"I have already mentioned Mr. Singer's corrected folio, 1632, and its various welcome concurrences with my corr. fo. 1632; but the Rev. Mr. Dyce, as if to disparage my volume, sometimes puts in a claim for emendations in Mr. Singer's folio not borne out by the fact: I will only trouble the reader with one instance, and it applies to a passage in 'Henry IV. Part II.,' A. i. sc. 2, where Falstaff says,

'And so both the degrees prevent my curses,'

as the words have been invariably printed from 1623 to 1857. What, then, is the emendation in my corr. fo. 1632? This :

And so both the diseases prevent my curses;'

a change that even Mr. Dyce could not refuse; and what is his note upon it? The old copies (says he) have 'the degrees prevent,' from which it seems impossible to elicit a tolerable sense. The two Ms. correctors-Mr. Collier's and Mr. Singer's-('the Percy and the Douglas both together') agree in the reading which I have adopted,' viz. diseases. This is a total mistake: Mr. Singer's Ms. corrector makes no such proposal; and Mr. Singer, in his 'Shakespeare,' vol. v. p. 179, actually retains 'degrees' in his text, observing in his note,-'It has been proposed to change degrees to diseases. But there is wit in speaking of a diseased sinner graduating in honours.'

The 66 TOTAL MISTAKE" with which Mr. Collier has here so rashly charged me is wholly his own. It is true that Mr. Singer, when he came to reedit Shakespeare, was content with the old reading, “degrees :" but let us hear what he had previously written on the passage in his Shakespeare Vindicated, p. 112;

B

"The substitution [by Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector] of diseases for degrees in Falstaff's speech is a good and legitimate correction; WHICH HAS ALSO BEEN MADE IN MY COPY OF THE SECOND FOLIO."

P. xv., note.

"I may just add, that if the reader will take the trouble to turn to 'Troilus and Cressida,' A. iii. sc. 3, he will notice another striking proof of the same species of detraction, where 'mirror'd' has always been misprinted married, until the change was brought forward in my corr. fo. 1632: Mr. Singer's Ms. corrector says nothing about it, although the Rev. Mr. Dyce, I dare say inadvertently, states the contrary."

Another " TOTAL MISTAKE" on the part of Mr. Collier. In his Shakespeare Vindicated, p. 198, Mr. Singer writes as follows;

"The substitution of mirrored for 'married,' so evidently required by the sense in the lines

'For speculation turns not to itself

Till it hath travell'd, and is married there
Where it may see itself,'

HAD NOT ESCAPED THE CORRECTOR OF MY SECOND FOLIO, who has taken considerable pains with the corrupt text of this play, but I should think a hint for this emendation will be found somewhere in print, and that both correctors have availed themselves of it."

P. xvi. Mr. Collier, after some remarks on Mr. Singer's note upon the line in King John, act v. sc. 4,

"Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,"

returns (p. xvii.) to me:

"Mr. Dyce does not attempt to say one word about the old corrupt text of 'unthread the rude eye of rebellion,' and the true language of Shakespeare, we may be sure, is what I have printed, Vol. iii. p. 200:

'Fly, noble English; you are bought and sold:

Untread the road-way of rebellion,

And welcome home again discarded faith.’

This is one of the cases in which Mr. Dyce did not run the risk of

noticing the emendation, lest in the first place he should have to correct his friend Mr. Singer's mistake, and secondly, and more importantly, lest his readers should chance to ask, 'Why did you not adopt such an easy, probable, and sensible emendation ?'"

The truth is, I noticed neither Theobald's nor the Ms. Corrector's alteration of the line, because the following passages of Shakespeare render it very doubtful if any alteration is necessary;

"Even when the navel of the state was touch'd,

They would not thread the gates," &c.

"Thus out of season, threading dark-ey'd night."

Coriolanus, act iii. sc. 1.

King Lear, act ii. sc. 1.

"It is as hard to come as for a camel

Richard II. act v. sc. 5.

To thread the postern of a needle's eye."

Malone, ad l., observes; "Our author is not always careful that the epithet which he applies to a figurative term should answer on both sides. Rude is applicable to rebellion, but not to eye. He means, in fact, the eye of rude rebellion." And a recent very accomplished editor of Shakespeare, Mr. Staunton, concludes his defence of the old reading thus; Moreover, the original spelling is unthred, and it is remarkable, that in the folio, 1623, thread, which occurs many times, is invariably spelt thred, whilst tread is always exhibited in its present form."

