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 THE 
 
 A FEW WORDS IN REPLY TO THE ANIMAD- 
 VERSIONS OF THE REVEREND MR. DYCE 
 ON MR. HUNTER'S "DISQUISITION ON 
 THE TEMPEST" (1839); AND HIS "NEW 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LIEE, STUDIES 
 AND WRITINGS OF SHAKESPEARE" (1845); 
 CONTAINED IN HIS WORK ENTITLED 
 "A FEW NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE: 
 WITH OCCASIONAL REMARKS ON THE 
 EMENDATIONS OF THE MANUSCRIPT-COR- 
 RECTOR IN MR. COLLIER'S COPY OF THE 
 FOLIO, 1632." BY THE AUTHOR OF THE 
 DISQUISITION AND THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 36, SOHO SQUARE. 
 
 MDCOCLIII. 
 
tONDON: E. TTTCKER, PRINTER, PERRY'S PLACE, OXFORD STREET, 
 
r r 
 
 2>Z 
 
 A FEW WORDS, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 4 
 Controversy is seldom a pleasant occupation, and it is not 
 always that it is profitable, either to the persons who engage 
 in it, or to the public. But if there is anything in literature 
 in which conflict may be engaged in without animosity, and 
 some good be expected to arise out of the collision of two 
 independent minds directed on the same subject, it must 
 surely be the settlement of the grossly corrupted text of the 
 old' editions of England's most favourite Poet, where to be 
 found mistaken can be no disgrace, — so open are innumerable 
 passages to variety of explanation, and which must be left 
 at last in an undetermined state; while firmly to establish 
 a true reading where a wrong one has long had possession of 
 the public ear, is an honourable and useful achievement, 
 since it adds something to the innocent pleasures of the 
 thousands to whom these writings are a perpetual feast, — 
 something also to the honour of the Poet. 
 
 I see therefore, not without satisfaction, mind so often 
 pitched against mind in this field, and I do not feel myself 
 quite unwilling to enter into such a controversy when I am 
 called out to do so. Not that every person who pretends 
 to set himself up as a critic and controversialist on these 
 
 019 
 
writings is entitled to notice. I do not, for instance, think 
 that a Quarterly Beviewer, who tells the public that Shake- 
 speare was an occasional reader in Stith's t History of 
 Virginia/ and that Meres, when he enumerated the dramas 
 of Shakespeare, meant by Love Labours Lost and Love 
 Labours Won, one and the same play, is entitled to a reply. 
 But when a man like Mr. Dyce, a great part of whose life 
 has been devoted to the study of these writings, who has laid 
 before the world so many proofs of his vast extent of know- 
 ledge, of his fine taste, and his penetrating intellect, comes 
 forth to the attack, if one were less disposed to controversy, 
 or if one saw less advantage likely to result from it, it is not 
 easy to feel that we can afford to be silent, and to leave the 
 question between us to the judgment of the present time, or 
 what is better in this the commercial age of literature, to the 
 judgment of posterity. 
 
 I therefore propose to examine the objections which Mr. 
 Dyce makes to a few of the criticisms in the two works in 
 which I have thrown my mite into the treasury of Shakespeare 
 Illustration; and I do so with the greater willingness, because 
 I am convinced that he intended nothing unfriendly in the 
 corrections, as he regards them, of my mistakes ; and I am 
 sure that he will not suppose that I am actuated by any 
 unfriendly feeling towards him. 
 
 I shall take the passages in the order in which they occur 
 in Mr. Dyce's volume ; and this leads me to speak first of a 
 criticism on an opinion which I have long entertained, though 
 not before avowed; for, contrary to my expectation, I do 
 not find it either in the disquisition' or in the larger work. 
 When Prosper o (Tempest, act iv, sc. 1) says to Ferdinand, 
 
If I have too austerely punished you, 
 Your compensation makes amends ; for I 
 Have given you a third of mine own life, 
 Or that for which I live — 
 
 the editors of Shakespeare have taken the great liberty of 
 changing the word ' ' third " into " thread," and they would 
 have us believe that the original printers of this play have 
 given us " third " by a mere misreading of the manuscript 
 placed before them. Mr. Collier's manuscript corrector places 
 in his margin " thrid " as a substitute for " third." He 
 might mean " thread/' but that is not quite clear, and it is 
 supposed that this new reading adds support to the conjec- 
 ture of the modern editors. 
 
