioned the 
 greatest dispute: on the contrary, the most hotly con- 
 tested questions relate to passages of which the only 
 fault in the eyes of a competent critic is, that the sense 
 is perhaps too obvious. No one, attentively considering 
 such passages, can fail to tind some sense, though per- 
 haps every one feels that aftei- all the sense intended by 
 Shakespeare has eluded his vigilance, and believes that 
 something better remains to be found iu the text, or, 
 failing that, to l)e found /6»r it. In such speculation, 
 Avhethcr of investigation or of tentative substitution, 
 there is, on the Avhole, much good ; ])rovided the critic 
 does not overlook what is * under his nose ', which is, in 
 so many places, the very sense which ought to put a 
 term to further specuhition. Here is an example in 
 point. Juliet, impatiently awaiting the advent of 
 Romeo to her nuptial couch, thus invokes the Night,
 
 Defense of Certain \\ 'ords and Phrases. 5 7 
 
 Spred thy dose Curtaitie Love-perfonning niglit, 
 That ruu-awayes eyes may wincke, and Itouu-o 
 Leape to these ariiies, uiitalkt of and iniseene. 
 
 Romeo mul Juliet, iii. 2. 
 
 So the folio 10:23, and two of the quarto editions, 
 the two earlier quartos reading ruiinaimt/p!<. For this 
 ■word n//i-atrr///t'!<, which was not suspected till after 
 Capell's J']{lition, and which admits of explanation with- 
 out the least loin- c/c f(irn\ mo find that no less than 
 thirty-two sid)stitutes have been proposed, whereof seven 
 have been inserted in the text of as nuuiy editions ! As 
 Ave do not intend to furnish a list of the conjectural 
 readuigs for any othcM- jiassage, we will do so in this 
 case, merelv to show with what fatuous iiubecilitv the 
 conjectural critics woidd fain over-ride the diction of 
 Shakespeare, wherever it hap})ens to be obscured by 
 archaism or weakened by seeming platitude. First, 
 however, we must premise that there was such a sub- 
 stantive as ruiiawaij, and that, in the language of the 
 time, it was for the whole ganuit of its meaning the 
 same as n'/iar/r/lr, with which every English Churchman 
 is familiar from the version of the Psalms appended to 
 the Liturgy. Ihit when it is said that Jehovah ' letteth 
 the nninqnle^ continue in scarceness ', the persons who 
 are so let to starve are delinquents, those who are rini- 
 awai/s from duty, who habitually r/oi aityn/ from or 
 desert the cause they are bouiul to support. Golding 
 thus em})lovs both r/z/ifi/jafcs and n/ziatrft^f/.s, to describe 
 those who have deserted the enemy's camp, and come 
 over to Ca?sar's. Ihu the senses of dcJi)iq»ruf and
 
 58 The Still Lion. 
 
 deserter are special senses both of runagate and of run- 
 awaij. Tlie more general signification of either word is, 
 one who having treacherously acquired anything (news 
 or goods), makes off with it, runs awaij to escape detec- 
 tion and appropriate wliat he has so obtained. In this 
 sense Shakespeare may very well have used tlie word in 
 Romeo and Juliet. But again, vagabonds who haunt 
 the streets towards dusk for disjionest purposes might 
 be very well called runagates or runawai/s. Or, once 
 more, runaicays may describe those who were hostile to 
 the union of Romeo and Juliet, and who would not 
 scruple to use any means to discover Romeo's intended 
 visit, and to place obstacles in his way. It will be 
 observed that the textual word ' run-awayes ' may stand 
 either for rimaioaijs or for runaicays ; and if satisfactory 
 sense can be made of either, surely emendation is an 
 impertinence. Mr N. J. lialpin, in a remarkable Essay 
 printed among the Shakesjjearc Society s Papers and 
 called ' The Bridal Runaway ', has made out a very 
 strong case for the latter form, taking Runaway as the 
 epithalamial solniquct of Love. But even if that view 
 should be decided against, we have still the former, 
 which, as we have shown, admits of ample justification. 
 Our own impression is that Shakespeare is using the 
 word as a plural possessive — runatvays eyes. He might, 
 for the sense, have just as well have employed runagates : 
 but not for the verse ; for though in rmiayates he would 
 preserve the symptosis of the run and Rom, he would 
 lose that of the ways and icink.
 
 Defence of Certain Words and P //rases. 59 
 
 But not only is ricnaicnj/s defensible, 1)ut it is easily 
 
 shown to be tlic appropriate word for the place. Juliet 
 
 s-avs, 
 
 Spred 4liy close (Jiirtaiiu' Love-performing uixl't. 
 Tliat ruii-awnyes eyes may winkc,- 
 
 '\Viiateyes? To answer wliicli (piestion we must de- 
 termine what eyes are made to wink, or arc deprived of 
 their function, I7.9V7 roriseqnence oi i\\Q advent of Night. 
 Shakespeare might liave used a very reprehensible meta- 
 phor, jiud spoken of Day's ci/ei^, as some of his contem- 
 poraries did : but the winking of Day's eyes, and the 
 closure of Night's curtain, are one and the same thing, 
 not distinct operations of which the one is dependent 
 iipon tlic other. So, despite Mr Dyce's deliverances, 
 fhose eyes arc excluded from the possibilities of the case. 
 Shakespeare niiglit also, and with great propriety, have 
 spoken of Night's eyes, meaning the stars ; 1)ut unless 
 by 2cwk he meant tvinkJo, the closure of Night's cur- 
 tain, so far from being the condition upon which the 
 stars are made to wink, or are veiled, is in fact the oid}- 
 occasion of their shining forth : so Night's eyes are 
 equally excluded. Despite ^^'alker and ^litford, no 
 poet speaks of the Moon's cijvs ; but if Shakespeare had 
 ever done so. he would not have done so here ; for the 
 advent of Night only serves to make her brighter. 
 Lastlv, can the eves alluded to be those of either or 
 l)oth of the lovers. To answer this we nmst consider 
 the next line :
 
 6o The Still Lio?i. 
 
 That runawaves eves inav winke, and Itomeo 
 Leape to these amies, untalkt of and \inseene, 
 
 from Mliicli it appears that the winking of those eyes is 
 the condition precedent of Romeo's security from de- 
 tection : and it would be an insult to common sense to 
 inquire whether the closing of Juliet's eyes, or of 
 Romeo's eves, could contribute to that result. Similarly, 
 the twinkling of the stars, brought out by the approach 
 of night, could not hel}) to ensure Romeo's immunity 
 from suspicion ; so that cannot be the wiidving contem- 
 plated by Shakespeare. We are thus driven into a 
 corner, and are obliged to find the objects connoted by 
 runaways in those who, but for the darkness, might spy 
 out the approach of the lover, and betray the secret to 
 parties interested in the frustration of his design ; or 
 even in those very parties themselves ; or in both : in a 
 word, we must understand by 7'imaicays, persons secretly 
 on the watch to thwart the assignation of the lovers.* 
 
 There is nothing unusual, recondite, or far-fetched, 
 in this explanation : yet the bulk of the critics Avill not 
 have it. Docs it not make one blush for mortal dulness 
 
 * Mr F. J. iMiniiv.ill takes tliis view in a letter in the Academy 
 (March 31, 1874). Aft'V (inotin^- Tii(jHiJ\ lloder, Jiodcur, &p. from 
 Cotgrave 1611, lie concludes, '■ Shakspere's runawaves, runag-ates, or 
 runabouts, were the rodeiirx dex rne-s with a different object, men who'd 
 leave no voung lovers ' vntatkt of and vnseene ', while the light 
 lasted." P)Ut rodcr lex rues he explains, after Cotgrave, to walk the 
 streets "especially at night, to ai'e tlie town served." A rodeur dci 
 rues then is the last person to allow a nocturnal assignation to elude 
 liis vigilance. lie at h'ast is no winker.
 
 Defense of Ccrtaiji Words and Phrases. 6i 
 
 that such a passage should have hecu singled out for 
 almost exhaustive euiendatioii ? Perhaps the best way 
 of presenting these conjectures is to classify thein under 
 the leading conceptions which gave them birth. 
 
 (1) It is conceived that rini-awaijes is a misprint for the 
 
 l)roi)er name of the source or sources of davlio-ht. 
 moonlight, or starlight. ITencc Ave are favoured 
 with 5 conjectures : Linnis, jNIitford : Ci/nthids, 
 Walker: Uranm, Anon.: Tilans, Bullock: ican- 
 deriiif/ {wanderlnq ci/cs being the planets), {Jf/ien- 
 aiuit, August (), 1S70). 
 
 (2) It is conceived that nui-aicai/cs is a misprint for 
 
 some word of which the last syllable is dafs. 
 This gives us 4 more : r/fdr dofs, and soon days, 
 Dyce : sunny da fs, Clarke: noondays. Anon. 
 
 (3) It is conceived that mn-awayes is a misprint for 
 
 the name of a mythical ])ersoii. This gives us 4 
 more : t/i Runaway s (i. c. the Sun), Warburton : 
 the runaway s, Capell : Rumour s, Heath : Rcnomys 
 (i. e. Renommcp), Mason. 
 
 (4) It is conceived that the first syllable of run-aivayes 
 
 is a misprint for sun. This gives us 4, one being 
 already mentioned. Smi airay, Taylor: sun-awake s, 
 Brady : sun-aweary, ■\PIlwaine : sunny days, 
 Clarke (as l)efore).* 
 
 (5) It is conceived that tlie misprint is in the last svl- 
 
 * On scciiiii^ tliis proof Mr I'erk ins- Ireland maliciously asks 
 wlicllicr any one has ivcr proposed to read Grundy's eyes!
 
 62 • Tkc Slill Lion. 
 
 Itible only of rnji~aica?/es. This gives us 5 more : 
 nuiai/fite ■">, Beckett : rnn-aicaf/, Blackstone : run- 
 
 •I .[. Mb'ct!/, ^li^wyXoY : run-abonh' , Keightley : runaway 
 spies^ H. K. 
 
 (G) It is conceived that ioare, or icari/, formed part of the 
 ■\vord for which r/hi-aicaye-'^ stands. This gives us 
 3 more. Unaicares^ Jackson : luuvari/, Taylor : 
 ■icaryoiics , x\.non. 
 
 (7) A class to which we may assign various conjectures 
 Avhich do not fall in the other six. We have 
 rumoitrous and rumourers , Singer: enemies. Collier: 
 roar in (/e, Dyce : yonder, Leo : ribalds, and roaming,. 
 iVnon. : Veronese [Nation, May, 1871) ; amounting 
 to S more : — 
 
 on which miscellaneous repsist, of both the wholesome 
 and the baneful, we may well ask one blessing — a) 
 speedy deliverance from one and all I 
 : , 2. We sometimes meet with a conventional phrase 
 or idiotism employed by Shakespeare in a sense peculiar 
 to himself, i. e. as an idiasm. The following example 
 is most instructive. We quote from As Yon Like It, iii. 
 5 (folio 1G2:3). 
 
 the common exeoxitioner 
 AVlinse heart th' accustora'd sight of death makes hard, 
 Falls not the axe npon the humhled neck, 
 But first l)eo-s pardon : will you sterner be 
 Then he that dies and lives Ly bloody drops ? 
 
 The Cambridge Edition records nine monstrous 
 substitutes for the phrase dies and lives. The simple-
 
 Defense of LcrUiui II 'ords ajid Phrases. 6 ^ 
 
 I'iict is, that this ))hi'asr was a redogiiizcd ////s/cro/f pru- 
 h'roii ; and wc ail' iiidchttul lo Mi- \\. W. Arrowsmitli 
 {Nolcfs and Qtterk'd, 1st ^. \ ii. 54:2) for a collection of 
 (uirly exan)j)Ics iUustratin^- its use, which seem to have 
 hocii cntirciy o\erlooked by all the previous editors and 
 commentators. Mr llalliwell, in his Folio Edition, 
 supjdements Mr Arrowsmith's lal)ours, but fails to re- 
 c(jgnize the fact that none of the examples adduced is 
 ])rccisely in point. That the phrase fo die and lice was 
 formerlv used for ii) lice and die, is fairlv established : 
 but of the phrase (o die and live hij a f/iinf/ not a single 
 example has been adduced. ]\Ir xVrrowsmith tells us 
 that fo die and live means ' to subsist from the cradle to 
 the grave '. Sliakesi)earc's executioner, then, must have 
 been initiated into his 'mystery' pretty early. But one 
 of Mr Arrowsmith's examples is from a work now before 
 us, ' Tlie Pil(/rin/a(/e of Kings and Pcinees .• ' at page 29 
 of whicli we read, ' Behold \\o\\- ready we are, how 
 willingly the Avomcn of Sparta vvill die and live with 
 their husbands.' So that Ave are gravely asked to believe 
 that, accordnig to this old writer, the Spartan women 
 were so precocious that they ' subsisted ' with their hus- 
 bands ' from the ciadle to the grave I ' Hitherto, then, 
 no example in point has been discovered. But even if 
 the phrase fo die and lice h(j a lliiny be a Shakespearian 
 idiasm, its signitication is as plain as the nose on one's 
 face. It means of course, fo inaL-e fliat filing a inaffer of 
 life and deaf Ii. The profession or calling of a man is 
 that fjg v'hieli he dies and lives, i. e. by which he lives.
 
 64 The Still Lion. 
 
 and failing which he dies. In the face of this simple 
 exposition, emendation is a sheer impertinence. 
 
 3. Not unfrequently we meet, in the pages of Shake- 
 speare, Avith a word or plirase which, though sounding 
 strange to us, was familiar enough in his day, and may 
 perhaps still retain a technical use. Here are two ex- 
 amples in point. In 2 lien. IV., iv. 1, we find West- 
 moreland thus sharply interrogating Archbishop Scroop, 
 
 Wherefore doe vovi so ill Iraiislate your selfe, 
 
 Out of the Speech of Peace, that beares siicli grace, 
 
 Into tlie harsli and boystrous Tongue of Warre? 
 
 Tin-ning your Bookes to Graves, your Inke to Blood, 
 
 Your Penues to Lauuces, and your Tongue divine 
 
 To a lowd Trumpet, and a Point of Warre. — Polio 1623. 
 
 For Graves Warburton would read fjlalnes, and Stee- 
 vens, greavps, and it is not easy to decide between 
 them. But what can justify any tampering with the 
 concluding expression, a pohit of tear ? AVhat can 
 excuse such a conjecture as report of icar, which stands 
 in manuscript in the Perkins Polio, and in Mr Collier's 
 one-volume edition, or Mr Singer's miserable gloss, a 
 bruit of icar ? Ignorance ordy ; yet such ignorance is 
 hardly credible ; for not only was the expression a point 
 of war as conmion as blackberries in Shakespeare's day, 
 l)iil k stilt in techitical use. It now means a drum-call, 
 such as the rutHe-l)eat on parade, when the colours are 
 unfurled. Steele in The Taller used it in the same 
 sense. It occurs fref|uently in Scott's novels (e. g. 
 Waverteij, 1st ed., ii. 4 ; Woodstoeh, 182G, i. 21 & 142 ;
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 65 
 
 and The Bride uf Lain.ineriuoor, Ibl'J, 247), Avlicro it 
 always means a trumpet-call. It is also of very com- 
 mon occnrrcncc in the old dramatists. (See Staunton's 
 illustrated edition of Shakespeare, i. 003.) 
 
 Our otlier example is from Coriolanit.'i, v. u, \\liere 
 Aufidius says of Coriolanus, 
 
 [I] holpe to reape tlie Panic 
 Which he did end all his ; and tooke some piide 
 To do my ?elle this wronu' : (Folio 1(5^3.) 
 
 Tliere is not the faintest obscurity about this metaphor ; 
 and notliing in the passage but the inflection ' holpe' is 
 entirely obsolete, and that of coijirse nevei; stuck Avith 
 anybody.* Tbc Avholc force of suspicion has fjillen on 
 the unoffending verb, end ! Why, in the name of 
 common sense? ''Aufidius says that he helped Corin- 
 lanus to reap the crop, but that Coriolanus ended it, and 
 made it his own. Certainly no difficulty in this phrase- 
 ology Avould be presented to the mind of the rudest 
 iiiidland ftirm-lahourer. We mav still hear the farmers 
 of W^orcestershire and Herefordshire employ that V9rb 
 in a technical sense in speaking of their crops. 
 
 ''' Milton applies it to thrashing out the corii, but not,^ 
 Ave think, in a technical sense : 
 
 * Dr Alexander Schnntlt explains the passaj^e thus : " I helped to 
 <i:ather the harvest wliieh lie eonsnmniafed as his alone. Perhaps 
 \yii(l is] a techuieal phra^ of harvest-work." {Bhake.^pmre-Iji'xicon, 
 1874.) It certainly is so. But to ?r/y; is woi io ^cd her, Eud'uKj a 
 ero-p is gaihcrhig it. A well-ended crop is one that is secured in irood 
 condition, or has " made a <rood end."
 
 66 riie Still Lion. 
 
 When in one night ere glimpse of moni 
 His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, 
 That ten day-labourers could not end. 
 