P. xix., note.

"In 'The Taming of the Shrew,' A. iii. sc. 2, Biondello introduces a part of an old ballad, which, until my time, had been invariably printed and read as prose: the Rev. Mr. Dyce gives it as verse, without a word. In Troilus and Cressida,' A. iii. sc. 2, for the first time I printed, 'Love's thrice-repured nectar' for 'thrice-reputed,' as it has always stood; and Mr. Dyce adopts it in silence. In the same way, in ‘The Merchant of Venice,' A. iii. sc. 1, I materially altered the entrance of Tubal; so does Mr. Dyce, without a syllable to show from whence he procured the change."

On turning to the two editions of Shakespeare which lie nearest my hand, Theobald's of 1740, and the Variorum of

1821, I find in The Taming of the Shrew, act iii. sc. 2, the following arrangement;

"Bion. Nay, by St. Jamy, I hold you a penny,

A horse and a man is more than one, and yet not many."

66

So much for Mr. Collier's assertion that "until his time" the speech of Biondello "had been invariably printed and read as prose."-In Troilus and Cressida, act iii. sc. 2, the lection thrice-repured nectar" was obtained by Mr. Collier from a copy of the 4to, 1609, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire: and, in conformity to the plan laid down for my edition, I "adopted it in silence," because it was not a conjectural emendation, but a reading warranted by an early copy.-As to my neglecting to say a syllable" about Mr. Collier's having "materially altered the entrance of Tubal,”—the charge is ludicrous. Mr. Collier, who has examined my Shakespeare so minutely, could not fail to see what pains I have bestowed throughout on the proper location of the entrances and exits: and does he seriously imagine that for such a trifling change as that in question I was indebted to him? N.B. "The entrance of Tubal" is marked in its right place in the acting copies of The Merchant of Venice,—several of which were printed long before Mr. Collier was born :-I now quote from Cumberland's sixpenny edition;

"Sal. Here comes another of the tribe: a third cannot be match'd, unless the devil himself turn Jew.

[Exeunt Solanio and Salarino, R[ight]. Enter TUBAL, Left].

Shy. [Running to meet him]. How now, Tubal, what news from Genoa," &c.

P. xxi. Here Mr. Collier does not scruple to print, FROM A PRIVATE LETTER, what I happened to write to him about the Notes and Emendations, soon after the appearance of that volume; a proceeding the more unjustifiable because he is quite aware that I subsequently found reason to think less favourably, on the whole, of the Ms. Corrector than I did at

first-but it appears, both from his Preface and from his Notes, that Mr. Collier is no longer under the restraint of any thing like delicacy of feeling.

P. xxiv.

“It would not be easy to point out a stronger or a stranger instance of the manner in which the Rev. Mr. Dyce consents rather to injure his text than to owe an obligation to my corrected folio, 1632, than is to be met with in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' A. v. sc. 2, where every syllable of a page and a half is in rhyme, excepting a single line, which single line is made by the old annotator to jingle, like all the rest, by the smallest possible change, little more than altering 'leap' to 'leapt,' which change Mr. Dyce can repudiate for no other reason, but because it comes to him recommended by an unwelcome authority. The folio, 1623, has it thus :

'Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;

Where fires thou find'st unrak'd and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids,' &c.

For between forty and fifty lines together the rhyme is invariable, and
the change, in order to restore the rhyme, is so direct and facile, that
we may be sure that the first line quoted above has been corrupted
in the press.
The remedy, though never seen, is as 'plain as way to

parish church,' and the old corrector points it out :

'Cricket, to Windsor chimneys when thou'st leapt,

Where fires thou find 'st unrak'd and hearths unswept,

There pinch the maids,' &c.

Can any body doubt that 'leap' of the old copies ought to be leapt ? Yes; the Rev. Mr. Dyce denies it, if he do not doubt it; for he tells us in a note what the Ms. corrector proposes, and yet without the slightest reason assigned (for how could he assign one?) he reprints the old blunder, and seems just as well satisfied with rejecting what Shakespeare must have written, as if he had himself recovered a portion of the lost language of the poet: this, too, merely that it might not be said, that he admitted the existence of one more 'particle of gold.'

The importance which Mr. Collier here attaches to the alteration of "leap" to "leapt" is to be accounted for only by his delusion about the merits of his Ms. Corrector; since not even the dullest critic, who might have wished to introduce a rhyme into the passage, could possibly have missed hitting on the alteration "leapt," it must have occurred to him instantaneously. But the Ms. Corrector, besides altering "leap" to "leapt," substitutes, in the same line,