 Mr. Dyce thinks the conjecture did not need this support, 
 and that this is only one of the many instances in which the 
 supposed corrections of the unknown annotator are of not 
 the slightest value. " In case any future editor should still 
 be inclined to make Prospero term Miranda ' a third of his 
 life/ it may be well to remark here, that in the language of 
 poetry, from the earliest times, a beloved object has always 
 been spoken of, not as a third, but the half of another's life 
 or soul. So Meleager, ol\ligv fxev <l/v%yg ; and Horace, 
 'Animoe dimidium mese.' M 
 
 All this is very true : but Shakespeare had a finer and 
 deeper meaning than this, and I cannot but wonder that Mr. 
 Dyce, whose acquaintance with the stores of ancient poetry 
 is perhaps not less complete than his acquaintance with the 
 Elizabethian poetry of his own country, did not recollect the 
 following passage in the Carmen Nuptiale, the Epithalamium, 
 of Catullus: — 
 
6 
 
 At tu ne pugna cum tali conjuge, virgo. 
 Non a?quum est pugnare, pater quoi tradidit ipse, 
 Ipse pater cum matre, quibus parere necesse est : 
 Virginitas non tota tua est : ex parte parentum est : 
 Tertla pars patri data, pars data tertia matri, 
 Tertia sola tua est ; noli pugnare due-bus, 
 Qui genero sua jura simul cum dote dederunt. 
 Hymen o Hymensee, Hymen ades, o Hymensee. 
 
 Carmen, lxii. 
 
 Father, mother, and daughter, are so bound together, that 
 they form but one soul, one life ; so that each was but the 
 third part of one whole. This appears to be the meaning of 
 the ancient poet, and this, as seems to me, is the sense in 
 which we are to regard the expression " the third of mine 
 own life," as used by Shakespeare. The giving a daughter 
 in marriage is the subject of both. 
 
 Catullus had not been translated : perhaps not. But 
 Shakespeare had a much more extensive acquaintance with 
 the language, the opinions, and the men of the times called 
 classical, than his commentators, since the time of Farmer, 
 have thought it safe for themselves to allow him. 
 
 I must now ask the reader to accompany me into the line- 
 grove. Nothing is more vividly pourtrayed, nothing in 
 Shakespeare is more picturesque, than the cell of Prospero, 
 " weather-fended" with line-trees ; something resembling, we 
 may believe, the retired residences of the citizens of London, 
 which, according to old Gerarde, were often overshadowed by 
 the line or linden tree. It will be observed by any diligent 
 reader of this play how carefully the poet keeps in view the 
 particular kind of tree which grew near the cell, so apt at 
 
once as a protection from the blast and as furnishing in its 
 blossoms (favourites, above all other flowers, of the bee) an 
 abode for Ariel, or at least as affording nourishment adapted 
 to his sylph-like character — 
 
 Where the bee sucks, there suck I, 
 
 that is, in the line-tree blossoms, which are kept so constantly 
 before us. 
 
 When the glistering apparel is to be placed as a temptation 
 to the clownish marauders who were about to invade the cell, 
 Prospero says to his " airy spirit" 
 
 Come, hang them on this line ; 
 
 meaning, as seems to me quite evident, on the spreading 
 branches of one of the line-trees : but no, say the players — no, 
 say all other commentators ; they were to be hung on a certain 
 clothes-line, a hair-line for drying wet linen which happened 
 to be there. I submit that there is no poetry in this ; that 
 the passage is greatly debased, if so understood ; that it loses 
 all its beauty; that a most inelegant idea intrudes itself; 
 and that it is necessary for the honour of the Poet himself 
 that the passage should be understood differently. 
 