 These points were very justly taken by Mr W. R. 
 .Vrrowsmitli in a sensil)lc, but exceedingly scm-rilous 
 and ill-written pam])hlet entitled, The Editor of Notes 
 and Queries and his Friend Mr Sinr/er. (The title 
 makes us wonder why some of the shortest publications 
 have the longest names. One of the Rev. Joseph 
 Hunter's, consisthig of barely 23 pages, has a title com- 
 prising 68 words and 12 ciphers !) At p. 9, Mr Arrow- 
 smith gives two newspaper-advertisements in which 
 occur the phrases, ' three excellent well-ended wheat- 
 ricks,' and ' a rick of well-ended hay.' We are almost 
 ashamed of insisting on anything so obvious : but where 
 the suspected ])hrasc ' walks with his head in a crowd 
 of poisonous flies,' it is the duty of the critic at once to 
 come to its aid ; and the more innocent the phrase, the 
 greater is that duty. In this case no less than five 
 substitutes have been proposed for end or for did end, 
 and three of these have been admitted into the text ! 
 Of these, the one which has found greatest favour is ear 
 for end, which was proposed by Mr Collier, and, with 
 the transposition of reap and ear, was adopted by ]\Ir 
 Singer. To ear is to j)lough, or till : so that Mr 
 Collier's reading makes Aufidius say that he had his 
 share of the harvest which Coriolanus had tilled for him- 
 self; (and even this sense is defective, since 'did ear' 
 belongs to a later tune than ' holpe; ') but this is just
 
 Defense of Certain Words and P/i rases. 67 
 
 the reversal of what Aufidius meant : for the gist of his 
 coinpUiint was that he had shared the toil with Coriola- 
 mis, and not the harvest. So the late Mr W. N. Lettsoni 
 came to the rescue, and proposed (Ah/e.s ami Queries, 1st 
 S. vii. 378) the transposition of car and reap. Bnt 
 matters were made no Victtor h\ tliis : for Fame, as Mr 
 R. W. Arrowsmith ])roni])tly pointed out, is the crop ; 
 and though we reap the crop, we ear not tlie crop, bnt 
 the land. It is noticeable that the clever and shrewd, 
 ])ut waspish critic of Blackwood' h Mar/azine (Ang., 
 Sept., and Oct. 1853), the merciless castigator of Gnats 
 and Qacric.^ (as he designated Mr W. J. Thorns' 
 periodical), proposed the same transposition : so wonder- 
 fully do wits jump ! Wluit a satire on conjectural 
 criticism is this little farce ! 
 
 4. But what shall we say when a passage is entirely 
 altered on the su))position that a word meant something 
 wliich it never did mean, and docs not mean at present ? 
 Yet this has happened to a passage in Trodus ami Cres- 
 sl.da, v. 'I. AVhen Troilus tinds that Cressid has for- 
 saken him for Diomed, he Ijursts into a passion of love 
 and indignation, which is in Shakespeare's finest 
 manner. Tie cries, 
 
 This i:^, and is not C/rssirl .- 
 Within niv soule there doth conduce ji fijrht 
 Of tliis stranire nature, that a thing iiiseparate 
 Divides more w idtr then the skie and eartli : 
 And yet the spiieious bredth of l!iis division 
 Admits no On'fex for a point as subtle 
 • AsJriac/ufe's broken woofo to enter: ( Fo. 10;.';})
 
 68 The Still Lion. 
 
 Sliakespeare elsewhere employs very similar imagery : 
 ' but I am not to say, it is the sea, for it is Do\y the sky : 
 betwixt the firmament and it you cannot thiiLst a 
 bodkin's point,' A Winters Tale, iii. 3 ; that is, though 
 the sky and the sea are so widely di\dded, or separated, 
 •ijet the sea mounts to such a height, that at times a 
 point cannot be inserted between them. To this kind 
 of equivocal division Troihis compares the separation 
 between his heart and Cressid's. In reality the only 
 fjuestion that can be rationally raised concerning this 
 speech of Troilus', is as to the name Ariachne. That is 
 the word of the Folio 1623. The quarto of 1609 has 
 Ariachna, and the undated quarto has Ariathna. This 
 variation is thought to favoiu" the vieAV, that the poet 
 confounded the two names, Arachne and Ariadne, and 
 possibly also the web of the former with the clew of the 
 latter. Arachne was the spinner and weaver, and so 
 subtle, i. e. fine-spun (subtil is), was her woof, that when 
 it was woven into the web, Minerva could not see how 
 the web was made, and in a fit of jealousy and revenge 
 tore it to pieces. If Shakespeare did confound the two 
 fables, it was no more than his contemporaries did. 
 Steevens quotes an example from Day's comedy of 
 Humour out of Breath, 1608 (Steevens says 1607) : 
 
 in robes 
 Richer tliaii iliat Avhich Ariadne wroiiglit. 
 
 Accordingly, we may see, if we like, Ariadne in 
 Ijoth Ariathna and Ariachne : * but after all it may 
 
 * Milton made as great a mistake when he attributed to the eglan-
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 69 
 
 have been a custom of the time to write Ariachne for 
 Arachne, if the metre re(juirc(l tlic achJitional syilul)le ; 
 and we know that poets and (h-amatists enjoyed a very 
 wide discretion in the jiresentation of proper names. 
 
 The point is of no moment. \\ hat it is of mo- 
 ment for lis to see is that by Ariaohne Shakespeare 
 meant the spider into which Arachne was transformed, 
 and which in Greek bears the same name ; and that tlie 
 v'oo/he meant was finer than was ever produced by hnninn 
 hand, viz. the woof of the spider's web— tliose dehcate 
 transverse filaments wliich cross the main radial threads 
 or warjjs, and which are perhaps the nearest material 
 approach to mathematical lines ! Thus has Shakespeare 
 in one beautiful allusion wrapt up in two or tliree little 
 words the whole story of Araclmc's metamorphosis, the 
 ph}'sical fact of the fineness of the woof-filaments of a 
 spider's web, and an antithesis, effective in the highest 
 degree, to the vastness of the yawning space between 
 earth and heaven ! For what orifice could be imagined 
 more exciuisitclv minute than the needle's eve which 
 
 tine the properties of tlie clematis. In TZ/c Floirer of FriouhJiippe, 
 Cilomond Tylney, 1568 [8vo], we have, ' All the whole arbour above 
 over our hcadcs, &c., was * * « wreathed above with the 
 sweete bryer or cpflantinc,' &:c. In the Tuery Queen, b. xi. c. 5, st. 
 29, Spenser describes an arbour, 
 
 'Throui;-li which the fragrant eglantine did sj)rcd 
 His prickling amies, entraylcd with roses red.' 
 
 Yet Milton speak? of 
 
 ' Thro' the sweet briar or the vine, 
 Or the lichttfj eglantine ' !
 
 yo The Still Lion. 
 
 Avoiild not admit the spider's woof to thread it ? And 
 all this argosy has been wrecked by two transpositions. 
 
 The late Mr Thomas Keightley, a gentleman held in 
 honour for his school histories, rather than for his un- 
 fortunate criticisms on Shakespeare, proposed in Notes 
 and Queries (2nd S. ix. 358) what he considered an 
 emendation of the passage we are considering ; and 
 subsequently had the temerity to incorporate this change 
 with the text of a complete edition of Shakespeare's 
 works. Observing that his great precursor Beckett had 
 proposed to read. 
 
 Subtile as Aracluie's unbroken woof 
 Admits no orifex for a point to enter, 
 
 wherel)y that monster had demonstrated to the world 
 that he did not know the meaning of woof, Mr Keightley 
 undertook to amend the one line before adopting the 
 other. The great gain, in his view, was that Ariachne 
 had her eye put out, w^iile the ' spacious breadth ' was 
 compared to Ariachne's icetj ! So he read, 
 
 And yet the spacious breadth of this division, 
 As subtle as Araehne's broken woof, 
 Admits no orifex for a point to enter. 
 
 Unfortunately, this is rank nonsense. How can a 
 ' spacious breadth ' be as subtle, or fine-spun, as a 
 thread ? Of course, it is easy to see that the whole far- 
 rago sprang from the one wretched blunder of taking a 
 icoof (which ever did and still does mean a thwart or 
 cross-thread) to mean a web. 
 
 Again, we feel almost ashamed to have to resort to
 
 Defense of Certain Wo7'ds and Phrases. 7 1 
 
 minute cxplaiuition of what every educated Englisliiiian 
 ouglit to know. In the operation of weaving, the threads 
 wliich ai-e stretched on the loom are called the worp, or 
 loarps, and the single thread which is carried through 
 them by means of the shuttle is called the woof ; and 
 the two combined in a textm-e are called the icrb. This 
 three-fold distinction has been scrupulously observed by 
 all accurate writers from very early times. One or two 
 examples of the use of icoof from the literature of 
 Shakespeare's day, may be acceptable, though su})er- 
 eroo;atorv. 
 
 ' S. IlieroMc W'Ould have Paula to handle woU, ^ * 
 and learne to dress it, and to holdc and occupie a 
 rocke, [distafi'] with a wooll basket in her lap, and 
 turne the spindle, and drawe forth the threatl with 
 her own fingers. And PetiietriaH * « he bad 
 have wooll in her hands, and her selfc either to 
 spinne, to warpe, or else winde spindles in a case 
 for to throw icoofa off, and to winde on clews the 
 spinnings of others, and to order such as should 
 be woven. * * * For should I call him a weaver 
 that never learned to w-eave, nor to draw the woffc, 
 nor to cast the shuttle, nor strike the web with 
 the slaye.' Richard llyrde's translation of L. 
 Vives' rnstrnctlo)! of a Chri>itinn Woman, Book i. 
 chap. 3, and Book ii. chap. 4. 
 
 5. In not a few cases the idiom of Shakespeare's day 
 has been overlooked by every editor, and in some pas- 
 sages in his text the construction has been altered to
 
 The Still Lion. 
 
 make the unrecognised idiom square -with modern usage. 
 Tlie most flagrant case that occurs to us, is that of ' the 
 suppression of the relative as subject ', which, in a par- 
 ticular connection, has ahvavs created difficulty ^vith the 
 editors. AVhere the relative is suppressed before an 
 auxiliary verb, the sense has always been too obvious to 
 be overlooked : besides, in the case of its suppression 
 before some tense of the verb to he, the practice still pre- 
 vails in verse, and in epistolary prose. In the Tempest, 
 V. 1, Prospero says to Alonzo and Sebastian, 
 
 A solemne Avre, and the best comforter, 
 
 To an unsettled fancie, Cure thy braines 
 
 (Now uselesse) boile within thy skull : there stand 
 
 For you are Spell-stopt. (Folio 1623) 
 
 Now in the first place, as two persons are addressed, 
 and ' you ' is the pronoun properly applied to them in 
 the fourth line, it can hardly be dovd^ted that the pos- 
 sessive pronoun ' thy ' in the second and third lines is 
 an error for the. Persons v»'ho have collated the old 
 copies are familiar with this and similar misprints ; the 
 pronouns being under a singular fatality. Making this 
 simple and necessary correction, and adopting modern 
 spelhng and punctuation, the passage will stand thus : 
 
 A solemn air, and the best comforter 
 To an unsetiled fancy, cure the brains 
 (NoAv useless) boil within the skidl : &c. 
 
 To modern ears tliis constniction sounds awkward : 
 accordingly Pope, having no sense of humour, altered 
 ' boile ' into tjoiVd. It was a phrase of the time to say.
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 73 
 
 that a man's ))rains ])(>il or are boiling, Mhen he is mad 
 or doting. In Clicttlc's play of lloffman, in the last 
 scene, the hero, who, strange to relate, manages to con- 
 verse with his tormentors after he is crowned with the 
 traitor's rcd-iiot iron crown, says, 
 
 Ay, so ; — boil on, tliou foolish, idle brain, 
 For giving entertainment to love's tlioughts ! 
 
 'Boiled brains' is in Shakespeare {A M'lntcrs Tale, 
 iii. 3), but the phrase is humorous ; and otherwise 
 inapplicable to the men Avhom Prospero's S])ell had 
 made frantic : whose brains were hoU'mg, not boded. 
 The editors, having as little sense of humonr as Pope, 
 have all adopted his abominable gloss. The Rev. AVm. 
 Harness, however, not long before his death privately 
 imparted to us his reading of the passage, w'hich was on 
 this wise : a note of admiration being placed after 
 fancv ', continue thus : 
 
 Sure tliy brains 
 (Now useless) boil within thy skull: &c. 
 
 which then seemed to iis, and still seems, as imbecile as 
 it is unnecessary. It is as plain as the nose on one's 
 face that the above is an instance of ' the suppression of 
 the relative as subject ' before the verb ' boil '. Para- 
 phrase the passage thus : ' Let a solemn air — which is 
 the best comforter to an unsettled fjincv — cure the brains 
 [which], now useless, boil within the skull.' 'An un- 
 settled fancy " is a deranged mind, or ' incertain thought ' 
 (as in Moamrc. for Jileasurv), ' settled ' being Shake- 
 speare's ordinary word for expressing soundness of mind ;
 
 74 The Still Lion. 
 
 and ' fancy ' or phantasy, being equivalent to the faculty 
 we call imagination. 
 
 With this example of the idiom in question compare 
 the following : 
 
 He loved me well * delivered it to me. — 
 
 Tico Gentlemen of Verona., iv. 4. 
 
 I have a mind * presages me suck thrift. — 
 
 Merchant of Venice, i. 1. 
 
 But let your reason serve 
 To make the tmth appeal", where it seems hid, 
 And hide the false* seems true. — Measure for Measure, v. 1. 
 
 Besides our neaniess to the king in love 
 
 Is near the hate of those * love not the king. — Rich. IT., ii. 2. 
 
 What wreck discern you in me 
 * Deserves your pity? — Cijmbetine., i. 7. 
 
 W hy am I bound 
 By any generous bond to follow him 
 *Follows his Taylor, haply so long untill 
 The follow'd make pursuit ? — The Two Noble Kinsmen, i. 2. 
 
 Only you. 
 Of all the rest, are he * commands his love. — Voljjone, i. 1- 
 
 O then I find that I am bound. 
 Upon a wheel * goes ever round. — 
 
 Ariostos Seven Planets, &c. 1611, 
 The Second Elegy (Appendix), p. 15. 
 
 The asterisk in each example shows where the relative 
 (be it luhich or u'ho) is to be understood. 
 
 G. Sometimes a word oi* idiotism presents no kind 
 of difficulty, yet the passage is meaningless to modern 
 readers, owing to the loss of some allusion of the time, 
 which every one then understood in a moment. For
 
 Dc/cnsc of Certain // 'ords and Phrases. 75 
 
 e.Miinple : in Love 8 Labours Lost, v. 1, Arniado says to 
 Holotei'iies, ' I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy ; 
 I beseech thee, apparel thy liead.' Neither Caj)ell nor 
 Maloiie understood it, and they therefore proposed 
 emendations. The hitter wislied to insert //o/ .- 'remem- 
 ber not thy courtesy ', i. e. pay no further regard to 
 courtesy, but replace thy hat : as we shoidd now say, 
 ' do not stand on ceremony with me.' This was an ab- 
 surd proposal, seeing that the phrase is frequent with 
 the early dramatists ; and in a curtailed form occurs in 
 Hamlet. Yet Mr Dyce {Few Notes, p. 56) adopted 
 JVIalone's conjecture. But he returned to the old text 
 at the instance of the writer, who gave in the Illustrated 
 London Ketcs a complete defense of the old readuig, from 
 a manuscript note of Mr Staunton's which will now be 
 found in his edition of Shakesjjeare, vol. i. p. b3. Mr 
 Dyce on this occasion did not remember his courtesy : 
 not only did he fail to acknowledge this service and 
 assign to Mr Staunton the credit of the restoration, but 
 wrote contemi)tuously of the notes, of which this was 
 one, evidently not perceiving that one and all were Mr 
 Staunton's. (See Dyce's Shakesjjeare, 1853. \o\. i. 
 J), ccxvi., and p. 5S1, note (13).) 
 
 But the origin of the expression, ' reniendjcr thy 
 courtesy ', has never been given. It arose, we think, as 
 follows : the courtesy was the temporary removal of the 
 hat from the head, and that was finished as soon as the 
 hat was replaced. If any one from ill-breeding or oxer- 
 politeness stood uncovered for a longer time than was
 
 7 6 The Still Lion. 
 
 Tieccssaiy to perform the simple act of courtesy, the per- 
 son so sakited reminded him of the fact, tliat the removal 
 of the hat was a courtesy : and this was expressed by the 
 euphemism, ' Remember thy courtesy ', which thus im- 
 plied, * Complete yom- courtesy, and replace your hat.' 
 
 Here is another example in point. In the Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, ii. 3, the host says to Dr Caius, ' I 
 wdl bring thee where Mistress Anne is, at a farm-house 
 a-feasting, and thou shalt woo her. Cried game ? said 
 I well ? ' 
 
 ' Cried game ' has been superseded in several 
 modern editions by ' Cried I aim ', a conjecture of 
 Donee's. Various other substitutes have been proposed. 
 But why should the old text be superseded ? There can 
 hardly be a doubt that under the words * Cried game ', 
 if authentic, there ku'ks an allusion of the time which has 
 now to be hunted out. If * cried game ? ' be either Is it 
 cried game ? or Cried I game ? we apprehend the allusion 
 is not far to seek. In hare-hunting, a person was em- 
 ployed and paid to find the hare ' muzing on her meaze', 
 or, as we say, in her form. He was called the hare- 
 finder. When he had found her, he first cried Soho ! 
 to betray the fact to the pursuers ; he then proceeded to 
 put her up, and ' give her courser's law '. What, then, 
 can * Cried I game ? ' mean but Did I cry game ? Bid I 
 cry Soho ? In the play ])cfore us, the pursuit was after 
 Mistress Anne Page. She was the hare, and the host 
 undertook to betray her Avhereabouts to Dr Caius, in 
 order that he might urge his love-suit. '
 
 Defense of Cerhun U 'ords and Phrases. 7 7 
 
 7. Some expressions in the text, which were then, 
 and still are, grammatical and si^rnificant, have been 
 altered, because their force is spent. They once had a 
 sort of proverbial point, which is now wholly gone from 
 tliem ; hence they readily fall a prey to ingenious 
 guessers. Ojie instance will be sufficient to exemplify 
 the chiss. In As You Like It, iii. 5, we read, 
 
 "Wlio mi^'lit be \o\\v mnflier, 
 That you insult, exult, ami all at once. 
 Over the wretched ? 
 
