Parts was sometimes written partes; this might have given rise to the error. 4, Helena's letter,— "His taken labours bid him me forgive; I, his despiteful Juno, sent him forth" &c. En. i. 7-10, especially tot adire labores. arrange, "Is this the way? Widow. Ay, marry is 't.-Hark you, they come this way: But till the troops come by,. I will conduct you where you shall be lodg'd," &c. And so the folio. Pilgrim is a trisyllable. 6,-". and clap upon you two or three probable lies." Improbable? or can probable mean plausible? iv. 1,-"They begin to smoke me. Chapman, Odyss. iv. folio, p. 53, 2, and thus through every street He crept discovering, of no one known. And yet through all this difference, I alone "I see that men make hopes, in such a scarre," &c. Non liquet.2 In the mean time, note that the reading of 2 For scarre (not to mention other conjectures) Mr. Dyce reads case, after Mr. Mitford, and supports his opinion by several very apposite quotations from Shakespeare. It is perhaps worth ob the folio is not ropes but rope's. For the phrase make hopes, one may perhaps compare King Henry VIII. ii. 1,— although the king have mercies More than I dare make faults." 3, early in the scene, Is it not meant damnable in us &c. Most of course. Ib., "By my troth, sir, if I were to live this present hour, I will tell true." Of course, die. Mira editorum ávaιo@noía! Ib., same speech, "Guiltian." Julian, I imagine. Ad fin. There is perhaps a line lost after "found an ass; something seems to be wanting; live—thrive, too, is a suspicious rhyme for Shakespeare's age; and triplets are very rare in him,3 and occur only, I think, under special circumstances. Perhaps. however, a rhyme is not wanted here. serving that in the Play of Lingua, i. 6, the old quartos, 1607, 1617, 1622, 1632, all read, "Poets will write whole volumes of this scarre." Perhaps scape, in the sense of trick or intrigue, is the genuine word in both passages. Scape occurs in that sense in Paradise Regained.-Ed. 3 The triplet which is given by many modern editions in Midsummer Night's Dream, v. 1, was produced by a transposition of Theobald's. Theobald, however, thought that a verse might have "slipt out ;" this seems to me certain, though Capell dissents. Qu., "This grisly beast, which lion hight by name, The trusty Thisby, coming first by night [To keep her promise, and not break the same], Did scare away, or rather did affright." Ed. 5,-"-which-his majesty-did first propose :" &c. Per haps, i.q., purpose. v. 2, "I do pity his distress in my smiles of comfort," &c. Of course, "my similes" &c. Ib., “And what would you have me to do?" and sqq. Lafeu, apparently, does not at first recognize Parolles through his rags. 3, "We lost a jewel of her; and our esteem Johnson's explanation is the true one. 1b, "Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless! Dyce, Remarks, p.73,-" Mr. Collier ought to have retained (with Mr. Knight) the reading of the first folio, cesse, on account of the rhyme." I am not quite sure, however, that cease, pronounced as it then was, would not have been considered a lawful rhyme for bless. Compare Venus and Adonis, St. clxvii., rhymes, confess-decease. Ib., "Her insuit, coming with her modern grace, The folio (p. 253, col. 1) spells and prints,— "Her insuite comming with her moderne grace, Comming is, so far as I have noticed, the uniform Elizabethan mode of writing coming, so much so, that in Harrington's Preface to his Ariosto, last page but one, we find it printed coming. Now the erratum comming for cunning is not unfrequent. Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2, folio, .. see, see, your silence, Comming in dumbnesse, from my weaknesse drawes for "Cunning in dumbness." Hamlet, iv. 7, fol., p. 276, col. 1, ult.,— "Wee'l make a solemne wager on your commings," for "your cunnings." (Here Knight restores comings, and explains it meetings in assault!) Jonson, Elegy in his Underwoods, Whalley's edition, doubtless from the folio, which latter I have not at hand, "While he, black wretch, betray'd each simple word Gifford (vol. viii. p. 408) properly reaas cunning; as indeed it stands in Donne's Poems, 1633, p. 301, where this elegy is printed by mistake. Beaumont and Fletcher, Custom of the Country, iv. 3,— "Your cunning comes too late ; ' where the folio of 1647 (p. 16, col. 1) reads comming. Sidney, Arcadia, B. ii. p. 233, 1. 28 (the lines are "Asclepiadikes"),— "Here nor treason is hid, vailed in innocence, (Compare, for the kind of error, Hamlet, i. 4, fol., p. 257, col. 1, "Or to the dreadfull Sonnet of the Cliffe;" for Summit.) In Romeo and Juliet, ii. 2, fol., p. 60, col. 1, Then those that haue coying to be strange; for "that have more cunning;" coying perhaps arose from the abbreviation coming for comming. Knight has escaped this snare. The same corruption doubtless obtains in the following passages. Fletcher, Faithful Shepherdess, v. 3, Moxon, vol. i. p. 284, col. 2, 1. 4; perhaps Dyce has corrected it. [No.-Ed.], Good holiness, declare What had the danger been, if being bare I had embraced her; tell me by your art What coming wonders would that sight impart ? Cunning, daídaλa wonders of Nature's workmanship. Heywood, Challenge for Beauty, ap. Lamb's Specimens, vol. i. p. 109, I perceive. Your coming is to make me think you noble." Cunning. See context. So also correct in B. iv. of the Arcadia, p. 433, 1. 13,-" Onely Timautus laboured to haue withdrawne them from this assembly, saying, it was time to stop their eares from the ambitious charms of Philanax. -That this was but Philanax comming, to linke broyle vpō broyle, because he might auoyd the answering of his trespasses," &c. Evidently, Philanax' cunning. Spenser, Mother Hubberd's, 1. 783; see context, "For he is practiz'd well in policy, And thereto doth his courting most applie: " &c. What can courting mean here? Cunning, I think. Perhaps courtier, courtship, &c., ran in the printer's head, or his eye was caught by courtly, thirty-one lines above, courtier, nine below, or courtizans, twenty-one below, and thus comming |