 I do not so much wonder at the players preferring a clothes- 
 line, because it was so much better adapted to the convenience 
 of a theatre ; 1 do not so much wonder that the editors and 
 commentators yielded what was perhaps their own judgment 
 to the authority of what they might suppose an ancient tra- 
 ditionary usage of the theatres, though it is not, I believe, 
 known that The Tempest was performed between the time of 
 Shakespeare and its revival with alterations by Davenant and 
 Dryden ; and especially since the " line" of the old copies 
 
8 
 
 became silently altered into " lime," another name for the 
 same tree. But when once the true meaning of the passage 
 has been suggested, I must take the freedom to say that, with 
 all the respect I have for the fine taste and generally accurate 
 judgment of Mr. Dyce, I do feel surprised that he should lend 
 his authority to a meaning which he must perceive to be a 
 vulgar debasement of a fine position, when there is so much 
 to be said for another meaning which is perfectly in harmony 
 with the whole tenor and ordonnance of the play. 
 
 Mr. Dyce relies upon a joke of Stephano, "Now, jerkin, you 
 are like to lose your hair." What this means I do not quite 
 understand, and I am sure it is not worth searching into. It 
 probably has no positive meaning ; but it certainly does not 
 necessarily imply any connection with a clothes-line, even 
 though it were made of twisted hair. Mr. Dyce says that 
 other objections might be urged to my explanation. 1 wish 
 he had presented us with them. I, of course, on such a new 
 view of the sense, thinking that I have here redeemed the credit 
 of Shakespeare, can admit of no reserve or compromise, though 
 perfectly willing to yield my own convictions on the production 
 of sufficient evidence for the clothes-line. Till then I adhere 
 to what I have ventured to promulgate, and still more should 
 be disposed to maintain that when the clowns are jesting about 
 the word "line," in such phrases as these, "Now is the jerkin 
 under the line" and " We steal by line and level," the passages 
 are better explained, if any sense worth searching for is to be 
 found in them, by referring them not to the clothes-line but to 
 the line trees under which they were furtively creeping to the 
 cell where they thought to surprise Prospero in his sleep. 
 
 Pass we from this beautiful romantic comedy to the play in 
 which Shakespeare has exhibited so many of his countrymen 
 
9 
 
 in their peculiar humours — The Merry Wives of Windsor i 
 and in it to the words of Falstaff concerning Mrs, Ford, 
 " She discourses, she carves, she gives the leer of invitation" 
 (act i, sc. 3) . Mr. Collier finds that his manuscript-corrector 
 has anticipated the modern editors, and substituted in the 
 margin " craves" for " carves," and he puts this forward as a 
 proof of the value of those corrections. To me it appears 
 to be a change damaging to the reputation of him who 
 made it ; to be one of the instances in which finding a word 
 that was not familiar to him, he strikes it out and substitutes 
 one of his own, better known, and which seemed to him to 
 suit the passage as well. I hold it certain that any old copy 
 of these writings, such as Mr. Collier would have us suppose 
 his manuscript-corrector had before him, must have presented 
 him with " carves" not with " craves." Mr. Dyce is very 
 strong in his remarks on the substitution, and rightly so : and 
 I have a special obligation to him for defending my restoration 
 of the true word in this place from an animadversion of Mr. 
 Halliwell, who quite misunderstood the meaning of a passage 
 which he quoted. The passage from Herbert's Prophecy of 
 Cadwalladar, which first led me to perceive that the old copies 
 here presented us with the true reading, and that the passage 
 had been much impaired by the weak attempt to improve it, 
 appears to me still to be the best authority we have for carve. 
 
 Then did this queen her wandering coach ascend, 
 Whose wheels were more inconstant than the wind : 
 
 A mighty troop this empress did attend : 
 There might you Caius Marius carving find, 
 And martial Sylla courting Venus kind. 
 
 and I feel somewhat doubtful, but I speak with diliiih 
 
10 
 
 whether in one or more of the three passages cited by Mr. 
 Dyce, there may not be an allusion to the familiar action of 
 carving at table. However, " crave" is, I think, dismissed from 
 this place to the tomb of the Capulets. 
 