 // i 
 
 If emendation were wanted here, surely a Jwppier 
 snggestion was never made than that of AVarburton, 
 who })ro})osed to re.'id, rail for ' all '. Earlier in the 
 same play we have (i. 1), 
 
 ' Thou hast rail'd on tliysell'.' 
 
 Compare also Lear, ii. 3, 
 
 being down, iiisulfed, raiPd 
 And put upon, &c. 
 
 Yet the text is most certainlv ridit. There is hardlv a 
 
 t, O *■' 
 
 commoner })hrase, more especially at the end of a verse, 
 than and all at once. Compare Hen. J'., i. 1, 
 
 Nor never TTvdra-headed wilfulness 
 
 So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, 
 
 As in this Kiny-. 
 
 The render who desires to see other corroborative 
 instances from writers of th(> time may consult Mr 
 Stannton's illustrated edition of S//ake.yyeare, vol. ii. p. 
 65. In this case the Candiridgc Editors give ns a truly
 
 78 The Still Lion. 
 
 wonderful collection of conjectures, one of which is War- 
 burton's domineer ! and this feat of dulness is capped 
 by another, which consists of four French words ! 
 
 8. But more curious still, there are passages which 
 have occasioned a considerable amount of discussion, 
 and have even received emendation, not on account of 
 anything difficult or corrupt in the construction, but 
 simply because no one among the swarm of critics had 
 seized the central or leading notion of the speaker. The 
 two following from the same play, which are selected 
 from many cases in point, may serve as samples of the 
 class. These are also in As You Like Lt. In iii. .2, 
 Rosalind plies Celia with some questions respecting 
 Orlando : and having reminded her friend, that though 
 she (Rosalind) is caparisoned like a man, she has a 
 woman's cmiosity, adds, 
 
 ' One incli of delay more, is a South-sea of discoverie. I pre'thee 
 tell me who it is quickly, and speak apace : I would thou couldst 
 stammer, &c. Is he of God's making ? What manner of man ? Is 
 his head worth a hat ? or his chin worth a heard ? ' 
 
 Reading this passage in the folio, we have sought 
 in vain for some explanation of the fact that its central 
 or leading notion has alwavs been missed. Here we 
 have a tale of questions — coup sur coujj — falling as thick 
 as hail upon the devoted Celia. See how inaiiy things 
 she is called upon to discover ; and then say whether she 
 has not incurred a laborious and vexatious duty by her 
 dela^ in answering the first question. How plain it is 
 that her inch of delay has cast upon her a Soul/t Sea~;-a^
 
 Defense of Certain ]Vords and Phrases. 79 
 
 vast and unexploivd ocean — of disoovery. The more 
 Celia delays her revelation as to who the man is, the 
 more she will have to reveal about him. Why ? Because 
 Rosalind fills np the delay (increases it, in fact,) with 
 fresh interrogatories, wherehy Celia becomes lost in a 
 South Sea of questions. 
 
 There is surely some fatality about this play, for we 
 observe several other ])assages in it, which, withont more 
 than the shadow of a pretence, have been altered in 
 every, or almost everv, edition. Eor instance, in ii. G, 
 Jaques says : 
 
 Hee, that a Foolc dotli very wisely hit, 
 
 Doth very foolishly, although he smart 
 
 Seeme senselesse of the bob. It" not, 
 
 The Wise-nian's folly is anathoniiz'd 
 
 Even by the squandering glances of the foole. 
 
 Folio 1623. 
 
 Theobahl, being conscious of a hitch in the sense, 
 proposed ' Not to seem senselesse ' for ' Seeme sense- 
 lesse'. In this lead he has been usually followed, even 
 by the Cambridge Editors. Had they seized the 
 central notion of the passage, they would not have done 
 so. Why does a fool do loiselj/ in hitting a wise man ? 
 Because, through tlie vantage of his folly, he ])uts the 
 wise man ' in a strait betwixt two ', to put u]) with the 
 smart of the bob, without dissembling, and so incur the 
 consequential awkwardness of having to do so — which 
 makes him feel foolish enough — or, to put iqi with the 
 smart, and (lixHOinhJi' it, which entails the secondary 
 awkw\ardness of the dissimulation— which makes him
 
 8o Tlie Still Lion. 
 
 feel still more foolish. Taking the former alternative, 
 i. e. * If not ' (' If he do not ') his ' folly is anatomized 
 even by the sqiiandring glances of the fool ' ; taking the 
 latter alternative, he makes a fool of himself in the eyes 
 of almost everybody else. So the fool gets the advan- 
 tage l)oth ways. There is a passage in a paper of De 
 Quinccy's called ' Literary Novitiate,' published in vol. 
 i. of Literari/ Remi/iisccnces (Ticknor and Field's 
 edition), which has a special bearing on the above 
 passage. At page 25 we rend, 'Awkwardness at 
 the least — and too probably, as a consequence of 
 that, affectation and conceit — follow hard upon the con- 
 sciousness of special notice or acbniration. The very 
 attempt to disguise end)arrassment too often issues in a 
 secondary and more marked embarrassment.' IIow 
 plain, then, is the sense of the passage we are consider- 
 ing. Jaques asks for ' the motley ', in order that he 
 may have a fool's privilege of making a fool of every 
 wise man. In Othello, i. 3, is a passage which may 
 serve to illustrate this. , 
 
 What cannot be preserved when fortune takes, 
 Patience her injury a mockery makes. 
 The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief; 
 He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief. 
 
 Observing that the line, 
 
 Seemc sensclesse of the Ijob. Ff not, 
 
 is too short, we think it probaljlc that the words //<?</o 
 originally formed part of it. Be that as it may, ' If not ' 
 must mean ' If he do not '. ' Verv foolishly ' should be
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 8 1 
 
 placed ill rrotchuts : y)crlifips 'very uisuly ' should l)e 
 so also. 
 
 9. A strictly methodical discussion of classes of 
 readings, even if it were practicable, woidd not present 
 any very great advimtage : so we have not attem})ted it. 
 We will now proceed to consider two of the cases in 
 which Shakespeare has ineta})horically employed the 
 image of a sea : viz. ' a sea of wax,' and ' a sea of 
 troubles.' 
 
 The pedantic poet in T'nnon of ylf/icm, i. 1, addresses 
 the painter in the following tumid and bombastic terms : 
 
 You sw, this confluence, this great flood of visitors. 
 
 I have in this longh work shaped out a man [s/iewii/ff Jiis mamcscripi] 
 
 Whom this beneath worhl l)oth embrace and hug 
 
 With amplest entertainment : my Tree drii'l 
 
 Halts not particularly, but moves itself 
 
 In a wide sea of wax : no U'vcll'd malice 
 
 Infects one comma of the comsc 1 hold ; 
 
 l^ut flies an eagle's flight, bohl and forth on. 
 
 Leaving no tract behind. 
 
 In this passage, ' my free drift ' and ' a wide sea of 
 wax ' are contrasted Avith the notion of ' halting ])nr- 
 ticularly ' and ' levell'd malice'. In other words, the 
 poet is contrasting generality Avith particularity. The 
 visitors who throng the jiresence-chambcr of Lord 
 Timon arc compared by tlie poet to a sea, or arm of 
 the sea, when the tide is rising, and ;ire therefore 
 designated a ' conHuence ' and ;i 'great flood". Timon 
 is said to be embraced ' with timplest entertainment ' 
 by this tiood ; and the poet disclaiming piu'ticular per- 
 
 6
 
 8a The Still Lion. 
 
 sonal censure, asserts, in a metaphor probably derived 
 from Archery, that ' no levell'd malice infects ona 
 comma', i.e. not a single clause, iu his poem. It is 
 the antecedent sentence whicli contains the stumbling- 
 block. What is the meaning of ' a wide sea of wax ' ? 
 Every one knows that the verb io wax means, to grow ; 
 and the old English writers employ it indifferently of 
 increase or decrease ; a thing, with them, may wax 
 greater or smaller, stronger or weaker. To icax Avas to 
 change condition simply. But more strictly it was and 
 is still used in opposition to wane. If anything changes 
 its condition, it either waxes or wanes. In this re- 
 stricted sense Shakespeare in several places uses the 
 verb io wax, of the sea. 
 
 Who marks the waxing sea grovr nave by wave. — 
 
 Tltm Andronicm, iii. 1 . 
 
 His pupil age 
 Man-eiiter'ci tliuS; he waxed like a sea. — Cariolanus, ii. 1. 
 
 The older editors and commentators seem not to 
 have had the faintest suspicion of the meaning of tlie 
 expression, 'a wide sea of wax'. Hanmer and Steevens 
 explain it as an allusion to the Roman and early Eng-r 
 lish practice of writing with a stylo on tablets coated 
 with wax, so that the poet in Tunoa must be supposed 
 literally to have ' shaped out ' his man in wax, almost as 
 much so as if he had modelled him. All the editors 
 have followed this lead. Mr Dvce to the last was con- 
 firmed in this interpretation ; but Mr Staunton, who 
 had once accepted it, was at length conducted to the
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 83 
 
 extraordinary conclusiou, that ' wax ' was a press-error 
 for tax ! Besides this, the only emendation attempted 
 is Mr ColHer's verse. Very strange indeed is all tliis 
 speculation, in the face of the certain fact, that the sul)- 
 stantive, loax, occurs elsewhere in Shakespeare in an 
 allied sense. 
 
 Chief Jiiatice. What ! you arc as a candlt", the better part l)uriit out. 
 Faldaff. A wassail caudle, ray lord ; all tallow : if I did say of wax, 
 my growth would approve the truth. — 3 Hen. IF., i. 2. 
 
 It is all very well to say that this is a quibble or 
 pun : it is so : but such a puu would be insufferable— 
 not to say impossible — unless there were a substantive 
 ivax, meaniug grow'th, on which to make the pun. It 
 is, indeed, open to q\iestion whether wax be used in this 
 sense, in the proverbial phrase ' a man of wax ', which 
 occurs in Romeo and Jidiet, i. 3.* ' A \\ide sea of Avax ' 
 
 * I formerly accepted Mr Brae's view, that in Ben Jousou's post- 
 humous fragment The Fall of 'Mortimer, the word waxe had the 
 sense of personal aggraudisemeut : but I am now convinced thai ^Ir 
 Dyce was quite right in referring the word in question to the waxen 
 seal attached, to the Earl's patent of nobility. Evidently Mortimer is 
 noting the onticard insignia of his rank — viz. his ' crownet ', his 'robes ', 
 and the Great Seal, which he bore in h'm hand. This last is a point 
 overlooked by Mr Dyce. Mr Brae, wlio has privately retracted his in- 
 terpretation, refers me to Nohilitas Politica vel Civilis, by Robert 
 Glover, Somerset Herald: edited in 1008 by his nephew Thomas 
 Milles. He tells us that an Earl 'bore a patent with the Great Seal 
 pendent by Conl and Tassel.' Mr Brae seems to have been misled by 
 tlie two lines which follow ' crownet, robes, and waxe ', in Jousou's 
 play ; in which he saw a possible allusion to the poet's speech in Timon. 
 
 There is a fate that ilies with towering spirits 
 Home to the mark, and never checks at Conscience. 
 
 But the metaphor is taken from hawking.
 
 84 The Still LI 071. 
 
 seems to be merely an ;ifFectcd and pedantic mode of 
 indicating a sea that widens with the flood. 
 In Ilainlef, iii. 1, we read : 
 
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fbrtinie, 
 Or to take arms ag.iinst a sea of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them : 
 
 The question inij)]ies an option, either to endure the 
 troubles or to end them ' Avith a bare bodkin ' or other- 
 wise. If ' a sea of troubles ' be taken to mean a trou- 
 blous sea (somewhat as in the passage we have just 
 considered ' a sea of Avax ' means a locLvuig sea, or a sea 
 at flood tide), the phrase ' to take arms against a sea of 
 troubles ' expresses as futile a feat as ' to wound the 
 still-closing waters '. Would Shakespeare have put such 
 a catachresis into the mouth of the philosophical Ham- 
 let ? The doubt thus engendered has manifested itself, 
 as usual, in a plentiful crop of emendations, which in 
 this case are all ingenious, with the exception of one 
 proposed by the late Mr Samuel Bailey. By far the 
 best is Mr A. E. Brae's conjecture of assaj/ for 'a sea'. 
 In the presence of that Ave think it impertinent to name 
 its rivals. It is not only singidarly clever, but it gives 
 a sense, force, and dignity to the passage, which, thus 
 emended, is in Shakespeare's best manner. Btit this is 
 not enough. 
 
 In the fir.st i)lace let us clearly realize the fact, that 
 tlic metaphor, a sea of Iroublcs, sorrotcs, (jnefs, dangers, 
 &c., is as old as the hills, and is found in all languages :
 
 Defense of Certai)i JJ^orc/s and P/irases. 85 
 
 and it is adniinibly e\i)rcssive of tlie two attril)ute.s of 
 those sorrows tliat come ' in hatliilions', their iniiUipHcity, 
 and their power to overwhelm. Accordingly no defense 
 or illustration of the tignre is needed. Moreover it has 
 been contended by many critics, as Johnson, i\ialonc, 
 Warburton (in his second thonglits), Caldecott, De 
 Quincey, and ]Mr Stannton, that the want of consistency 
 or integrity in this metaphor is no argnment against 
 Shakespeare having written the passage as it stands. 
 Caldecott {Sjjecimen of a New Edition of Slial-espeare, 
 1819, p. G')) puts it thus: 'lie uses it [the metaphoi-] 
 liimself everywhere and in every form : and the inteijrity 
 of his metaphor is that which by him is of all things 
 the least thought of.' In support of this assertion 
 Caldecott refers to three passages in Shakespeare, not 
 one of which bears it out. The fact is, that Sh kespeare 
 eui ploys sea figuratively eight times : viz. Timon of Athens, 
 i. 1, ' sea of wax ' ; and iv. 2, ' sea of air ' : Pericles, v. 1, 
 ' sea of joys ' : Hen. Id 1 1., iii. 2, ' sea of glory ' ; and ii, 
 4, ' sea of conscience ' : 1 dien. Id., iv. 7, ' sea of blood' • 
 Lucrece, st. 158, 'sea of care'; and the instance in 
 (uiestion. In every case, except the last which is on its 
 trial, the integrity of the nieta})hor is sufficiently pre- 
 served. That, however, in Timon of Athens, iv. :2, has 
 been thought cpiestionable ; and ^fr Richard Carnett 
 {Athenaeum, Oct. lo, 1859), after quoting the lines, 
 
 Leiik'd is our bnrk, 
 And we, poor mates, stand on tho dying-defk, 
 Hearing tiie surices threat ; wt- must all part 
 Into tin's nfu of air,
 
 86 The Still Lion. 
 
 remarks — ' I, for one, cnn neither imderstand the phrase 
 in italics, nor correct it.' Withont asserting that these 
 lines were written by Shakespeare, we niay very readily 
 illustrate their meaning. ' Part ', of conrse, is (Jpparf ; * 
 and the 'sea of air' is that into which the sotil, freight* 
 ing his wrecked hark, the body, mnst at length take its 
 flight. Compare with the above, the following from 
 Drayton's Baffle of Af/inconrt .• 
 
 Now where both armies got upon tliat crvonnd, 
 As on a stage, wliere they their strengths must try, 
 "\Vhenee_/)w» the width of wany (i (/npinr/ iconnd 
 T/iero's manij a soul into the air mitnt jly. 
 
 As to Shakespeare's metaphor in the passage under 
 consideration, ' a sea of troul)les ', it occurs once in the 
 Faerie Queen (Book VI. c. ix. st. 31) ; and the sea is 
 otherwise employed metaphorically by Spenser in many 
 places (see the Faerie Queen, Book I. c. xii. st. 14: 
 Book III. c. iv. st. 8, &c.), but not once does he do vio- 
 lence to the metaphor. It is also frequently found in 
 prose works of the time. In Richard INIorysine's trans- 
 lation of L. Vives' Tnfroduction fo Wy^edom, Book IV., we 
 have ' sea of evils ' ; and in Andrew Kingsmyll's Com- 
 forfs in AlJIieiion^ (fol. G) we have ' seas of sorrows ' : 
 and in both cases is the integrity of the metaphor pre- 
 served. Arc we, then, to believe that Shakespeare de- 
 parted from this conscientious custom in one passage, 
 
 * Tlie convei"se is the case with an expression in the Marriage Ser- 
 vice ; so in Green's Groat^rorth of Wit .• ' hut I am yours till death 
 us depart.'
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 87 
 
 wherfc a sea is not an improbable misprint for rn^aay ? 
 We are thus presentod with the lioriis of a dilemma : 
 viz. on the one hand the impntiition of a lame metaphor 
 to Shakespeare's most philosophic rharaetcr, and on the 
 other, a eonjeetural emendation. Now it seems to us 
 that there is a way out of this dilemma — a middle 
 course whieh has hitherto escaped the notice of the 
 critics. One consideration of the highest importance 
 has been entirely ignored. When Hamlet talked of 
 ending his sea of troubles, or, as he afterwai'ds describes 
 it, shuffling oft* his mortal cod,* he had a covert con- 
 sciousness, a conscieyice in fact, which stayed the hand 
 he would have raised against his own life ; viz. that this 
 so-called ending and shuffling off, was a mere delusion, 
 just as much so as repelling the advancing waves of the 
 sea with shield and spear. Is not the metaphor, then, 
 sound and whole? If there be an incongruitv in the 
 notion of taking arms, offensively or defensively, against 
 the sea, is there not just as great an incongruity in using 
 ' a bare bodkin ' against the soul — the immortal part, 
 whieh (as Kaleigh has it) ' no stab can kill ' ? But, in tact, 
 that seeming incongruity is defensible, quite apart from 
 the metaphor. The late Wy Samuel Bailey in his dis- 
 cussion of the passage in (juestion has the following re- 
 
 * Shakespeare represents the luiman body under various figures: 
 a. coll : dense: a frame: a mach'nie : a rest lire : a heft: a motion, or 
 puppet : S:c. It has been eontended that in Hamlet's speeeli, the 
 'mortal coil' is the coil, i. o. trouble 6r turmoil, iiieident to man's 
 mortal state : but the analoiiics are too stroug in favour of tin- ' mortal 
 coil' being what Fletcher calls the 'case of flesh ' {BonJiico, iv. 1).
 
