avoids the awkwardness of converting 'private' into a sort of substantive We derive this emendation from the corr. fo. 1632." See ante, p. 77. P. 186,-act iv. sc. 3. 666 We will not line his sin-bestained cloak With our pure honours,' &c. It is thin bestained cloak' in all editions, ancient, and modern, but amended to 'sin-bestained' in the corr. fo. 1632. Even Mr. Singer could not resist the force of this valuable emendation, and avails himself of it with due acknowledgment." The Ms. Corrector was probably induced to make this alteration because he found in the old copy "thin bestained" printed, with a hyphen, "thin-bestained," and therefore supposed that a compound epithet had been intended by the poet, -which there is no reason to believe. The folio abounds in passages where the hyphen is wrongly introduced: e. g. in the present play it has ; "Who hath read or heard Of any kindred-action like to this?" Act iii. sc. 4. "The mis-placed-John should entertaine an houre," &c. "With any long'd-for-change or better state.” Ibid. Act iv. sc. 2. "Send fayre-play-orders, and make comprimise," &c. "A cockred-silken wanton braue our fields," &c. (and see p. 30 of the present volume.) Act v. sc. 1. Ibid. "The king's cloak (that is, his authority) was thin, because not lined and strengthened with the power and honours of his nobles." Blackwood's Magazine for September 1853, p. 306. "Bestained is sullied, dishonoured. strong enough without the compound sin." men of the Stratford Shakespeare, p. 10. P. 188,-act iv. sc. 3. 666 a holy vow, Never to taste the pleasures of the world, The epithet is Knight's Speci Never to be infected with delight, Nor conversant with ease and idleness, By giving it the worship of revenge.' Till I have set a glory to this HEAD,] To this hand,' in all editions anterior to that of Pope, and amended to 'head' in the margin of the corr. fo. 1632. 'Head' is assuredly right, and the error of hand for 'head' was so easy that it was often committed by our old printers." Mr. Collier mistakes in saying that Pope substituted "to this head" (i. e. the head of the dead Arthur) for the reading of the old copies "to this hand” (i. e. the hand of the speaker, Salisbury): Pope made no alteration here. "To this head" was the conjecture of Farmer; and a most erroneous one,he as well as the Corrector having been misled by the words "glory" and "worship." Compare our author's Henry IV. Part First, act iii. sc. 2 ; "And I will call him to so strict account, Yea, even the slightest worship of his time, Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart." Malone justly observes, "The following passage in Troilus and Cressida [act iv. sc. 1] is decisive in support of the old reading; 'Jove, let Æneas live, If to my sword his fate be not the glory, Compare, too, Chapman's Homer's Odysses, b. xxiv. ; "Hast not thou decreed That Ithacus should come, and give his deed The glory of revenge on these and theirs ?" P. 197,-act v. sc. 2. p. 374, ed. folio. "This apish and unmannerly approach, To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms, From out the circle of his territories.' This UNHAIR'D sauciness or boyish troops,] It is unheard sauciness, and H boyish troops' in the old copies; but, as Mr. Dyce observes, hair and hair'd were often spelt hear and heard, and such is probably the reason why the corrector of the folio, 1632, did not alter unheard to 'unhair'd.' The genitive case, which the corrector introduces, is clearly necessary, for the Bastard was speaking of the 'unhair'd sauciness' of the boyish troops of France; and it not unfrequently happened that the compositor blundered by confounding the abbreviation for and with the preposition ' of."" When Mr. Collier first published this alteration of "and" to "of," he prefaced it by stating that "The manuscriptcorrector gives no countenance to Theobald's proposal to read unhair'd for 'unheard';" which statement, though Mr. Collier would now recall it, was doubtless the truth. The Corrector evidently did not know that "unheard" was the old spelling of "unhair'd;" and when he altered "and" to "of" he meant us to understand "unheard sauciness" as equivalent to "unheard-of sauciness,' "" -a sense which the words could not bear. Mr. Collier ought to have contented himself with the modern reading, "This unhair'd sauciness, and boyish troops;" for, by