 The Comedy of Errors is a Grecian story. The place at 
 which the Syracusan merchant is to suffer the execution of 
 his sentence is called " The place of depth and sorry execution." 
 This word " depth" has been changed to " death" in all the 
 modern editions, and Mr. Collier finds " death" substituted 
 for " depth" in the manuscript-corrections of his folio. I dare 
 say nine-tenths of the readers of Shakespeare would approve of 
 this change. To me it is a sad weakening of the passage, and 
 the change appears to be made on the same principle which is 
 applied to the word " carve," namely, that when a critic finds 
 a word which he does not remember to have met before, or 
 which in the connection in which it presents itself he does not 
 understand, he is at liberty to substitute one of his own, which 
 he thinks will suit the place. 
 
 Our great writers, and especially our great poets, ought not 
 to be dealt with thus. I can understand critics of the lower 
 form acting thus, but I should not have expected it from 
 Mr. Dyce, who will not accept my restoration of the old and only 
 authoritative lection, but will still have " the place of death." 
 We have no other reason given by Mr. Dyce or by the editor 
 who first made the change, than that " death" is a more in- 
 telligible word in the place than " depth." But I presume 
 that Shakespeare knew perfectly well that where the exe- 
 cutions among the Greeks took place, there was to be found 
 a deep pit, the Bccqufyov, into whieh criminals were sometimes 
 thrown, and that the place, therefore, where the execution 
 of the Syracusan was to be performed, was where the Bara- 
 
11 
 
 thrum was, and that " Barathrum" might, according to the 
 practice of the time, be rendered " The Place of Depth," the 
 deep and horrid pit. 
 
 I wonder, therefore, that I have not here the support of such 
 a scholar as Mr. Dyce, and, if we take it as a question of taste 
 only, that he has not perceived that the passage loses something 
 of its force by the substitution of " death" for u depth." As 
 to the mode of thus representing proper names from the 
 ancient languages in English words, I certainly can by no means 
 approve it as on a proper principle of translation ; but I can 
 show that it was a practice of the time, and of Shakespeare in 
 particular, and that, therefore, there is no objection to the 
 reading of the old copies on that account. What is " Old Free 
 Town" in Romeo and Juliet but the name of an Italian city 
 turned into English ; and " Man's Life " in The Tempest is 
 best explained as being an Anglicising of the name of some 
 African city, possibly Zoa, or Biserta or some other place into the 
 name of which B/bc entered. In Maundevile's Travels we 
 have "Evil Town." So also " Mars-hill" in the Acts of the 
 Apostles is a rendering of Areopagus on this same principle. 
 
 I venture, therefore, in opposition to the acknowledged au- 
 thority of Mr. Dyce, to express the hope that " place of depth" 
 will be retained from the old copies, whenever (if ever) we 
 have an edition of these glorious writings which does full 
 justice to the mighty mind which produced them. • 
 
 The appositeness of the quotation from the uncastrated copy 
 of Every Man in his Humour lies in the proof that the word 
 "Barathrum" was known about the theatres in the time of 
 Shakespeare, and was known as the exponent of a deep and 
 horrid pit, — emphatically "a Place of Depth." 
 
 There is a scene in Love Labours Lost which has always 
 
12 
 
 appeared to me to possess much beauty, and to have been too 
 much neglected by the commentators, and indeed not rightly 
 in one place interpreted by one of the most eminent among 
 them. I mean the scene at the shooting-stand, and the con- 
 versation between the princess and the poor forester whom she 
 draws into so many embarrassments. I took some pains with 
 it, in my New Illustrations ; but I must honestly confess that 
 there was one line in it which I could not introduce into any 
 consecutive exposition of the passage, or in other words, which 
 I did not understand. And I now, having spoken in two 
 instances in disparagement of the corrections, so called, in 
 Mr. Collier's folio, am happy to express my thanks to Mr. 
 Collier and to the unknown corrector for having relieved me 
 from all difficulty and brought this line to conform itself to 
 what now appears evidently to be the scope oi* the passage. 
 The line is this : — " O heresy in fair, fit for these days," fol- 
 lowing upon the line " See, see, my beauty will be saved by 
 merit." The corrector substitutes " faith" for " fair." 
 