 88 The Still Lion. 
 
 mark : ' The objection is not to the metaphorical de- 
 signation a sea of Ironhles, [ — who ever said it was ?] 
 hut to the iigiirative absnrdity implied in " taking up 
 arms against a sea of troubles ", or indeed against any 
 other sea, literal or imaginary. I question whether any 
 instance is to be found of such a fight in the whole 
 compass of English Literature'. {'Lite Received Text of 
 Shakesjyeare, p. 39.) Why restrict the search to English 
 Literatm'e ? But the instance is to be found in various 
 literatures. In Ritson's Alemoirs of the Celts (p. 118) 
 occurs the following passage, which is a translation of 
 one in ^Elian: 
 
 ' Of all men I hear that the Celts are most ready to 
 undergo danger.^. * * * So base, indeed, do 
 they consider it to fly, that frequently they will not 
 escape out of houses tundjliug down and falling in 
 upon them, nor even out of those burning, though 
 themselves are ready to be caught by the fire. 
 Many, also, oppose the overwhelming sea : there 
 are some, likewise, who taking arms rush iqjon the 
 waves, and sustain their attack, extending their 
 naked swords and spears, in like manner as if they 
 were able to terrify or wound them.' 
 
 The same tradition is referred to by Aristotle in his 
 Eudemian Ethics, iii. 1 : 
 
 hidv ol KeXro) Trpo^ to. Hufxara oTrXa a7ravTco(ri
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 89 
 
 See also Arist. Nidi. Ktli. iii. 7. 
 
 Wc tliliik, tluMi, Tlainlct's soliloquy iniglit be fiiirly 
 pni-ii phrased tlius : 
 
 ' To exist : or to cease to exist : that is the (juestion 
 for me to decide. Whether it is the nobler part 
 to endure the outrages of fortune, and to dare the 
 surrounding sea of troubles ; or to imitate tlie 
 fabled feats of the Celts, and " taking arms rush 
 upon the waves." Doid)tless it is the nobler to 
 endure unshaken ; and is it not also more pru- 
 dent? For, it seems proba])le, that the attempt to 
 end our troubles by self-destruction would be as 
 futile as that of the Celts to assail tlie ocean; 
 and that after death itself we should find ourselves 
 overwhelmed bv evils of which we know nothin<i:, 
 and which therefore, for aught we know, may be 
 greater than those from which we should have 
 escaped. Thus does conscience make cowards of 
 us all.' 
 
 All things considered, then, in the case before us, we 
 elect to adhere to the received text, and to refuse to 
 allow even the most admirable of emendations to allure 
 us from our allegiance to that consistent metaphor which 
 has all the external evidences of authenticity. 
 
 While on this famous soliloquy, we may as well note 
 that 
 
 The undiscovivcd rountry from whose bourn 
 No tiavclki' ivtiinib
 
 90 The Still Lio?i. 
 
 is the allegorical country of the Meropes, well known to 
 every reader in Shakespeare's day. In the fifth dis- 
 course of the Spanish iMandevile (London, IGOO, p. 
 1:20), Bernado, one of the interlocutors, says, 
 
 ' That which I Mill tell you is out of Thcopompus, 
 alleaged by iElianus in his book Be varin Hisioria. 
 [It is in ^1. Var. Hist. iii. 18.] This Sylcnus 
 * * is * in one comuiunication that hee had 
 with King Mydas, discoursed unto him, that out of 
 this Land or world in which Avee live « * *i^ * 
 there is another Land so great that it is infinite 
 and without measure ^ * * * and the men 
 which dwell therein are twise so great as we are, 
 and their life twise as long * * * * . There 
 were in other provinces thereof certain people called 
 Meropes, who inhabited many aud great Citties, 
 within the bounds of whose Country there was a 
 place called Anostum, which word signifieth, a 
 place whence there is no returne : this Country, 
 saith he, is not cleare and light, neither yet alto- 
 gether darke, l)ut between both, through the same 
 runne two Rivers, the one of delight, the other of 
 
 griefe ', &c.* 
 It is noteworthy, too, that ' the undiscovered 
 
 ■r.HU tlO Oil 
 
 * For these hvo illustnitions from iElinn we are indebted to our 
 friend Dr Sebastian Eviuis : wlio iu tin; ])assag"e from Ilauiicl would 
 omit the pronoun after ' end,' undc-rstandiug by that verb die.
 
 Defense of Certai7i Woi'ds and Phrases. 91 
 
 country' is not mentioned in the 4to, 1003. Shake- 
 speure may have read this passage in /I'^lian between 
 1602 and 1G04, in which hitter year the first enlarged 
 Hamlet was ])ublished, containing the allnsion to 
 Anostnm. 
 
 10. Some of the ohscnrities in Shakespeare's text 
 arise from the consilience of two sourcMJs of ])er])]exity. 
 Here is one example, in which a word employed in an 
 obsolete sense forms part of a phrase which is itself of 
 peculiar cx^nstr action. In Ilamlct, i. 4, Horatio tries to 
 dissnade Hamlet from accomp{uiying the ghost, lest it 
 should 
 
 assume some other hornble form, 
 Wliirh miyltt deprive your sovcreig-uty of rea>oii, 
 And draw you into madness. 
 
 The verb to deprive is at present used with the same 
 construction as bereave or rotj ; but in Shakesi)earc it 
 corresponds to our ablate. Thus in Lucrece, st. clxx.: 
 
 'Tis honour to deprive dishonour'd life. 
 
 And ai*ain in st. ccli.: 
 
 That life was mine, whieh (liou hast liere dcpriv'd. 
 
 But the passage from Hamlet contains yet another source 
 of j>erplexity, viz. to ' deprive your mverrifivtii of ronmn \ 
 i. e. to deprive tlic sovereignty of your i-cason ; or, as 
 we should more naturally say, to deprive your reason of
 
 92 The Still Lion. 
 
 its sovereignty * -. in view of Avliicli the Rev. Joseph 
 Hunter {Few IJ'ords) proposed to transpose ' yoiu' ' and 
 'of. In defense of the original text, take the following 
 from a letter of Sir Thomas Dale, IGIO (the year of 
 Shakespeare's death). He calls Virginia, 'one of the 
 goodliest and richest kingdoms in the world, which being 
 inhabited by the king's subjects, will put such a bit into 
 our ancient enemy's mouth as Mill curl) Iii-s hauiiness of 
 monarch i/.' 
 
 11. Occasionally it is the figurative language of the 
 text which throws the critic on a false scent, and thus 
 leads him to look for a corruption where there is none. 
 The best example which we can call to mind is a 
 passage in MkcU Ado About Xotliijir/, iv. 1. Leonato, 
 learnins; that Hero has fainted under the shock of her 
 disgrace, cries, 
 
 Do nbt live, Hero, do not ope thine eyes : 
 For, did I think thou Avouldst not quickly die, 
 Thought [ thy spirits were stronger than thy sliames, 
 ifyself would on the rearward of reproaclies 
 Stiike at thy life. 
 
 This is the reading of the quarto, which has i\\Q 
 spelling rereward. The military metaphor has per- 
 plexed the critics. The war is between Hero's spirits 
 
 * It is purely' an' accideiit'nia't' thh objective of ''deprive' is ex- 
 pressed by two substantives connected l)y q/, suggesting to the modern 
 reader the construction here given. A learned friend suggests tliat in 
 some possible poem, entitled (say) ' The Battle of the High and the 
 Low,' the following might occur : 
 
 To malce an application to the Bishop, 
 Who might depnve the rector of the parish. 
 And turn hiui out of office.
 
 Defense of Certain ]Vords and Phrases. 93 
 
 and her shames or reproaches. The latter have, in the 
 onset, assailed her, and she lies insensil)le from tlicir 
 violence. Then savs Leonato. if, ouiii<r to the sustain- 
 inp; power of her spirits, her reproaches fail to kill her, I 
 will come, as a reserve, in their rear, and 1 will slav her 
 myself. Not perceiviii"; tiie integrity of the metaphor, 
 for which ' rear\vai"d ' (the op])osite of voi/icard, vaywurd, 
 or vauijnard) is ahsolntely required, Mr A. E. Brae, this 
 time most infclicitonsly, proposed to read reword for 
 the reading of the folio, ' reward '. This reading would 
 invest the passage with downright nonsense; for as it 
 stands, the very deficiency of the reproaches (which are 
 enough to prostrate, but not to kill her) is the reason for 
 Leonato's interference : whereas, Mr Brae's reading 
 would make him sav, that if that deficiencv were abated, 
 if their power were recruited, he would then interpose 
 to do a work of supererogation. Besides, this reading 
 seems to distinguish between Plero's shames and her re- 
 proaches, which are evidently one and the same. If, 
 then, the text were faulty, ]\lr Brae's reading would be 
 no cure, l)ut even make matters worse. The objection 
 io reward, taken in the old sense of ret/a rd, or to reword, 
 on the ground of prosody, would be untenable. Bcward 
 anil reword mv^at be indifferently iand)uses or trochees. 
 Itelapse, severe, siqjreme, and secure (Shakespeare), re- 
 Jlecf (Fletcher), rcyret (Drant), revere (May), and recluse 
 (Donne), are all occasionally used as trochees. The real 
 objection to reward is, that the sense of regard was 
 already obsolete w hen Shakespeare wrote ; that to re-
 
 ^4 The Still Lion. 
 
 word is, that it makes Leonato's declaration inconsistent 
 with itself, violates the integrity of the metaphor, and 
 degrades Hero's reproaches (her shames, in fact,) into 
 verbal accusations : (' upon the repetition of these 
 charges ' is Mr Brae's paraphrase) ; to both alike, that 
 the relative text presents no difficulty to the reader who 
 Tinderstands the military figure which it involves, and 
 therefore no footing for the conjectural critic. We have, 
 in fact, the same metaphor in Shakespeare's 90th Son- 
 net, which has also suffered emendation in j\Ir Y. T. 
 Palgrave's Gem Edition: 
 
 Oil! do not, whea my heart hath scip'd this sorrow 
 
 Come in the rearward of a conquered woe ; 
 
 Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 
 
 To linger out a purpos'd overthrow. 
 
 If thou, wih leave me, do not leave me last 
 
 AVheu otlier petty griefs have done theii* spite, 
 
 But in the omet come ; so shall I taste 
 
 At first the very worst of Fortune's raiglit ; &c. 
 
 AVe will give one more example of the same fatality. 
 Shakespeare's figurative use of the word sfai/i, whether 
 substantive or verb, is various. The primaiy notion is 
 that of giving to something a colour from without ; this 
 may be a stain of foulness or otherwise, and stain may 
 thus YCiQ^m pollute, pollution ; or somewhat more generally, 
 dishonour ; otherwise, dj/e, indue (verb, in Shakespeare's 
 peculiar sense), and therefore subdue (verb), — i. e. to a 
 particular attril)ute or quality ; and again, infect, infec- 
 tion, and finally couiproinise. In another view the sub- 
 stantive stain may siprnifv the reverse of foil, as in Venus 
 and Adonis, st. 1 , ' stain to all nymphs,' i. e. casting their
 
 Defense of Cerlain Words and Phrases. 95 
 
 chaniis into the ^hadt' by comparison ^vith tliose of 
 Voiuis. The passage we have in view, in in;iking these 
 remarks, is in Antonij and Clcopnlra, iii. 4. Antony 
 complains to Octavia that lier brotlier has gone to war 
 against rom})cy withont reason, and without his (An- 
 tony's) qouciuTeucc ; that lie has given \\\\\\ (Antony) 
 ' narrow measure ' in speaking of liini. This tonches his 
 hononr, and he therefore declares that while his Avife 
 goes, as reconciler, between the two trinmvii*s, he will 
 give Ca3sar a strong motive for making overtures of 
 friendship. lie says. 
 
 The mean time, Indy, 
 I'll raise the preparation of a Avai* 
 Shall duln vour brotlier. 
 
 The metaphor, Avhicli once seized can never occasion 
 the least perplexity, has misled the critics, who have 
 accordingly attempted to remedy a seeming imperfec- 
 tion, by treating ' stain ' as a misprint. Theobald reads 
 strain; Boswell proposed sfai/, which Mr J. P. Collier 
 adopted. Rann has 'atahi, for si/sfain. Jackson pro- 
 posed stun ; and the Cambridge Editors, worst of all, con- 
 jecture */«c'>i\^ Certainly, had strain been in the old text 
 we should have been well satisfied with it. But while Ye- 
 ^i\Y(y\\v^i\vdi ^^ facdc prijfceps among the j)roposcd sub- 
 stitutes, we hold it (piite inferior to the word of the folio. 
 Compronme woidtl be a dilution of stain, in the sense we 
 believe Shakespeare to have intended. Antony's pre})ara- 
 tion was designed to effect a total change in Caesar's ])ur- 
 poses and plans, in fact to indue and subdue him to the
 
 g6 The Still Lion. 
 
 qualitv of Antony's mind — possibly even to overshadow 
 Caesar, and impress him with the weight of Antony's 
 personal character. As it seems to us, we lose a sea 
 of meaning by adopting any of the proposed substi- 
 tutes. Our bard eschewed, for the most part, weak 
 generalities, and, though his Mord stain have a consider- 
 able range of meaning, it is preserved from vagueness 
 by its anchorage in the world of sense. 
 
 l.'^. Some passages present a cluster of difficulties — 
 so many, in fact, that it cannot be supposed that mere 
 textual corruption can have originated them all. Two 
 salient exam|)les occur respectively in J\IraMire for Mea- 
 sure, iii. 1, and Cyuihelwe, v. 4 ; both relating to death. 
 Tlie former runs thus : 
 
 I, bill to flip, and g"o \vc know not where, 
 
 To lie in col'l obstruction, and to rot, 
 
 This sensible warm motion, to become 
 
 A kneaded clod ; And the deliji-hted spirit 
 
 To bath in tierie floods, or to recide 
 
 In thrilling Hcgion of thicke-ribbed Ice, 
 
 To be imprisoned in the viewlesse windes 
 
 And blowne with restlesse violence round about 
 
 The pendant world : or to be Avorse then woi-st 
 
 Of tliose, that lawlesse and incertaine thonght. 
 
 Imagine bowling, 'tis too horrible. Folio 162.3. 
 
 The opening of this passage was specially selected by 
 Mr J. M. D. Mciklojohn, in a paper read to the CoU 
 lege of Precejjiors, as an illustration of his assertion 
 that the practice of calling upon a student to write 
 a pariiphrase of poetry is useless and absurd : here he 
 pronounced a jjaraphrase to be im])ossible. Now a
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 97 
 
 p;»ra})lirnsc is only impossible tliroiiji;li some iiilieiciit 
 obscurity in the text to he cxpoimdcd : and surely the 
 more diftieult a passage is, the more useful is the j)ara- 
 phrase. To us it appears plain that the practice of calling 
 lor a paraphrase is in the highest degree commendable: 
 for it is the only means ])y Avhicli the teacher can dis- 
 cover how far his pupil understands the passage which 
 forms the subject of his study. Not that a paraphrase 
 can by any means convey the whole sense of the ori- 
 ginal : no paraphrase was ever intended to do that : but 
 it can convey, l)y analysis aud qualification, the greater 
 ])art of that sense ; and surely ' half a loaf is better than 
 no bread.' We do not 'halt particularly' to expound 
 the meaning of ' cold obstruction ' or ' delighted spirit : ' 
 Ave would rather call attention to Shakespeare's use 
 of the abstract substantive, as ' Reo;ion ' and ' thouiiht.' 
 Dycc's first edition thus remarks upon the former word : 
 ' The folio has " Region " : but the plural is positively 
 required here on account of "//ow^^v" in the preceding, 
 and " iiiiuU " in the following line.' And for the latter 
 he reads, after all the editors, save those of Oxford and 
 Cambridge, ' ihoii(/]iis! That note, if it mean anything, 
 means that Shakespeare cnipl{)yed Region in the con- 
 crete, and in the modern and ordinarv sense : and we 
 have no doubt that Dyce adojjted the jilural thoughts as 
 the nominative to ' imasjine.' On the contrary we con- 
 tend that ' Region ' is used in the abstract, and in the 
 radical sense ; and that it means rrsfrictrd jdace, or con-
 
 98 The Still Lion. 
 
 finement * ; alsvo, tlmt ' tlioiight ' is used in the abstract, 
 and that it is the objective governed by * imagine.' 
 The adjective ' incertain ' is employed in a specialised 
 sense, like the Latin incertus : certain, like ccrlifs, is used 
 by Shakespeare as the opposite of crazy or mad : e. g. 
 in A Midmmmer NifjUfs Bream, i. 1, Demetrius says, 
 
 "Relent, sweet Hennia ; And Lysander yield 
 Tliv crazail title to mv certain right : 
 
 and ai>"ain in ii. 2, 
 
 That the rndc sea grew civil at her song ; 
 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, &c. 
 