adopting the Corrector's "of," he has rendered the sense of the line questionable, and has besides introduced a genitive case where it would certainly seem from the rest of the passage that Shakespeare did not intend one. P. 201,-act v. sc. 4. "For I do see the cruel pangs of death Here we see the value of the addition of a single letter: it is Right in thine eye' in the old copies, and fright, pight, fight have been suggested by various commentators as emendations; but Shakespeare refers to the admitted brilliancy often assumed by the eyes of dying persons. The corr. fo. 1632 alters the text to 'Bright in thine eye,' the letter B having, in some way, escaped at the beginning of the line, or the compositor having read Br merely R, and so printed it." Here I must be allowed to quote what I have written ad l. in my edition of Shakespeare, on the authority of an eminent living physician, against the alteration of "Right” to “Bright,” which the Corrector has so ignorantly made: "Mr. Collier tells us that 'Bright' is to be understood in reference to the remarkable brilliancy of the eyes of many persons just before death' [Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 212]: but if that lighting up of the eye ever occurs, it is only when comparative tranquillity precedes dissolution,-not during 'the pangs of death;' and most assuredly it is never to be witnessed in those persons who, like Melun, are dying of wounds-of exhaustion from loss of blood-in which case, the eye, immediately before death, becomes glazed and lustreless." KING RICHARD II. P. 223,-act i. sc. 1. "For that my sovereign liege was in my debt, Since last I went to France to fetch his queen.' CLEAR account,] So the corr. fo. 1632, with indisputable fitness, the reading of all editions, ancient and modern, having been dear account.' Mr. Singer prints it 'clear account,' observing that dear is an evident error:' so it is, but he did not discover it until it was pointed out in my corr. fo. 1632, of which he says nothing, although he adopts the emendation found in no other authority. The German editor puts it einer klaren Fordrung." I am not surprised that here the Ms. Corrector should alter "dear account" to "clear account" (for we have already seen him waging war against the former word, substituting "clearest spirits" for "dearest spirits," and "dire groans" for "dear groans," -vide pp. 55, 61): but I certainly am surprised that Mr. Singer should have thought such an alteration necessary. Mr. Staunton, with far better judgment, characterises the Corrector's "clear account" as 66 a poor and needless innovation:" he truly observes that "dear, in this place, means precious, momentous, pressing, all-important;" and he cites from two other plays of Shakespeare, "Some dear cause Will in concealment wrap me up awhile." King Lear, act iv. sc. 3. "O dear account! my life is my foe's debt." "The letter was not nice, but full of charge Id. act v. sc. 2. "A precious ring; a ring that I must use P. 224,-act i. sc. 1. Id. act v. sc. 3. "Wrath-kindled gentleman, be rul'd by me.- We'll calm the Duke of Norfolk, you your son.' Wrath-kindled GENTLEMAN, be rul'd by me.] So all the 4tos; the King addressing himself to Norfolk, who had just concluded his angry speech. The folio reads gentlemen; but Bolingbroke, merely as the accuser, was not so properly 'wrath-kindled,' and, moreover, had had time to cool. In consistency with this notion the King afterwards undertakes to 'calm the duke of Norfolk.' 999 The above note is found in Mr. Collier's first edition, with the exception of the concluding sentence, a very unimportant addition to his defence of a reading which all the other editors have rejected, and which the fifth line of the speech, "Forget, forgive; conclude and BE AGREED," distinctly proves to be inadmissible. P. 229,-act i. sc. 3. 666 "to defend my loyalty and truth, To God, my king, and my succeeding issue, Against the duke of Hereford that appeals me,' &c. Here the corr. fo. 1632 restores the old reading of the 4tos, viz. 'my succeeding issue' for 'his succeeding issue' of the folio, 1623. It is therefore clear that Mowbray, as Johnson argued, adverted to his own issue endangered by attainder, and not to the issue of the king." From what Mr. Collier says here, who would not conclude that Johnson had zealously patronised the reading "my suc |