 I regard this as one of the most decisive and most valuable 
 of the suggestions of the old corrector. There are several 
 others which are good, very good ; though perhaps not so many 
 as to justify all the clamour with which these corrections have 
 been introduced. But here we have what had escaped all 
 former critics on the text, and a reading which gives out a just 
 and very appropriate sense : — 
 
 See, see, my beauty will be saved by merit : 
 
 O heresy in faith, fit for these days ! 
 
 A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise. 
 
 The saving by merit rather than by belief being the heresy 
 alluded to ; instanced in the praise given by the affrighted 
 
13 
 
 forester to the princess's beauty, when she had slipped the 
 money into his hand. 
 
 Mr. Collier need not have expressed himself with so much 
 reserve ; and I submit to Mr. Dyce, whether on consideration 
 he will pronounce the corrector of the folio of 1632 "altogether 
 wrong." If he retain that opinion, I would gladly know how 
 he would interpret " O, heresy in fair/ 3 granting him what he 
 requires, that u fair" shall be read as a substantive. 
 
 The garden scene in The Merchant of Venice is one of such 
 exquisite beauty, that no one can feel at his ease who is 
 conscious that he may have contributed, however unin- 
 tentionally, to the deterioration of any one passage in it. I 
 therefore gladly embrace this as the first fitting opportunity 
 for retracting the choice which I made among the varying 
 lections of the old copies in respect of one word : — 
 
 Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold. 
 
 Some of the copies read w patens," some*" pattents." I gladly 
 yield to Mr. Dyce who has here, as I now think, set me right. 
 When I adopted the old reading, " patterns," I thought that 
 Shakespeare was alluding to the stars in their constellations 
 rather than to the stars as single objects of contemplation; 
 not sufficiently adverting to two circumstances : first, the use of 
 the word " inlaid" which suits better with a single star than a 
 constellation ; and secondly, that the pattern of a mosaic work 
 or of a flowered or spotted damask implies a repetition of the 
 same figure in the same order, which is not found in the con- 
 stellations. I, therefore, submit to the correction of Mr. 
 Dyce, and admit that what is meant is that " The floor of 
 heaven is thickly inlaid with plates or circular ornaments of 
 
14 
 
 bright gold/' expressed by " pattens" or " patents." At the 
 same time I cannot think this among the happiest conceptions 
 of the poet. 
 
 In The Taming of the Shrew we have in the speech which 
 Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Tranio, an unfaithful 
 tutor — 
 
 1.1. 
 
 Or so devote to Aristotle's checks 
 As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured. 
 
 It was certainly matter of some surprise that Mr. Collier, 
 who ought to know something of what has been done in the 
 criticism on these plays, should so exult on finding " ethics" 
 instead of " checks," in his manuscript-corrector, as if it were 
 a suggestion valuable in itself, and now for the first time 
 made. It has not escaped the notice of several persons who 
 have written on this annotated folio, that the same change 
 had been suggested long ago by Sir William Blackstone ; and 
 though I do not, because I think there is a sense in which 
 the passage may be understood, keeping the word " checks" 
 of the authoritative copies, and regarding the manuscript- 
 corrector only as one of the conjectural emend at ors, pronounce 
 a decided opinion that " ethics" must be the true reading, yet 
 I adhere to what I wrote several years ago on this passage : — 
 " Blackstone's suggestion of ' Aristotle's ethics/ for l Aristotle's 
 checks/ is so plausible and so happy, that it must place an 
 editor in doubt at least concerning the propriety of adhering, 
 when any sense is to be made of it, to the original printed 
 text." 
 
 I have restored in a note on the same passage a far more 
 important word from the old copies, " balk." 
 
15 
 
 Balk logic, with th' acquaintance which you have, 
 
 where all the modern editors have most unceremoniously 
 dismissed "balk" and have introduced "talk;" thus showing 
 that they had no proper conception of the scope and meaning 
 of either " balk" or " acquaintance." 
 
 The " Midnight Bell" in King John (act iii, sc. 3) has long 
 been taken for a clock bell striking the hour of one ; and is 
 so still, if we may judge from the labours of Mr. Dyce on these 
 plays, notwithstanding the explanation of the passage which 
 I gave in 1845. 
 
 If the midnight bell 
 Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth 
 Sound on into the drowsy race of night. 
 