 In fact, certain and incertain are synonyms for settled 
 and wisettled, respectively. (See ' settled senses,' Win- 
 ter s Tate, V. 3 ; and ' unsettled fancy,' Tempest, v. 1.) 
 Accordingly, as we read the passage, the last three lines 
 may be paraphrased thus : 
 
 ' Or to be in an infinitely worse case than those 
 Avho body forth — or render o])jective — their own 
 lawless and crazed mind.' 
 
 The pendant from Cijmheline, v. 4, is as follows : 
 
 Most welcome bondage ! For thou art a way, 
 I tliink, to lil)erty. Yet am 1 better 
 Thau one that's sick o' the gont, since he had rather 
 Groan so in perpetuity, than be cured 
 
 * So Carlyle appears to have understood it : for in his Heroes and 
 ITero-worHJiip, 1842, Lect. iii. p. 13.5, he quotes the passage apro- 
 pos of Dante's 'soft etherial soul, looking out so stern, implacable, gi'ini- 
 trenchant, as from imprisonment of tliielc-rihhed ice I ' as expressed in 
 Giotto's portrait. lie is perhaps also glancing at VInferno, Canto 
 xxxiv.
 
 Defense of Certain Words and Phrases. 99 
 
 By the sure pliysiei.ui, Death ; who is tlie key 
 
 To unbar these locks. My conscience ! thou art fettered 
 
 More than my shanks and wrists. You ^ood f^ods gfive nic 
 
 The penitent instrument to pick that bolt, 
 
 Then free for ever! Is 't enouj^h I'm sorry ? 
 
 So children temporal fatliirs do appease: 
 
 flods are more full of mercy. Must I repent ? 
 
 T cannot do it better than in jryves 
 
 Desired more thau constrain'tl. To satisfy, 
 
 ( If of ray freedom 'tis the maiu part) take 
 
 No stricter render of me than my all. 
 
 1 know you are more clement than vilcd men, 
 
 Who of their broken debtors lake a third, 
 
 A sixth, a tenth, lettino: thein thrive aji:ain 
 
 On their abatement ; that 's not my desire : 
 
 For Imogen's dear life take mine ; and thoui>h 
 
 'Tis not so dear, yet 'tis a life : you coin'd it. 
 
 'Tweeu man and man they weigh not every stamp ; 
 
 Though light, take pieces for the figure's sake ; 
 
 You rather, mine being yours : and so, Great Powers, 
 
 If you wiU take this audit, take this life, 
 
 And cancel these cold bonds. 
 
 Of the passage from ' Mast I repent,' down to ' my 
 all,' Mr Stamiton Avrites, * It is, we fear, liopelessly 
 incurable.' To which we can only answer, that M'e 
 see there no corrnption whatever ! Difficulty there is, 
 but none that does not disappear by the simple process of 
 elucidation. In our judguicnt the entire passage is one of 
 those in which the bard displays at once his wealth of 
 knowledge and his fertility and felicity of language. Its 
 terseness, along with a technical and figurative use of 
 words, has misled jdl the critics : and, as the result of 
 their industry, we have only systematic misprision and 
 wanton innovation. In Shakespeare-criticism we learn
 
 loo The Still Lion. 
 
 to be grateful for negative virtues : and we are really 
 tliaiikfiil to ^Ir Staunton for printing the passage intact 
 and entire, and sparing us the pain of conjectural cor- 
 ruption. Posthnmus rejoices in his })odily thraldom, be- 
 cause its issue Avill be death, which will set him free : 
 certaiidy from bodily bondage, and possibly from spirit- 
 ual bondage — the worse of the twain. So he prays for 
 * the penitent instrument to pick that bolt,' the bolt 
 which fetters his conscience worse than the cold gvves 
 constrain his shanks and wrists : that is, for the means of 
 a repentance which may l)e efficacious for pardon and 
 absolution. He then enters into these means in detail, 
 foHowin^; the order of the old Churchmen : viz. sorrow 
 for sin, or altriiion : ' Is't enough I am sorrv ? ' &c. : 
 then penance, which Avas held to convert attrition into 
 contrition : ' oMust I repent ? ' &c. : then satisfaction for 
 the w'rong done. As to this last he says, if the main 
 condition of his spiritual freedom be that, (' To satisfy,') 
 let not the gods icith that otjjccf take a stricter render 
 than his all — his life. These are the three parts of 
 absolution. The third he expands in the last clause. 
 He owns that his debt exceeds his all. He says, in 
 effect, 
 
 ' Do not call nie to a stricter account than the for- 
 feiture of my all toicards payment. Take my all, 
 and give me a receipt, not on account, but in full 
 of all demands. Earthly creditors take of their 
 del)tors a fi'action of their debt and less than their 
 all, ' letting them thrive again on their abatement ' :
 
 Defense of Certain JVords and Phrases. i o i 
 
 but 1 do not desire tluit iiididireiice of Mmv cle- 
 mency. Take life for life — my all : and tlioiiii;li it 
 is not worlli so much as Imogen's, yet 'tis a life, 
 and of the same divine origin : a coin from the 
 same mint. Between man and man light pieces 
 are current for the sake of the figure stamped u))on 
 them : so nmch the rather should the gods take 
 my life, which is in their own image, though it is 
 not so dear or precious as Imogen's*.' 
 
 The old writers com})ared the hindrances of the body 
 to gyves : so AValkington in T/ie OpIU-k Gla.sse of Jf/im- 
 ors, 1 GO 7, folio 11, 'Our l)odies were the prisons and 
 bridewils of our soules, wherein thev l:iv manicled and 
 fettered in Gives ', !kc.\ -. and when Posthumus says 
 ' Cancel these cold bonds,' he means free the soul from 
 the body : but the epithet ' cold ' has reference to the 
 material gyves, which \vere of iron : cf. T/ic Ttco Noble 
 Kinsmen, iii. I, where Palamon says, ' Quit inc of these 
 cold gyves ' — i. e. knock oft' my fetters. 
 
 Such passages as these two serve as admirable illus- 
 trations of the novel position taken by a writer in the 
 Times of Sept. 29, 1S03, in a review of The Cambridge 
 Edition of Shakespeare : ' There never was an author 
 who less required note or comment than Shakespeare.' 
 It is quite true that the mass of readers are content to 
 
 * For the keys to these two passa<,'es I am iiulclttcd to ^fr Hii^-h 
 Carleton of AueklamI, N. Z., and to the Uite llev. W. W . JUrrv, Pre- 
 bendarv of S. Paul's. 
 
 t He is possibly ihiiikiiiij- of the Vhactio, li ami 73.
 
 102 The Still Lion. 
 
 take the text as thev find it, and take in as much of it 
 as they can withont trouble ; and that the mass of critics 
 and editors are impatient of the restraint v/hich a 
 thorough and painstaking study of the text would 
 impose upon their conjectural fertility — it is so much 
 easier to ' regulate ' the text, or to shun the dark places 
 in it, than to elucidate it. Meanwhile the Still Lion 
 
 IS PATIENT AND LONGSUFFERING, AND ' REQUIRES ' NEI- 
 THER NOTE NOR COMMENT : BUT IS READY TO AVENGE . 
 HIMSELF ON SCIOLISTS AND MEDDLERS. 
 
 We now hold our hand : hut passages upon passages 
 crowd upon us, clamouring for advocacy and defence, 
 which as vet are suuering the crvino; wrono:s of emenda- 
 tion, as if the Prom.ethean bard were here chained to the 
 rock of pedantry, and a critical vulture v\'ere preying on 
 his vitals. But we tnist we have done enough, both by 
 wav of warninor and of criticism, to show that i^-norance 
 of the spelling, language, and customs of Shakespeare's 
 day, is an absolute disqualification for the serious work 
 of criticism, even more so than the insensibility of sach 
 men as Steevens and Johnson. 
 
 The text is beset with difficulties to the ordinary 
 reader, which are occasioned far more by the presence 
 of ol)solcte phraseology and of allusions to obsolete 
 customs and forgotten events than by the accidents of 
 the press ; so that to an ignorant reader who is im- 
 patient of obscurity profuse emendation is a positive 
 necessity. But unhappily, ignorance, insensibility, and 
 literarv ambition concur to convert a reader into a
 
 Defense of Certain Woi'ds and Plwases. 1 03 
 
 criticaster of Sluikcs[)carc's text. The result is, tlmt 
 passages, ciiiiueiit for their sense and l)eauty, for tlie 
 purity of tlieir construction, the selectness of their words, 
 the dignity or fitness of their thoughts, are defaced and 
 marred by the meddling, clumsy boor whose vanity has 
 induced him to play the critic. Sucli is the fate that 
 has befallen, among many other passages of faultless 
 excellence, that, perhii})s the most lovely of all that ever 
 flowed from the great soul of the poet, in which Pericles 
 calls on Ilclicanus to wound him, lest he should be 
 drowned with the sweetness of ' the great sea of joys ' 
 that rushed upon him * : till at length we are glad to 
 find a fitting vent for our grief and indignation in tlic 
 words of Milton, 
 
 Sfe with what haste these dn^s of Hell advance 
 To waste and havoc yonder worlil, wliicli Tiiou 
 llast uiadc so fair ! 
 
 * "VVe had in mind the late ^fr Samiul I'ailcy's proposal to alter 
 • sweetness ' into mnjea, for publishing- wliich, in our judgment he 
 deserved to stand in the pillory, or do penance in a white sheet, or go 
 woolward and lie in the woollen till he came to a better frame of 
 mind. When we saw his work On the Received Text of Skakeapeare \\& 
 thought we had seen the worst possible of Shakespeare-criticism. We 
 found ourselves in eiTor there, however, as soon as we saw the now late 
 Mr Thomas Keightley's S^itikeHpenre Expositor. In defence of Shake- 
 speare's expression, ' To drown me with their sweetness ', if, forsooth, 
 defense were needed, or let us say for its illustration, we might cite the 
 following from Stephen Gosson's I'hiij>i Confidfd in Fire Actions, (n.d.). 
 sig. B. t, ' bec^nuse we are. . . . drunken with the sweetness of these 
 vanities.'
 
 IO_f. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ON THE CONJECTURAL EMENDATION OF SHAKESPEARe's 
 
 TEXT. 
 
 APPY indeed sliall avc be if our remarks 
 induce the verbal critic to sjjcire the works 
 of Sliakespeare as he loves them. But, at the 
 same time, we concede the fact of textual con'uption in 
 many passages, and the proljability of corruption in 
 many others. The truth is, that besides the two classes 
 of textual difficulties, called historical ^t^^ grammatical , 
 there is a third more formida])le than either, viz., the 
 class of literal difficulties, which may very well be the 
 result of misprinting. Conjectural criticism being thus 
 allowed, it becomes expedient to assign the limits within 
 which it should be exercised. Something towards this 
 end would l^e accomplished if a code of canons could 
 be imposed upon all, as a common basis of operations. 
 Evidently, such a preliminary would obviate a vast and 
 useless expenditure of inventive sagacity, and the an- 
 tiquarians would thereby be spared a world of super- 
 fluous s})eculation. There are, indeed, certain consider- 
 ations which miglit assist the critics in the determination
 
 Conjectural Enicndaiion of Shakespeare s Text. 1 05 
 
 of that basis, lor one thing, the ]io})clcssness of certain 
 dasses of emendations may well be allowed to pnt 
 them ont of court, however felicitous they may be : 
 
 1. Where there is no close resend)lance between 
 the (liH-fuH /i/crar/nii of the word or words to ])e sup- 
 planted, and that of the word or words to be supplied, 
 regard being had either to their written or to their 
 printed form. For example : we cannot exj)ect that, in 
 As You Like It, iri/jutaiy streams will ever be accepted 
 in lieu of ' wearie very means ' ; thtit in jilt's Wetl titat 
 Ends Wetl, her own suit joimiifj loilh her mother s (/race, 
 will ever supersede ' Her insuite connning with her 
 modern grace'; or that, in The Comedy of Errors, pro- 
 spice fuu em will ever take the ])lace of ' the prophecy.' 
 
 2. Where the proposed word is unknown or very 
 iinnsual in the relative literature : for instance, in 1 lien. 
 IT., tame chetah for ' tame cheater ' ; in The Tempest, 
 i/ou/if/ chamats (i. e. Angora goats) for 'young scamels': 
 to which might be added several of the proposed emend- 
 ations of stracht/, in 'Twelfth Ni(/ht. At the same time 
 it should be remembered that some words can more 
 readily substantiate their title than others: e.g., rother 
 for 'brother' in Timun of Athens is a good word enough, 
 and that it was not wdiolly uidvuown to Shakespeare is 
 l^'oved by Rother Street in tlic very town where he was 
 born and died, the name by which the street was known 
 in his lifetime. Yet no example of the use of rother, an 
 ox, has ever been discovered in the literature of his day. 
 
 Criticism, like Commentarv, has often fallen to the
 
 io6 The Still Lion. 
 
 lot of men whose a1)ilitics and training had not fitted 
 thcni for that kind of intellectual work. In the fifth of 
 De Qiiincey^s Letters to a young man ivhose education has 
 hecn nc(jJected, Dr Nitsch, the Commentator on Kant, 
 affords a mark for the Opium-Eater's fine irony. He 
 fancies the learned doctor protesting against the reason- 
 ableness of expecting a man, who has all this commenting 
 to do, to have thoroughly mastered his author. The 
 equitable division of labour demands that one man shall 
 master the system, and another write commentaries ! 
 -Criticism offers almost as prominent a mark for ridicule. 
 If a few really intelligent and learned men have done 
 much good work in this department, assuredly the greater 
 bulk of criticism has proceeded from those who had few 
 or none of the necessary requirements. The least one 
 ■might expect of them would be a study of the context, 
 and the reservation of their specidations until some one 
 conjecture can be shown to stain its rivals. Nobody 
 cares to be told that ])ossibly a suspicious vvoj'd in the 
 text is a misprint for this, that, or the other ; as is the 
 custom with several critics of tliis day, to whom the great 
 Becket seems to liave bequeatlied the rags which served 
 him for a mantle. 
 
 The simple truth is, that sticcessful emendation is 
 the fruit of severe study and research on the one hand, 
 and of rare sensibilitv and sense on the other. The 
 
 *j 
 
 number of really satisfactory conjectures are ccmipara- 
 tively few ; and few are those critics who have shown 
 any remarkable sagacity in this kind (;f speculation.
 
 Cojijcchiral Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 107 
 
 The ensuing may be cited with lUKinalified satisfaction : 
 
 1. Our Poesic is as a Gowne, which uses 
 
 From whence 'tis iiourisht. — Tivion of /Itheiis, i. 1 . 
 
 Our Poesic is as a Gumnie (Pope) which oozes (Johnson), &c. 
 
 2. It is the Pastour Lards, tlie brother's sides. 
 The Wiint th;it makes liim h^auo. — Ihid. iv. 3. 
 
 It is the Pasture (Rowe) lar.ls tlie rother's (Singer) sides, 
 The want that makes him leane (Piowe), 
 
 3. for thou seest it will not coole my nature. — Twelfth Ni(jlil, i. 3, 
 for thou seest it will not curie by (Thi-ohaLI) nafure. 
 
 4. Her infuite comming with her moderne p:race, 
 
 Sulxhi'd me to her rate.— ^//'s TFell that Ends Well, v. 2. 
 Her infinite cunniuf; (Walker), &c. 
 
 5. Till that tlie wcarie verie nicanes do ebbe. — yh You Lilce It, ii. 7. 
 Till that the wearer's (Singer), Sec. 
 
 6. To you, our Swords have leaden points, 3Iarl- Antony : 
 Our Amies in streniilh of malice. — Jidlus Cresar, iii. 1. 
 Our Armes in strength of amitie (Singer).* 
 
 * Even the propo.scr of thispalmarian emendation was not aware of 
 the corroboration it might receive from Shakespeare's language in other 
 places. We have in Anton;/ and Cleopatra the very phrase in one 
 place, and almost the very phrase in another. In ii. G we read ' that 
 which is the strength of their amity sliall prove the immediate author of 
 their variance ' : and in iii. 2, Antonv savs, 
 
 I'll wrestle with you hi my strength of love. 
 
 Again in 2 Hen. I J'. 2, wo have this parallel, 
 
 Let's drink togciluT I'riendly, and embrace, 
 That all their eyes may bear these tokens home 
 Of our ri'storcd love and amity : 
 
 In fact, * malice' in the folio is merely the result of correcting amitie, 
 set up awry, with the in and a transposed. The entire sense is, 'We 
 will receive and embrace yon externally, with our arms in all their 
 strength of amity, and internally, with our hearts of brothers' temper'. 
 No ollur emendation meils all the rccinirements of the jiassage.
 
 ■io8 . ■ The Still Lion. 
 
 7. Thy pak'ncsse moves me more than eloquence. 
 
 Merchant of T^enice, iii. 2. 
 Thy plaiimcsse (Warburton) moves me, S:c. 
 
 J*. For I do see the cniell paiijis of death 
 
 Eiglit ill thine eye. — Kbirj JoJoi, iv. 4. 
 
 Riot (Brae) in thine eye. 
 9. 'Tis eiiou2^1i 
 
 That (Britaine) I h.avc kill'd thy Mistris : Peace, 
 
 He give no wound to thee. — Ci/mbeUne, v. 1. 
 
 I have kill'd thy Mistris-piece (Staunton)*. 
 
 10. for his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of grecne 
 
 lields. — Hen. V., ii. 3. 
 
 and a Babied (Theobald) of greeue fields. 
 
 11. For his Bounty, 
 There was no winter in 't. An Anthony it was. 
 
 That grew tlie more by reaping. — Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. 
 
 an autumn 'twas (Theobald). 
 
 12. I have rctyr'd me to a wastefull cocke. — Tiinon of Athens, ii. 2. 
 I have rctyr'd me to a wakcfull couche (Swynfen Jervis). 
 
 As to tlie last, a few remarks may be added in justi- 
 fication of so vaUiahle a correction. We do not touch 
 the fitness or the beauty of the emendation, which speak 
 for themselves, but the probability of the misprint. AVe 
 must use a favourite resource of Zachary Jackson here. 
 In the ' upper case ' of the compositor, the ft and k are 
 in contiguous ' boxes ', so that an ft would sometimes be 
 dropped into the k box by mistake : thus [ft | k i; whence 
 it might very well happen that vdl-ofiiU was set up 
 waJif'/ulL Not improbtdjly v:akefuU in the ' copy ' sug- 
 
 * This master-piece in emendation was communicated to us by Mr 
 Staunton in tlie course of conversation, shortly after the completion 
 of his Edition of ShalrcHpeare.
 
 Conjectural EjHcndation of Sliakespcarc s Text. IC9 
 
 gested cock to the mind of tlie workiiinii instead of 
 couch, by the power of association ; tlie 1)ani-cock being 
 often called the wakeful l)inl, or tlie wakeful cock. As 
 an illustration of this particular misprint, we may 
 instance these two cases : in one l^irmingham news- 
 paper we observed the remarkable expression (of a 
 remarkable phenomenon) ' sermon witliout bosh ', for 
 sermon wilhotit book; and in another, 'genial break' for 
 f/enial hrcafh ; and the blunder of ' break ' for hrcaih 
 also occm-red in one of the proofs of our tractate en- 
 titled, IfuH Thomas Lodge an Actor ^ p. 10. 
 
 Of course, in order to appreciate the actual duty 
 done by each of these twelve emendations, it is necessary 
 to make the passage to which it applies a special study. 
 All that the mere presentation of tlunn to the eye can 
 do, is to show the reader that the ductus Uterarum of the 
 conjecture is sufficiently near to that of the text, which is 
 also the fact in the majority of unsuccessful conjectures. 
 
 As in the case of ' wastefull ' for wabf/dl, in many 
 misprints the process is patent ; in some, however, we 
 see the fatalitv under v.hich certain classes of words 
 were wrongly set up, without being a])le to see why that 
 fatality existed. Of all classes pronouns (simply as 
 such) were the most commonly misyuinted. The first 
 folio of Shakespeare and the first quarto of the Sonnets 
 teem with such errors. Some particular passages seem 
 to have suffered from as great a fatality. Again and 
 again has corruption disastered them, misprint being 
 grafied on misprint. Here are two examples :
 
 I ro The Still Lion. 
 
 1. In the Tempest, i. 2, it is beyond the shadow of 
 a doubt that Shakespeare wrote, 
 
 Urcliins 
 Shall forth at vast of ni"ht, that thev mav worke 
 All exercise on thee. 
 
 Three morsels of knowledge, indeed, are requisite for the 
 full comprehension of the sense : io forth was a common 
 phrase for to go forth ; vast of night meant dead of night ; 
 and exercise meant chastisement. Ignorance of one or 
 some of these things has hitherto hindered the reception 
 of ]\[r Thomas White's restoration. It has been argued 
 by a ver}' competent critic and editor, that exercise must 
 be a verb, because to icork exercise would, otherwise, be 
 a pleonasm which it would be impertinent to impute to 
 Shakespeare. Nothing can be more fallacious than that 
 style of argument. Pleonasms are the very stuff of the 
 Elizabethan and Jacobian Avriters. In our authorized 
 version of the Holy Scriptures, for instance, St Paul is 
 made to say (2 Cor. viii. 11), ' Now therefore, perform 
 ve the doinof of it,' But nevertheless, to work exercise 
 is not a pleonasm : it means to inflict punishment. Un- 
 happily in setting up the text of the Ihnpest in 1G22, 
 the ' th ' of ' forth ' got slightly dislocated, so as to be 
 too near the following word ' at '. Accordingly, the 
 lines stand there 
 
 Urchins 
 Shall for that vast of night, that they may worke 
 All exercise on thee. 
 
 Then came the editors who, seeing in the line in
 
 Conjectural Emendation of Sliakespcai-e s Text, i i i 
 
 question an intimation of tlie awiully indefinite duration 
 of the nif^ht during ^vhich tlie urchins arc i)crmitted to 
 exercise tlieir infernal arts on Calilian — as if, forsooth, 
 their privilege were limited to a single night, and to one 
 which was longer than any other — , advanced the 
 limitary comma from * niglit ' to ' worke '. Then came 
 Thomas Warton, who, requiring the line for the illustra- 
 tion of one in Milton, gave it in a note thus : 
 
 Urchins 
 Slir.ll for tlmt want of night that they may «ork ; 
 
 thereby graffing one misprint on another.* 
 
 2. In his rechai/Jfc of the old Tiiiion, Shakespeare 
 undouhtedlv wrote, 
 
 Our poosie is as a g-umnie which oozes 
 Prom whence 'tis nouridht. 
 
 But in the edition of 1G23, the passage was, as we have 
 seen, thus misprinted, 
 
 Om* Pocsie is as a Gowne wliich uses 
 From ^Yhence 'tis nourisht. 
 
 and l^ieck, who set himself up as a critic on Shakespeare 
 and other English Dramatists, defended the nonsense, 
 under the impression, pcrlnips, that Shakespeare meant 
 to compare poetry to a worn-out robe ! 
 
 Unhappy passage ! Tn a letter on ' The influences 
 of Newspapers on Education ', written by i\Ir Elanchard 
 Jcrrold, in the Dailt/ Neics, he had intended to quote 
 
 * h\ tlie former edition of The Still Lion the line appears with a 
 new misprint, 
 
 Sliull forth at vast of niglit, tliat tliey nuikc worko. Sue ante, p, 39.
 
 112 The Still Lion. 
 
 the amended version ; but to his horror it n})i)cared in a 
 totally new form, 
 
 Our poesy is as a queen that dozetli ; 
 
 and it now remains for some conceited foreigner of the 
 future to contend that the bard meant to signalize the 
 drowsiness of our poetry, by comparing it to a queen, 
 who, despite the calls of her high station, falls asleep on 
 her throne ! 
 
 Let us now^ consider three selected passages, 
 given in both the quarto and folio editions of Ilamlet. 
 These will serve as samples of the state of the old text, 
 and of the value of having more than one version of a 
 passage which has suffered from the blunder of copyist 
 or printer. In the first, the folio corrects the error of 
 the quarto : in the second, the quarto corrects the error 
 of the folio : in the third, the folio deserts us ; no 
 quarto-reading can, in this case, be allowed as the cor- 
 rection of another ; and conjecture has not arrived at 
 any satisfactory result. 
 
 1. In Hamlet, iv. 7, as given in the quartos of 1604 
 and 1003, we have, 
 
 so that luy avrowcs 
 Too slifihtly tynihcnl for so loucd Ann'd, 
 Wouhl have reuerted to my bo we ac'aine, 
 But not where I haue [had] aym'd them. 
 
 The only variation in the words ' loued Arm'd ' given 
 by the early rpiartos is, that two read ' loucd armes ', 
 and one reads ' loved armes '. 
 
 Such a crux as that would have been ' larks ' or
 
 Conjectural Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 1 1 3 
 
 'nuts' to the critical taste. llaj)j)il\ the folio 1023 
 gives us the true lection, viz. loud d U'iiide. So Ascham, 
 in his Tod'ojj/iilit.s, Book ii. (Arber's Repiiiit, p. l.jO-l), 
 says, ' The greatest enemy of Shootyng is the winde and 
 wether, &c. Weak bowes, and lyght shaftes can not 
 stande in a rou";h wvnde.' 
 
 2. If, on the other hand, we liad but the first folio, we 
 should be called upon to explain or amend the following 
 passage in HauiUd : 
 
 To his good Friends, thus wide He ope my Amies : 
 And like the kiiiile i.ife-reiid'ring Politician, 
 Kepast them with my blood. 
 
 Such a crux as ' Life-rend 'ring Politician' would 
 have been as appetising and entertaining as the last ; 
 and the game would naturally have been quickened by 
 the fact, that when Handel was first indited PolUkian, 
 occuring once, however, in this play (' tlie Pate of a 
 Politician,' iv. 1,) was an InsolenH vcrbuni, which we now 
 believe to have been first used by George Puttenham in 
 1581), if he were the author (which he probably was) of 
 TJie Arte of Encjlixh Poesie. The misprint is an unusual 
 expansion of the original word. It is most unlikely 
 that Pelican (the word of the quarto editions) was (as 
 some have asserted) a difficulty with the old compositor: 
 on the contraiT, we may be pretty sure that he set iq) 
 Polieian, mu\ that a ])edantic 'reader' of tlie house 
 inqjroved u})on this, converting it into Polilician. 
 
 3. Now for a case in which the old copies concin-
 
 114 '^^^^ Still Lion. 
 
 to leave us ftt the hiercy of conjecture. In the same 
 quarto editions of Hamlet we read, 
 
 For use aliliost can change the stamp of nature, 
 And either the deuill, or throwe hiin out 
 AVith wbnderous potency. 
 
 Unhappily this passage, defective by one word (probably 
 a verb following on ' either ' and governing 'the devill '), 
 is not in the first quarto, nor yet in any of the early 
 folio editions. The defect is so miserably supplied by 
 the dateless quaito (1G07) that the modern editor is 
 driven to the conclusion that the word there given is a 
 mere conjecture, and that the defect must be anew con- 
 jecturally supplied. This quarto reads : — 
 
 For n'se almost can change the stamp tif nature, 
 And maistev the deuill, or throwe him out 
 With wonderous potency. 
 
 Here ' maister ' is not only bad on the score of 
 rhythm, but still leaves the line short. Kot improbably 
 it was intended to supply the word ff>r which " either * 
 was conceived to be a misprint. Pope and Capell fol- 
 lowed this lead, and read ' And master even the devil — ' 
 But all other editors have wisely retained ' either' : 
 viz. ' And either curb the devil ' — i\Ialone ; ' And 
 either quell \\\q devil* — Singer: while the late Mr Bol- 
 ton Comey proposed to read, ' And either aid the 
 devil ' — and Mr Cart\\Tight, ' And either lai/ the devil.' 
 A correspondent of IS^otes and Queries (3rd S. x. 426) 
 signing himself F. proposed, ' And either l/ouse the
 
 Co7ijectural Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 1 1 5 
 
 devil ' ; coiifciving (like Mr CoruL'y) that the luissiiij^ 
 ^vor(l should be antithetical to throir out, and not per- 
 ceiving tliat no very ' wondmus ])()tency ' would be 
 required to house a demon, who was already by nature 
 in possession ! Two conjectures privately communicated 
 to us deserve niention. Our valued friend, Professor 
 Sylvester, would read ' And either ma^k the devil ' — 
 conceiving that 'maister' was a misprint for the true word. 
 In this course he is somewhat counteuanced by a pasr 
 sage occurring in a ])rior speech of Polonius (iii. 1) : 
 
 We are oft to blame in tliis, — 
 'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage, 
 And pious action, we do sugar o'er 
 The devil himself. 
 
 Another valued friend, Mr C. J. ]\[onro, proposes to 
 read ' And entertain the devil ' — conceiving that ' either' 
 may be a press error for rnfertnin. All other conjectures 
 w^hich I have seen are so utterly imbecile, that I will 
 spare their proposers the ordeal of criticism. It is not 
 easy to discover why the five verbs, ciirb, quett, tay, aid, 
 and tiouse found more favour than a score of others, ap- 
 parently as well suited to the sense and measure of the 
 line as any of those. How soon arc the resources of the 
 conjectural critics exhausted ! hoAv meagre is the evi- 
 dence adduced in favour of any single conjecture ! yet the 
 requirements of the passage are by no means severe, nor 
 are th'e means for complying with them either narrow or 
 rechercJte. It is rather an cmbarras des ricltesses that 
 blinders our decision. To call over a few of the caiulicUites
 
 ii6 The Still Lion. 
 
 for admission into tlie text : curh suggests rein, rule, thrall, 
 hind, cJiain, 8:c. ; qi'dl and Irt^ suggest charm, icoi'si, 
 qf'ench,foil, balk, cros-'^, tlncart, daunt ^ shame, cow, &c. ; 
 "vvhile aid and home suggest ^r^, rome, stir, serve, lodge, 
 feed, &c. Besides which there are manv dissyllables that 
 "vvould answer the purposes of sense and measure, as 
 abate, abase, &c. And why not read ' And over-master 
 the devil ' — seeins; that the word dermaster occurs in 
 a former scene of this play ? AVe are not now attempt- 
 ing the settlement of this question, but merely point- 
 ing out what a wealth of suggestion has been ignored 
 by the self-complacent critics who have so feebly 
 attempted it. But, as a preliminary to its settlement, 
 we venture to call attention to the evident requirements 
 of the passage. ' The stamp of natui*e ' is not new 
 to us in this connection, nor in this play; Ave have 
 had it twice in the second ghost-scene, viz. the ' vicious 
 mole of nature ', and ' the stamp of one defect '. Now 
 Hamlet would say, ' Use almost can change [convert] 
 this stamp of nature ' : so that an antithesis is not only 
 not required, but is impertinent. Use, he would say, 
 can either subdue ' habit's devil ', by following out his 
 own presci'iption oi gradual weaning from, evil, or (if the 
 worst come to the worst and revolution be necessary) cast 
 Mm out : and either of these can such use, or change of 
 habit, effect ' with wondrous potency.' The key-note of 
 the whole passage is 'Reformation, by gradually subduing 
 evil habits ' ; and so far from Hamlet's advice, ' assume 
 a virtue if you have it not ', being (as Knight understood
 
 Conjectural Emcjidation of Shakespeare s Text. 117 
 
 it) a recommeiuhition of hypocrisy, * the homage paid by 
 vice to virtue ', it is given solely with the view of facili- 
 tating inward amendment, and is therefore honest and 
 sincere. Very similar advice was given by Lewis Vives 
 in a book which, not iniprobablv, mav have been Shake- 
 speare's closet-companion, viz. The Introdtiction to 
 Wysedom : Englished by Richarde Morysine : 1540, Sig. 
 13. ii. 
 
 ' Let every man desyre uprightc thinges, and flee the 
 crooked : chose the good, and refuse the evyll, this 
 use and cmtomn shall totirnc well doinf/e almost into 
 nature, and so worke, that none, but suche as are 
 compelled, and suche as are in stryfe, found the 
 weaker, shall be brought to do evvll.' 
 
 Roger Ascham, too, in his To.vojjhili/s, 1545, Book ii. 
 (Arber's Reprint, p. Ill), has the same proposition in 
 somewhat diflcrcnt words .... 
 
 ' And in stede of the fervent desyre, which provoketh 
 a chvlde to be better than hys felowe, lette a man 
 be as muche stirred \\\) with shamefastnes to be 
 worse than all other. * *■ * * -* And hereby you 
 may se that that is true whiche Cicero sayeth, that 
 a man by i/.se, may be brouyhte to a ncice nature.' 
 
 This, in fact, is exactly what is meant in Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds' Fifteenth Diseottrse, where we are recom- 
 mended ' to feign a relish till we find a relish come, and 
 feel that what began in tiction terminates in reality '. 
 
 The missing word, then, must at least unport ////'
 
 ii8 Tfie Still Lion. 
 
 subduing of the ilevil qf habit. In the first quarto we 
 have the expression, 
 
 ' And win [i. e. wean] yourself by little as yoii may ', 
 
 ffoni the sin to AA'hich you [the queen] have habituated 
 yourself. Now, that weaning hg little and little, or 
 gradually weaning the will and affections from the cus- 
 tomary sin, 'recurring and suggesting still ', is just what 
 the missing word, were it recovered, would assiu^edly be 
 found to express or to imply. Lag and shame are 
 equally acceptable in sense, and both afford a perfect 
 rhythm. Perhaps shame is the finer reading of the two. 
 At the same time, it must be owned, that Hamlet's pre- 
 scription is calculated to do but little for the sinner : 
 at best, we fear, to ' skhi and film the rancorous place.' 
 Kant well savs : 
 
 'People usually set about this matter [i.e. the reform- 
 ation of character] otherAA'ise, fighting against par- 
 ticular vices, and leaving the eommon root whence 
 they sprout untf)uched. And 3'et mankhid * * * 
 is just so mu<"h the more readily awakened to 
 a profounder reverence for duty, the more he 
 is taught to exclude thereft'om all foreign motives 
 that self-love might (otherwise) foist into the 
 maxims of conduct.' 
 
 We can hardly say that conjecture has yet deter- 
 mined the best reading here ; though it cannot be said 
 that sufficient indications are wanting for its guidance. 
 Unfortunately it is in the very nature of the case, that
 
 Conjectural Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 119 
 
 some doubt phould continue to vqx this passage, after 
 conjecture hfit> done its work. 
 
 Let us take a more striking Ct^se than this -. a passage 
 in which th^re is no Jtiaius .- merely a misprint ; which 
 has nevertheless all the features of incurable corru})tion. 
 We refer to that famous Rope-scarre which occurs at tlie 
 opening of the fifth act of Much A(Iq ahout JS^olhif/f/. 
 Leonato, refusing the proffered consolations of his 
 brother, says, 
 
 Bring jne a father tjiat so lov'd his diilde, 
 AVhose joy of her is overwhelin'd like luine. 
 And bid him speake of patience. 
 
 Ritson reads the last line, 
 
 And bid him speake to me of patience, 
 
 and the late Mr Barron Field independently suggested 
 the same, unnecessary, if not impertinent, interpolation. 
 Leonato continues, after four lines which we omit here. 
 