 Is it possible that this can mean the striking of a hammer 
 on the outside of a bell ; is it possible that the poet can have 
 meant anything else but the sound emitted from the inside 
 of a bell when a pendulous clapper strikes against the inner 
 surface ; or that " sound on" can denote anything else but 
 continuous sounding ; not striking as on a clock bell, which 
 whether twelve times or once, is soon to cease. Mr. Collier's 
 corrected copy has " ear of night," for " race of night ;" which 
 Mr. Dyce joyfully adopts — I contend that "race of night" 
 is the true reading, both as having the authority of the 
 original copies, and as being far more poetical ; and therefore 
 what we might rather expect from Shakespeare : as being 
 capable of justification also, from another passage — 
 
 V. 1. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 
 
 This palpable gross play hath well beguiled 
 The heavy gait of night. — 
 
16 
 
 I have written at large on this passage in the New Illus* 
 t rations, vol. ii, p. 8-13. The conclusion at which I arrive is 
 that Shakespeare had not a clock bell in his mind at all, but 
 a funeral bell tolling at midnight, as the corpse of some 
 eminent person was being conveyed to the sepulchre of his 
 ancestors. 
 
 Mr. Dyce objects to the explanation which I have given of 
 the word " quill," which occurs in the second part of King 
 Henry the Sixth — " My masters, let's stand close : my Lord 
 Protector will come this way by and by, and then we may 
 deliver our supplications in the quill " (act i, sc. 3) . Finding 
 no assistance from the commentators, and finding the word 
 " quill" used by Sylvester for narrow passages, I thought it 
 probable that this might be its meaning in this place, that 
 there would be a crowd of persons standing close, so as to 
 leave but a narrow alley, along which the protector would 
 have to walk, who would so be easily accessible to any of the 
 crowd who might wish to place their petitions in his hands. 
 Mr. Dyce, however, thinks this a mistake, and would read 
 " quoil" or " coil," meaning bustle or tumult. 1 shall not 
 dispute it with him, because I think both of them a little 
 uncertain : and so thought Mr. Collier's manuscript-corrector, 
 whose reading " sequel" I must honestly confess I think 
 worse than either. 
 
 Before leaving the histories I will beg the reader's atten- 
 tion to a criticism on a passage in the play of King Henry the 
 Eighth, though it is not called for by anything in Mr. 
 Dyce's Few Notes, or by Mr. Collier's Notes and Emendations, 
 or by Mr. Singer's Vindication. 
 
 In the edition usually called Boswell's Malone, we find the 
 character given of Wolsey by the Duke of Norfolk printed 
 thus, as the best that could be made of the old copies : — 
 
17 
 1. 1. 
 
 Surely, sir, 
 There's in him stuff that puts him to these ends ; 
 For being not propp'd by ancestry (whose grace 
 Chalks successors their way), nor call'd upon 
 For high feats done to the crown ; neither allied 
 To eminent assistants, but spider-like, 
 Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note 
 The force of his own merit makes his way : 
 A gift that" heaven gives for him, which buys 
 A place next to the king. 
 
 It is clear that this cannot be what Shakespeare wrote ; it 
 is so unintelligible ; yet the original copies are less intelli- 
 gible still in the part which I restored : — 
 
 but spider-like, 
 Out of his self-drawing web. ! gives us note, 
 The force of his own merit makes his way : 
 A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys 
 A place next to the king. 
 
 This in 1845 I restored thus : 
 
 but spider-like, 
 Out of himself drawing his web. O ! this gives us note, 
 The force of his own merit makes his way. 
 A gift that heaven has given him buys for him 
 A place next to the king. 
 
 and I have since found a valuable confirmation of this view 
 of the sense of the passage, and at the same time a further 
 proof of the attention which Shakespeare seems to have given 
 to the books of Impresses and Emblems of the time : for it is 
 certain that the spider raising itself by its own web, spun 
 
18 
 
 M out of itself" is to be found in some book of Emblems of a 
 date before ^he time of Shakespeare, as tlie representative of 
 the man who rises to eminence, as Wolsey did, by the mere 
 force of his own unaided genius and energy. 
 