 If such a one will smile and stroke his beard, 
 
 And sorrow, waji^ge, crie hem, when he should grone, 
 
 Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune druuke, 
 
 "With candle-wasters : bring him yet to me, 
 
 And I of him will gather patience : 
 
 But there is no such man, Sic..--— Folio 1633. 
 
 The line, ' And I of him will gather patience ', doubt- 
 less suggested the conjecture of Ritson and Barron Field. 
 Tiu3 argument is this -. ' Find me a man who lias suffered 
 my calamity ; and if he will speak of patience, I, on my 
 part, will gather patience i)f him'. In the passage 
 lastly quoted there are two ditliculties. The first was 
 plausibly bridged oyej* by Steevens by simply trans-
 
 1 20 The Still Lion. 
 
 posing ' And ' and ' crie ,' ' wagge ' meaning, according 
 to tins interpretation, as it does in so many other 
 places, hiidf/c. The objection to this is, that it is 
 inconsistent with the philosophic and serious character 
 of the person whom Leonato invests w^th his own 
 MTongs and sorrows. The second difficulty concerns 
 the obsolete word ' candle-Avasters '. Here, then, is a 
 passage AAdiich demands both emendation and exposi- 
 tion : but in order to deal with it successfully, we must 
 first cope with the second difficulty. Of all the com- 
 mentators, Zachary Jackson alone proposed an emenda- 
 tion for ' candle- wasters ' : he conjectured caiidle-ivaters ! 
 What it means it is hard to sav ; for no such w^ord is 
 known to have ever existed, though caudle, a sort of 
 posset, is familiar enough. We remember that Eden 
 Warwick (i. e. the late Mr George Jabet, the accom- 
 plished editor of The Poefs Pleasaimce, 1847) pro- 
 posed to sul)stitute for \\nm\Qi'^ pajock oy paiocke the 
 strange word pafoliie, a word he had coined expressly 
 for the occasion, as a possible derivative of pafacco or 
 pjatoikol. We need not pauje to consider the merit or 
 demerit of such singular suggestions, both being non- 
 suited for something even worse than inmlentia. But, 
 regarding ' candle-wasters ' as a genuine word, wdiat was 
 its meaning? Mr Staunton (Ed. vol. i. p. 730) says 
 that it means ' Bacchanals, revellers '. Mr Dyce follows 
 suit. I venture to think that these editors have gone 
 bevond the voucher of their authorities. We do not 
 believe that a single example can be adduced of candle- 
 waster in that sense.
 
 Conjeciiiral Emendation of Shakespeare s Text, i 2 i 
 
 It is to us passing stranp;e tliat the word ' drunk ' in 
 this passage should have l)eeu uniiurniily interpreted in 
 its literal sense, and ' eandle-wasters ' understood to 
 mean drunkards, wlio spend the night in revelling. Of 
 all absurd things, there is nothing more painfully absurd 
 than the attemi)t to literalize a metaphor. Surely 
 Shakespeare never meant Leonato to deny the possibility 
 of his drowning his troubles in drink ; for that were the 
 easiest as it is the most vulgar resource of a man in 
 trouble. Nanty Ewart, in Re(J(jaunilet, is such a man. 
 Drunkenness was his resource from the misery of 
 haunting memories. ' Here is no lack of my best 
 friend ', said Ewart, on taking out his flask, after 
 awakening an old sorrow, the remend) ranee of which 
 was too painful to be borne with patience. Whatever, 
 then, was meant by * making misfortune drunk with can- 
 dle-wasters ', it must have been some achievement which 
 in Leonato's circumstances was very difficult of perform- 
 ance ; so difficult that he pronounced it impossible. Now, 
 Whalley succeeded in unearthing two examples of the 
 use of candle-icaster and larnp-ivaster, and one of candle- 
 loastinff, which throw considerable light on this passage ; 
 but which, from their rebutting the ordinary interpreta- 
 tion, are usually suppressed by the editors. Here they are : 
 
 Heart, was there ever so prosperous an invention tluis unhtekily 
 prevented and spoiled by a wlioreson book-worm or cavdle-icader ? 
 
 Ben Jonson : Cynthia s Retells, iii. 2. 
 
 He slioidd more catch vour delicate court-ear, than all your hcad- 
 scratchers, thiunb-bitcrs, lattip-wnaten of them all. 
 
 Shakerley Marmion : TJic Antlquanj, 16-11, 4to,
 
 122, The Still Lion. 
 
 I which have known you better and more inwardly than a thousand 
 of these candU-wnsthtg book-worms. 
 
 The Hospital I of Incurable FooJes : Erected in Eng'lish, as near 
 the first Italian modell and platforme, as the nnskilfuU hand of 
 an ignorant Architect could devise. 1600, sm. 4to. Sig. H. 
 
 From these extracts ^ve gather that a candle-waster is 
 a book-ivorm ; literally, a consumer of the ' midnight oil ', 
 a nocturnal student ; and the term (like ' Grub-street ' of 
 a century later) was always applied contemptuously, and 
 the work of such a writer Avas said, after the Latin 
 phrase, fo smell of the lawp.^ Not improbably the 
 term meant also a lucubration. The conclusion is, that 
 fo mal'e misfortune drunk with candle-wasters, is to drown 
 one's troubles in studi/ ; and what fitter pendant could be 
 found to the preceding phrase to ' patch grief with pro- 
 verbs ' ? 
 
 So far, then, all is clear and indisputable. We may 
 now recur to the former part of Leonato's speech, in 
 which the real crux lies : 
 
 If such a one will smile and stroke his beard, 
 
 And sorrow, wagge, crie hem, when he should grone, &c. 
 
 To stroke the beard aud cry hem ! (what the French call 
 
 faire le stri-enx) is the very picture of a sententious 
 
 pedant who would talk down or scold down the first 
 
 gush of natural feeling, whether of grief or of rage. 
 
 * Lucernam olet. Again, Oleum pe^-dere is to lose one's labour in 
 writinsT, to be an oil-waster. Drvden, in his Preface to Troilus and 
 Cretistda, 1679, 8vo, falls foul of Shakespeare iov catachreds ; and in 
 the same breath speaks of certain dramas smelling of the buskin ! As 
 buskins are not remarkable for their offensive odour, the phrase is a 
 worse caiac&resis than is to be found iij Shakespeare.
 
 Conjectural Emcndatio7i of Shakespeare's Text. 123 
 
 Such was Achilles' epitome of Nestor iu Troiha and 
 Cressida, i. .'3, v here tlmt chief is described as amusing 
 himself with Patioclus' niiuiicrv of the Greeks: 
 
 A, 
 
 No^v play me Nestor ; hem aiul stroke thy beard ! 
 
 It seems to follow, then, that the words ' And sorrow 
 wagge ' must he an error for some j)hrase expressive of 
 choking, smothering, or suppressing soitow. Hence we 
 venture to think, that, supposing there has been no dis- 
 location of the text, Tyrwhitt's conjecture of gagge for 
 * wagge ' at least preserves the continuity of the thought, 
 an<l the integrity of the image, as well as the ductus 
 liter arum. To attempt to settle the (piestion definitely 
 in favour of this or that conjecture wotild at present be 
 mere waste of time. The interpretation we have given 
 to the purport of tbe passage cannot, we are assured, 
 be successfully assailed ; and tbat may help the critic to 
 a solution of the textual difficulty. 
 
 Mr Stmmton, Avho found, as Ave have said, a baccha- 
 nalian allusion in the phrase to malic mhfortune drunk 
 with candle-wasters, persuaded himself that the foraier 
 part of the speech bears out that view. He contended 
 that to *crv hem ' here means, to sino: the burden of a 
 roystering song.* To all which we say, (1.) that no cx- 
 am])le of either the one or the other phrase, employed in 
 those senses, has ever been adduced ; (:2.) that if a dozen 
 examples in point were fomid, the case would be in no 
 wise mended ; for the interpretation in question is logic- 
 
 * Possibly ' Hem boys I ' in //. ILn. //'., iii. 2, is part of such a 
 refrain.
 
 114 T^^^ Still Lion. 
 
 allv inconsistent with the context. The counsel Leonato 
 is rejecting, is that he shoukl seek to restrain and 
 assuage his grief, rather than indulge it. To reply, as 
 we contend he is intended to do, ' Show me a man who 
 has my weight of sorrow and wrong, and is yet an 
 example of stoical or cheerful endurance, and I will 
 follow your counsel,' is logical and ad rem .• but to 
 reply, ' Show me a man who, having as great a sorrow or 
 wrong as I have, drowns the remembrance of it in 
 drunken revelrv,' &c., would be wholly irrelevant : and 
 this for four reasons, which are here set forth at length : — 
 
 i. Because it would imply that Antonio had been 
 recommending drunkenness to his brother, as an infal- 
 lible specific for grief: for it would make Leonato's 
 words imply that if a man could be produced who had 
 succeeded in that feat, he woukl accede to his brother's 
 suggestion, and make such a man his model : only 
 ' patience ' would be an outstanding difficulty. 
 
 ii. Because it would make Leonato say, ' Show me 
 a man who has so little patience and self-control as to 
 rush to the tap-room for the solace of his troubles, and 
 I will make him my model, and gather patience of him,' 
 which would be an impossible task. 
 
 iii. Because it would make him assert that there is 
 no such man : that no man could be found who, having 
 Leonato's sorrow or wrong, could succeed in forgetting 
 it in drinking-bouts : whereas drink is, as we have seen, 
 the common resource of common men in trouble. 
 
 iv. Because it would confound the intellectual man
 
 Conjechiral Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 125 
 
 with him wlio lacks intellect, iiulustrv, and moral feeling. 
 As Mrs Beecher-Stowe so well puts it in lJrcd{y\\'L\\i. x.), 
 ' Every one [who is ' nnconifortahle and gloomy '] natur- 
 ally inclines towards some source ot" consolation, lie 
 who is infc/lcctifal reaih and .studies ; he who is industri- 
 ous flies to business ; he who is affectionate seeks 
 friends ; he who is pious, religion ; 6(/f Jie iclio is none 
 of these — what has Ite but his whiskey ?' It is thus that 
 the common sense of our time throws light upon the 
 dark or doubtful passages in Shakespeare. But this 
 particular cruv is, in our opinion, one of the least doubt- 
 ful in drift, though it has been so ])crsistently perverted 
 by commentators of the literalizing scliool. 
 
 We mav here cite a few other instances of the 
 supreme value of modern illustration, as an aid to emend- 
 ation and interpretation (we gave two at pp. 99 and 153). 
 We have already noted the plausibility of bed as an 
 emendation of ' Ixme ' in that famous speech of Alcibi- 
 ades, which Mr Dyce printed without an attempt to 
 defend or explain it. Addressing the doting Senators 
 (behind their backs), the General exclaims, 
 
 Now the Gods kcepe you old enough, 
 
 That you may live 
 
 Ouely in bone, tliat none may looke on you. 
 
 Tiiiion, iii. 5, Folio l(j23. 
 
 That the one in ' bone ' was caught by the compositor 
 from the one in ' ouely', is probable, regard being had to 
 the proximity of ' none '. Surely, their fitting j)lace was 
 bed, where the ailments of their advanced age might re-
 
 126 The Still Lion. 
 
 ceive all needful ministrations, and where they would 
 be safe from bringing disgrace on the go^'ernment of 
 Athens. In this reading we are supported by a passage 
 in ls\x George Dawson's address to his Congregation, on 
 the occasion of celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary 
 of ' The Church of the Saviour ' at Birmingham, de- 
 livered there on Aug. 5, 1872. He said, in reference to 
 his own late illness, 
 
 ' To be patient with a man who has always something 
 the matter with him is one of the grandest kinds 
 of patience. People always ailing are tiresome, 
 there is no denying it. I have a great dread of be- 
 coming an invalid. I have a great respect for in- 
 valids in bed, — out of sif/td.' 
 
 i. e. ' Only in bed, that none may look on [them] \- 
 Can a more light-giving illustration be conceived ? 
 
 Then, apart from emendation, how ' express and ad- 
 mirable ' is the following from a modern novelist, now 
 deceased, as detennining the sense of an obscure phrase 
 in Hamlet, i. 1. Beraardo asks, 'What, is Horatio 
 there?' To which Horatio replies, 'A piece of him.' The 
 late Charles Knight speaks of this as Horatio's ' familiar 
 pleasantry ' : but what is its meaning ? The simple an- 
 swer is — Horatio calls his hand, as he touches that of the 
 Pi-ince — a piec<3 of himself, because he could not be dis- 
 tinctly seen in the dark shade of the battlement : i. e. a 
 piece, as implyuig that the rest Avas there, though not 
 revealed to Hamlet's sense at once. Now all this is
 
 Conjectural Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 127 
 
 suggested l)y a passage in tlie peiiuUiinate chapter of 
 Jaue E^re. She has come upon the bhiid Rochester, 
 and placed her hand in his : 
 
 "*llor very fingers', he cried, 'her small, slight 
 lingers ! //"-so, there inuat be tnore of Iter '.' 
 
 Of course, neither Charlotte Bronte nor Mr George 
 Dawson had the faintest notion of illustrating Shake- 
 speare, when these things were uttered. If either 
 of them had, some of the force of the illustration 
 "vvould be lost. As it is, we see the power of common 
 sense, even in this day, to do the great playwright 
 yeoman's service. Just so does a fine passage in Mr 
 Caird's sermon, entitled ReIi(/ion in Common Lfc, p. 24, 
 afford a guiding light for all who care to determine the 
 exact thought which was in Shakespeare's mind when 
 he wrote that passage, in the Tcmjjexf, iii. 1, which is so 
 corruptly given in the folio 10.23 : 
 
 I forget ; 
 But these sweet thoughts, doe even refresh iny Uibours, 
 Most busie lest, when I doe it. 
 
 Mr Caird says, 
 
 * The thought of all this may dwell, a latent joy, a 
 hidden motive, deep down in his heart of hearts, may 
 come rushing in, a sweet sohice, at every pause of exer- 
 tion, and act like a secret oil to smooth the wheels of 
 labour.' Certahily Shakespeare meant to say that t/ie 
 sweet tAot'(//tts well up in t/te paitseis of ejcertion. Had 
 not Dr Wellesley overlooked this, he would not ha\e
 
 128 The Still Lion. 
 
 ap])lied ' most ' to ' rctVesli ', and ' busy ' to Ferdinand 
 {Stray Kotes, 1SC5, p. 2), making him say that his 
 sweet thoughts refresh him by their presence during his 
 labours. We would adopt Mr Bullock's reading, husi- 
 liest for ' busie lest ', and regulate the passage thus : 
 
 I forget [i. e. I am forgetting my injunction], 
 But these sweet thoughts doe even refresh my labours 
 Most busiliest ■when I doe it. [i. e. do forget it.] 
 
 BusiUest mav have been written btmelesf (we note that 
 easiliest is printed ensilest in Cywheline, iv. 2) : and if 
 so the onlv error in the folio is a slight dislocation in 
 that word. But here, as in the crnx from Much Ado 
 about Kotliiny, the question does not admit of a final 
 decision. In such, and the like, w'e must be content to 
 suspend our judgment, and exercise patience. 
 
 In a multitude of cases, however, the correction of 
 the text is certain ; and in some, where the remedy is 
 still somewhat doul)tful, a particular emendation which 
 has met with all but universal acceptance by the editors 
 has been now and then pronounced too good for the 
 place ! It is an exceptional honour for the conjectural 
 critic to be esteemed almost equal to his author. Such 
 Avas the approbation bestowed by Dr Johnson on War- 
 burton for his emendation of God, vice ' good ', in Ham- 
 let, ii. 2 : ' being a good kissing carrion ' ; but surely 
 approbation was never so extravagant as in this opinion ; 
 for, as IVIr Corson points out, ' a good kissing carrion * 
 is simply a carrion that is good for kissing ! The high- 
 est honour, however, attainable bv the author of an
 
 Conjectural Erucudatioii of Shakespeare^ s Text. 129 
 
 emendation was actually attained by Tlicobald, \iz. that 
 of being confounded with liis author, and that by no 
 ordinary critic. In our opinion lie fully deserved that 
 honour, and s{[\w{\s facile princrp.s among the host of con- 
 jectural critics. Holding that opinion, we indignantly re])el 
 Dr Johnson's censure on Theobald ; whom he calls ' a man 
 of narrow comprehension and small acquisitions, with no 
 native and intrinsic s])lendour of genius, with little of 
 the artificial light of learning, but zeahms for minute 
 accuracy, and not negligent in pursuing it.' But, as if 
 grudging Theobald this small concession, he adds that 
 Theobald was ' weak ami ignorant ', ' mean and faith- 
 less ', 'petulant and ostentations'. I)e Quincey, echo- 
 ing Johnson, calls Theobald ' painstaking but dull ' : 
 {Woi'ks, Black, vol. vi. p. 12C5, note); and yet, on an- 
 other occasion, when De Quincey is insisting on ' the 
 gratitude of our veneration for Shakespeare ', he actuidly 
 adduces, as a remarkable display of Shakespeare's 
 dramatic art, the famous words ' and a babied of green 
 fields ', from Mrs Quickly's description of Falstaff' s 
 death, in Hoi. F., li. 3. Those words, he thinks, ' nmst 
 have been read bv manv a thousand with tears and 
 smiles at the same instant ' ; ' I mean,' he adds, ' con- 
 necting them with a previous knowledge of Falstatf and 
 of Mrs Quickly' (l/'orh, Black, vol. xiii. p. 119). Just 
 so : that is precisely where lies the marvel of this piece 
 of work, which we owe to Theobald rather than to Shake- 
 speare. I am far from denying that those words are 
 what Shakespeare wrote -. indeed, it is the peculiar merit
 
 130 The Still Lion. 
 
 of that emendation that most T)ro])al)lv it exactly restores 
 the original work of the bard : but Theobald had to 
 ■work upon the corrupt text, ' and a Table of greene 
 fields ', which seems to promise so little poetry or know- 
 ledge of human nature, that one critic is satisfied that 
 they are a stage direction, incorporated, by mistake, 
 with the text of Mrs Quickly's speech ; another supposes 
 the reference to be to a pen lying on a table-book of 
 green fell ; while Mr Collier's pseudo-old Corrector 
 alters the words into ' on a table of green frieze.' * 
 Hopeless indeed must the prosaic corruption appear to 
 most men- — ^to all wlio have not caught the infection of 
 Shakespeare's genius, and have not a like knowledge of 
 human nature. Theobald, however, proved himself to 
 have had both. He knew precisely how Falstaff would 
 talk, when he lay picking the bed-clothes, and smihng 
 on his fingers' ends ; and he knew exactly what part of 
 his babbling talk would be remembered and repeated 
 by Mrs Quickly. Moreover, he had faith in Shake- 
 sj)eare, and believed that he would reproduce all this ; 
 and he had moreover the necessary knowledge of Eliza- 
 bethan orthography, such as this, that babbled was ordi- 
 narily spelt babied. Thus was he led to an emendation 
 which has covered Shakespeare with glory and been 
 identified with his text. (See Notes and Queries, 1st S. 
 viii. 314, for an eloquent commentary on this scene, 
 
 * Ho must liavc been reading BrcAvstcr's Optics, 1S31, p. 296, 
 where the aiitlior proposes an ohservatioii, on ' a i)eii lying upon a 
 green elotli.'
 