 I cannot refer to the particular book of Emblems in which 
 it is found, though I have looked at several ; and I know of 
 it only by the following passage in a writer contemporary 
 with Shakespeare, which is, however, quite sufficient to the 
 purpose, and more than sufficient, as it shows how another 
 Englishman of some note was wrought upon in his youth by 
 the instructive and encouraging Emblem. 
 
 Hugh Sandford wrote a treatise, c De descensu Domini 
 nostri/ &c. It was printed at Amsterdam, 4to, 1611, being 
 edited by another Englishman, Robert Parker, who in the 
 preface has introduced several particulars of Sandford's life 
 and character, and amongst other things tells us — u Delecta- 
 batur ille in juventute sua maximopere, pictura aranece proprio 
 filo scandentis, cum hoc symbolo 'Ego debeo nulli;' nee 
 immerito. Id enim maxime mirum quod ad sublime fastigium 
 (loquor cum Salomone) proprio Marte aranese ad instar enisus 
 sit: et quanquam ccvto%i$ockto<; esset," &c. It will not, I 
 think, be doubted that Shakespeare owed this figure to the 
 very print which fixed itself in the imagination and affections 
 of Sandford : possibly even that print may have had some 
 effect on the mind and life of Shakespeare himself. 
 
 Few single words have afforded more trouble to the editors 
 and commentators than the word " Runaways," in a well- 
 remembered passage of Romeo and Juliet (act iii, sc. 2), and 
 few words have received so many unhappy substitutions. 
 Mr. Collier finds in his manuscript-corrector that he says 
 the true reading is "enemies;" "unawares," has met with 
 
19 
 
 several patrons; "sunaway" with some, And now comes 
 Mr. Dyce with " roving," which makes the blank verse halt 
 for it. After all, none of them, it seems to me, are at all to 
 be preferred to the text as we have it, " that runaways* eyes 
 may wink." It is not in Shakespeare's best manner, but 
 then the greatest poet is not always in his finest mood. 
 " Runaways" I understand to be the same as " Runagates," 
 for which we have a kind of authority, a poor one I allow, in 
 Dyche's ( Dictionary/ 1735, "Runagate or Runaway, a 
 rover or wanderer." This approaches nearly to Mr. Dyce's 
 sense of the passage, without destroying the measure. 
 Juliet wishes that the night may be so pitchy dark, that 
 should Romeo meet with any runagates (runaways) wan- 
 dering about the streets, he may not be recognised, or 
 even observed by them. Till something better is suggested, 
 an editor of Shakespeare would do best to adhere in this 
 passage to the text as the old copies present it to him. 
 
 In another passage of this play (act iv, sc. 4) the nurse 
 says, " Go, you cotquean, go." And finding " cutquean" in 
 Golding's Ovid used in a sense which could be applied only 
 to a female, it appeared to me that this free expression must 
 be addressed to Lady Capulet, and not to her husband. My 
 idea was that there ought to have been a break at " go ;" 
 that having thus in her unceremonious manner dismissed the 
 lady, she then turned herself to Capulet himself. Mr. Dyce 
 is quite right in saying that the context sufficiently disproves 
 the notion, that the nurse was speaking to the lady, if we 
 take the passage without the break. Mr. Dyce further says, 
 that Golding writes, "cucquean". Not always — for in my 
 copy of Golding, 4to, 1593, printed by John Danter, Sign, 
 I. iv, we have — 
 
20 
 
 But she considering that 
 Queen Progne was a cutquean made by means of her. 
 
 He does, however, write "cucquean" in another place. On 
 the whole, I now agree with Mr. Dyce, and others, in thinking 
 that the " cotquean" of the nurse does mean u a man that 
 busies himself in women's affairs," and that the whole of 
 what the nurse says is addressed to Capulet. The jealous- 
 hood which might appear naturally enough to arise out of the 
 use of such a word as that which the nurse used, seems to 
 have an origin later in the dialogue. 
 
 I am unwilling to enter again on anything like a full expo- 
 sition of the view which I take of the instigation scene in 
 Macbeth, especially with so slight an invitation as the remarks 
 of Mr. Dyce on the substitution of " boast " for " beast n by 
 Mr. Collier's manuscript -corrector. I perfectly agree with 
 him that there is no propriety in such a substitution ; on the 
 contrary, it appears to me a material deterioration of a text 
 already sufficiently corrupt. " Beast M is best defended, if it 
 can be defended at all, by Mr. Foster, in the passage quoted 
 from him by Mr. Dyce, as used in opposition to " Man;" but 
 this explanation, though very uncertain, will appear more 
 deserving of acceptance, if we take it in connection with the 
 restoration of the words forming the context, as given by me 
 in 1845. 
 
 It is very much to be regretted that we should find Mr. Collier, 
 an editor of two editions of Shakespeare, recollecting so little 
 of the varieties of text in this much talked of scene, as to 
 state in terms, after giving us the text, 
 
 I dare do all which may become a man, 
 Who dares do more is none — 
 
21 
 
 w We give the text as it has appeared in every edition from 
 the earliest in 1623 to our own day." This is strange, passing 
 strange ! and exceedingly mischievous, as it tends to fix in the 
 public mind a delusion respecting this passage of a very im- 
 portant kind. The real state of the case is, that so far from 
 this being the reading of every edition, it is the reading of no 
 edition of any authority. It is the mere substituted reading 
 of some modern editor, probably Rowe or Theobald, who 
 could not restore the passage as it ought to have been restored. 
 I wonder that Mr. Dyce did not perceive and remark this; 
 for he must well know that the first and second folio (there is 
 no quarto of Macbeth), instead of presenting us with the 
 reading which Mr. Collier says they do, with one consent, 
 
 I dare do all which may become a man, 
 Who dares no more is none. 
 
 The change is but in a single letter, but it is a most potent 
 change ; and no one has had any right to change the " no w 
 of Shakespeare himself into "do." 
 
 Still some change is required. The passage is in some way 
 corrupt. But as it has appeared to me, and as I believe it 
 will appear to any person who will take the old copies, and 
 laying aside all the prejudice which the constant perusal of 
 the sophisticated modern editions may have engendered, 
 examine them with close attention, the restoration is not to 
 be effected by altering the poet's text, but by making a change 
 in the person speaking, and there is ample evidence in other 
 parts of this play that the stage directions, as they are called, 
 cannot be depended on. Read it thus : — 
 
22 
 
 Macbeth. 
 I dare do all that may become a man. 
 
 Lady Macbeth. 
 Who dares no more is none. 
 
 He who on a great occasion such as this cannot lay aside the 
 ordinary feelings of humanity, and the thought of what weak 
 people may think to be becoming, is unworthy the name of 
 man. Then the idea of a " beast M as a contrast to u man," 
 naturally introduces itself, and she says, " what beast was it 
 then which made you break this enterprise to me ? M 
 
 " Boast," however we read the passage, and however we 
 assign the several members in the dialogue to each of the two 
 speakers, can have nothing to support it. I cannot however but 
 think, as I formerly suggested, that " beast" intrudes, and got 
 in in a way somewhat peculiar ; that " was 't " was, by mistake 
 of the scribe, written twice, and that some person wishing to 
 adhere as closely as might be to the manuscript before him, 
 took an ill-written " wast " for " beast." I hope I shall not 
 be thought to be endeavouring unduly to bring any work of 
 mine under the notice of the public, if I request from the 
 lovers of Shakespeare, and especially those who are critical 
 readers of him, to peruse what I have written in the New 
 Illustrations on this and some other scenes of this noble 
 Tragedy, vol. ii, pp. 152-201. 
 
 A remark upon a single passage in Hamlet, and I have 
 done. g& 
 
 Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason. 
 Mr. Dyce very properly disposes of the conjecture of 
 
23 
 
 Mr. Gifford ; but it is not quite clear how he would himself 
 read the passage. I submit that the true reading is, 
 
 Which might deprive of sovereignty your reason. 
 
 Mr. Collier's manuscript-corrector here, as in many other 
 places where his aid is most wanted, affords us no assistance, 
 
 LONDON : E. TITCKEB, PBINTEE, PEBBY'S PLACE, OXPOBD StfBEET. 
 
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