 Conjectural E7ncndatio}i of SIiakespca7'es Text. 131 
 
 written in the vein of J)r -Jolm JJrown ; and also Tlic 
 GrnmiiKir of Assent, pp. :204 — :270, wiicre l)r Xcwinnn 
 takes the corrupt passage ot" the folio, with its various emen- 
 dations, as the concrete example of comj)lcx inference.) 
 No amount of sacracitv or injiicnuitv in the critic 
 
 O c Oft/ 
 
 can compensate the want of ap})ropriate learning and 
 scholarship. In some instances, indeed, if he have 
 sagacity to catch the hidden sense of a corrupt ])assage, 
 and ingenuity in conjecture, a great step may be made 
 towards its restoration. But success in any case pre- 
 supposes the appropriate knowledge. l)r E. A. Abbott's 
 elaborate but stdl imperfect SliaJccsjjcarian Granniiar 
 will at least serve to testify to the fact that the grammar 
 of Sliakespeare and his contemporaries is not at all that 
 of our written tongue, and Dycc's G/ossarj/, and Dr 
 Alexander Schmidt's ShaJa'spearc-Lexicon (of which at 
 present but one volume has been ])ublished), will alibrd 
 abundant evidence of the fact th.at there was a treasury 
 of words open to an Elizabethan writer, which arc now 
 obsolete, or at least current in senses more or less dif- 
 ferent from those which the Avords imported in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 
 Eor other aids to conjecture in the vindication or 
 the restoration of the text, one of the most valuable is 
 the collation of passages more or less parallel, occurring 
 in Shakespeare's plays and poems. For example : in 
 Thnon (f AUu'iis, iii. 5, Sempronius exclaims, 
 
 IIow ? Have they denv'cie liim ? 
 lias Vcntidiiius aiiil Luculliis tIcnvMi' liiiii,
 
 13 i The Still Lion. 
 
 And does lie send to me ? Tliree * ? Humh ? 
 
 It sliowes but little love, or jiulgemeiit in him. 
 
 Must I be his last Refuge ? His Friends (like Physitians) 
 
 Thrive, give him over : Must I take th' Cure upon me ? 
 
 The mention of Lucius, Lucullus, and Ventidius 
 (explaining the ejaculation ' Three '), has been thought 
 to favour Johnson's conjecture, that ' thrive ' is a mis- 
 print for fliricp : q. d. these three friends have one after 
 another given him over, just as physicians give over 
 their patient. But a parallel passage in the fourth act 
 of the same ])lay seems to us quite sufficient to justify 
 the text as it stands in the folio. Timon addressing the 
 banditti, says, 
 
 Trust not the physitian, 
 
 His Antidotes are poyson, and he slayes 
 
 More then you Rob : Take wealth, and lives together, &c. 
 
 i. e. he advises the robbers to take the physicians as 
 their examples, who thrive by their patients' wealth 
 first, and leave them to die of their drugs afterwards. 
 We maintain, then, that in the former place Sempronius 
 is intended to say, that Timon's friends act by him as 
 physicians do by their patients, tlirive by him, and then 
 give him over. Till the singular force of this parallel 
 can be explained away, it is an im])ertinence to treat the 
 suspected passage as corrupt. 
 
 Another case, where a passage ought to help us to 
 restore an undoidjtedly corrupt text, is in Measure for 
 Measure. Escalus says, 
 
 * i. e. with TiUeius.
 
 Conjectural Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 133 
 
 Wfll, lioaveii forf^ive liiiii ; and fcjrj^ivti us all : 
 Some riv by siiine, and some by vertiie full : 
 Some run from brakt-s of Ice, and answin" none, 
 And some condemned for a fault alone. 
 
 The second line beinji; in italics in tlic folio 1 6:23, we mnv 
 safely regard these threi; lines as the vestiges of an older 
 play, or as an interpolation by an inferior hand : but 
 certainly they must have had sense once ; while at 
 present the line following that in italics is quite innocent 
 of nieaning. Apparently ' and answer none ' means, and 
 are not called to account ; since in the last line we are 
 told that judgment is passed on others for a single faidt. 
 Accordingly one would expect to find that the corrupt 
 line means, that some run tIirou(/h <i course of increasing 
 wickedness, without hein(j called to account. Now there 
 is a passage in Cyniheline, v. 1 , which is of good service 
 to us at this pinch. Posthunius says, addressing the 
 Gods, 
 
 But alacke, 
 You snatcli some lienee for little faults ; that's love 
 To have them fall no more : you some permit 
 To second illes with ilh;s, each elder worse, &c. 
 
 We have here the same counter-assertions, but in the 
 reverse order. Reading them thus, 
 
 \ou some permit 
 To second illes with illes, each elder worse, 
 I'ou snatch sonic hence for little faults; 
 
 and comparing this with the passage from Measure fur 
 Measure, we can hardly helj) believing, that the corruj)t 
 line
 
 134 '^^^^ Still Lion. 
 
 Some run from brakes of Ice, aiul answer none, 
 
 ouglit to assert, that some run tlirongli a long career of 
 sin going on ever from bad to worse, without being called 
 to account. Without sonic further dat/nn it is hardly 
 possible to propose a satisfactoiy emendation of the 
 passage. ' Ice ' may, indeed, be Vice, as Rowe sug- 
 gested ; or it may be I/Ie or Illes, or even Sin, but the 
 crux is still obstinatelv iiTcducible. At anv rate, it is 
 
 • \ . ' , . ■ ■ ' 
 
 remarkable that tlie passage in Cj/nibclinc should afford' 
 an exact aualoo-ue to the line which in the folio is 
 
 D 
 
 pnnted m italics. 
 
 Some rise by sin, unci some by virtue full. 
 
 The line following ' each elder worse ' is undoubtedly 
 corrupt, yiz- 
 
 To make them dread it, to the doer's thrift ; 
 
 but we know well enough what it ought to mecw, though 
 Ave have not yet discovered what it ought to saj/ : it 
 should mean, that the Gods allow the sinner to run liis 
 course, that, in the event, like the })rodigal son, his 
 stomach may rise against the husks and wash, and that he 
 may voluntarily return to a cleanly life. Such rise by sin ; 
 while those who fall bij virtue are snatched a\A ay that they ^ 
 may fall no more. It is, Ave think, quite probalilc that 
 })y the aid of this analogy the corrupt line may be some 
 day restored. At present it nuist remain a case of 
 inchoate restoration, like the sorroio-wag and bmie-lcst 
 passages, Avhicli demands patient consideration, not im- 
 mediate decision.
 
 Conjectural Enicndalion of Shakespeare s Text. 135 
 
 Here, however, is one IVoin CorwlanuH, ii. 1, wiiicli 
 contains two corruptions, the hitter admitting of an easy 
 and conchisi\ e remedy. Let ns premise that ' liini ' 
 here means Martins, not tlie 13al)v. 
 
 Your prattliiifj Nurse 
 Into a rapture lets her BiiI)Y crio, 
 AVliile slie chats him. 
 
 'Chats liini' is nndonbtedly cornipt ; and niany 
 conjectures have been made, all alike inachnissible. 
 Perhaps ' clap.s him ' is the best, but the metre halts for 
 it. As to tlie other })lace, j\Ir Justice Blackstone 
 {S/ird-psipcrn'(> Socielifs Papers, i. 99) remarks, ' A 
 Rapture is an odd effect of crviu"; in Babies. Dr 
 * * * -would read it Rupture. Only Qu. If crying 
 ever produces l/iis Effect?' To which he ackls, ' I have 
 since enqnired, and am told that it is nsual.' Probably 
 most fathers and mothers know that snch is the fact; 
 But Blackstone might have learned it from a sixteenth 
 century work, vi/. Vhioravantcs Secrets, 15S2, p. 5, 
 where we read, 
 
 * To helpe yong Children of the Rupture. 
 
 The Rupture is caused two waies, the one through 
 weaknesse of the place, and the other through much 
 criyng.' 
 
 This emendation was independently pro])osed by two 
 other critics (see the Cambridge Edition of Shakespeare, 
 vi. 31()); and it seems as good as an emendation can 
 be ; yet it has never been adopted, becansc it was con- 
 ceived that the word in the text admitted of cxjjlanation
 
 I A 6 The Still Lion. 
 
 J 
 
 and defense. Certainly 'rapture' is just st'lzarc : of. 
 Chapman's Ulad, xxii. (Taylor's ed. ii. ; 192); and 
 Pericles, ii. 1, where ' rupture' is, as was pointed out 
 by Dr Sewell, an erroi* of the press for rapture : 
 
 A 11(1 spite of all the rupture of the sea. 
 This jewel holds his biding on my arm. 
 
 ]\Ir J. P. Collier [Farther Particulars, 1839, p. 41) 
 quotes the parallel passage from the novel on which 
 Shakespeare's play was founded : the hero says he got to 
 land ' with a Jewell, whom all the raptures of the sea 
 could not bereave from his arme.' But there seems no 
 authority for the employment of rapture in the sense of 
 jit or convulsion : and that being so, we adhere to Black- 
 stone's emendation, and believe that jnst as rapture in 
 Pericles was misprinted rupture, so rupture in Coriolanus 
 was misprinted rapture. 
 
 We conclude this essay with a restoration which is 
 not due to conjectural ingenuity, but to the contemporary 
 authority of Ben Jonson. According to him, Shake- 
 speare, in his Julius C'cesar, iii. 1 , wrote as follows : 
 
 Ccesar. Thy brother by decree is banislied : 
 
 If thou dost lieiid and pray and fawn for him, 
 I spurn thee like a cur out of my way. 
 Maliillm. CiEsar, thou dost me wrong. 
 CcBsar. Caesar did never wrong but with just cause. 
 Nor without cause will he be satisfied. 
 Metellm. Is there no voice more worthy than my own, &c.; 
 
 and somewhat later (iii. 2) we read, 
 
 Second (Mizen. If thou consider rightly of the matter,
 
 Conjectural Emendation of Shakespeare s Text. 137 
 
 CiFsnv has had {^eat wrong. 
 Third C'dizi'ii. Has he, master ? 
 
 But the folio, our oiilv autlioritv for Julius Casar, docs 
 
 ' ^ • 
 
 not give Metcllius' remark, l)iit continues Caesar's ad- 
 dress thus, 
 
 Know, Cii'^ar dotli not wroui:, nor witliout cause 
 Will he be satisfied. 
 
 Now this is a propos of nothing. Tlicre is nothing in 
 Caesar's speech })reccding these two lines to lead to the 
 denial, ' Caesar doth not wrong ' (for ^letellus does not 
 provoke it) ; and besides, the second line is unfinished. 
 To Ben Jonson's Timber or Discoveries ; made upon 
 meii and maiter : (S:c. (Works, IGtO-l, fol., vol. ii. ])p. 
 97), we are indebted for the preservation of the original 
 text in iii. 1, as we have given it. But the editors, 
 deeming its adoption an act of unfaithfulness to the 
 folio, Avill not have it. ]\Ir llalliwell indeed says {Life 
 of Shakespeare, 1848, p. 185), 'Take Jonson's words 
 as literally true, and the whole becomes clear ', &c. ; and 
 he has a like note on the text, in his magnificent Folio 
 Edition of Shakespeare : but he had not the courage to 
 act on his conviction, and regulate the text on Jonson's 
 authority. Po])e had the temerity to propose substitut- 
 ing for the reply of the Third Citizen, in iii. :2, the 
 altered line, 
 
 Ctesar had never wrong, hnf with just caiise. 
 
 Thus making the ple])eian a sympathiser with Brutus. 
 The text in iii. 1, as we have first given it, was charged 
 upon Shakespeare as a bull ; but Ben Jonson does not
 
 138 The Still Liun. 
 
 tell us that Shakespeare changed it in consequence ; nor 
 have we any reason for believing that he would have 
 cared for the laughter of his censors. Nostro jiidicio 
 "Ben's critique is captious. The justice of the cause is 
 not inconsistent with wrong. j\Ir Halliwell rightly 
 observes, ' If wrong is taken in the sense of injury * or 
 harm, as Shakespeare sometimes uses it, there is no 
 absurdity in the line, " He sball have wrong," 11. Hen. 
 VI., V. 1.' {Life of S/ialTspeare, 1848, p. 185.) Again, 
 
 in A Winters Tale, v. 1, Paulina, speaking of the hapless 
 Qiieen, says. 
 
 Had one such power, 
 She had just cause. 
 Leontes. She liad, and would incense me 
 
 To nuirther her I married. 
 
 (i. e. her whom he might take as his second wife). Clearly, 
 then, the Queen has, in Leontes' ]\\A^me\\\, just cause io 
 incite him to do another a grievous wrong. This is even 
 more amenable to Jonson's censure than the line which 
 fell mider it. The Cambridge editors most absurdly 
 charge Jonson wdtli a lapse of memory ; and this, too, 
 in the face of the additional facts, that the folio reading 
 is defective both in sense and in measure, and that Jon- 
 son reverts to the same censure in the Induction to his 
 Staple of Neics. 
 
 Where then Avas the blunder? We say it was Jon- 
 son's, and his fellow censors' : that the line they laughed 
 at was and is unimpeachable good sense, and that it is 
 
 * Iiijin-y, here, is an inf^tauce of the same ambianu'ty.
 
 Conjcchiral Emendaiion of Shakespeare s Text, 139 
 
 the editor's duty to use Jonsou's censure for the purpose 
 
 of corroctin*,^ tlic fcjlio rending, and restoring tlic j)assagc 
 to that form in which, as we behevc, it ficjwed from tlic 
 ])en of Shakespeare. 
 
 \\\\\\ anytliing but })leasing angnries we bring this 
 somewhat desultory essay to a close. Though wishing 
 to treat our op])onents with all the ceremony prescrn)ed 
 bv the law of arms, we have not been loath to strike in 
 earnest, in supi)ort and vindication of a literary heritage 
 which is, in our eyes, far too precious to be made the 
 sport of every ingenious guesser, whose v.unity impels 
 him to turn critic or editor. There are enrlv dramatic 
 works enough for such men to try their 'prentice-hands 
 upon, without intruding into that paradise ' where angels 
 fear to tread.' For the fashion of this day in dealing 
 W'ith the te.\t of Shakespeare w'e have no kind of respect, 
 scarcely any tolerance. We have yet to learn v.hat 
 right a combination of dulncss, ignorance, arrogance, 
 and bad taste has to respectful usage ; and of such stuff 
 are the later critics of Shakespeare made, with a few 
 honourable exceptions. Of the mass of their rubbish 
 we have taken no kind of note in the foregoing discus- 
 sions. In a few select cases we have endeavoured, u itli 
 such knowledge and ability as we possess, to show how 
 superior is the old text to the readings by which it has 
 been proposed to supersede it ; and where wc may have 
 failed in the performance of our task, wc have sutiicient 
 faith in that text to charge ourselves with the whole 
 blame of the failure.
 
 rUBLISHED NOTICES. 
 
 Extract from the Second Annual Volume of the German 
 Shakespeare Society : Preface, p. viii. 
 
 " Karl Elze by his treatise, ' Shakespeare's Significance for the 
 present times,' spiced by polemics, leads over to the domain of philo- 
 logical criticism, which is represented this year by two renowned 
 scholars — the Englishman, C. M. Ingleby, and by onr countryman, 
 Nicolaiis Delius. 
 
 " Ingleby, to whom we are indebted for the most complete view 
 and exjiosure of the Shakespeare Forgeries, which made so much stir 
 in the world at their time, gives us here, as the precursor of a larger 
 work, contributions for the restoration of the Shakespei-ian text. I 
 have considered it unnecessary to translate his essay, because the 
 principal contents of it would, even in a German garment, remain 
 unintelligible to any one not acquainted with the English language." 
 
 Extract from The Satiirday Review of July 20, 1867. 
 
 " Under the eccentric title of ' the Still Lion,' Dr Ingleby indites 
 an essay on the conjectural emendation of the Text [of Shakspeare], 
 which abcmnds in robust, pithy sense, jocose humour, and felicitous 
 illustration. There is also enough personality to remind us that the 
 Shakspearian critics of this country are a quarrelsome brood." 
 
 (/ 
 
 JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PUJMERS.
 
 AA 000 611518
 
 liiaiiiiliiiliii®