'no' as an affirmative of relief, of satisfied decision. The ellipsis is filled by the thought,-'Not grisly! Then your ghost was not my father, and it need not trouble me.' It is an open question how Shakespeare punctuated the line in his original manuscript, or whether he punctuated it at all. As I have elsewhere intimated, the punctuation of Shakespeare's text is, at best and worst, the work of printers, editors, and proof-readers.

The measured exactness of Horatio's answer is due, I think, to the same cause as was his hesitation of a moment before, he feels the hurt he is dealing his friend. In sum-total, he but assents to Hamlet's description, since 'grizzled,' 'grisly,' and 'sable silvered' are identical in meaning: 'These hands are not more like.' The referential contour belongs, if not to every group in the speech, at least to the descriptive words, 'sable silvered.'

At last almost persuaded of the shade's identity, Hamlet refrains from further questioning, as useless, and speaks the intention that has lurked in his mind all along:- 'I'll watch to-night, a falling sweep. The added 'Perchance 'twill walk again,' may be construed as a semi-question:-"Twill walk again; don't you think?' In that case, the accent of 'again' would take the inflection, a mingling of belief, doubt, and anticipation.

1.

NOTES AND STUDIES IN INTERPRETATION.

'SINK OR SWIM, LIVE OR DIE, SURVIVE OR PERISH.' In my boyhood days, I often pored and puzzled over the rules of inflection in the old McGuffey Readers. The book and the teacher's interpretation of its rules were infallible, of course; but from somewhere inside me I heard now and then a timid whisper of doubt. An occasional sentence or phrase, 'read according to the rule,' sounded unnatural;

the printed words seemed to mean one thing, and the same words, spoken, seemed to mean something else. I recall the opening sentence of Webster's 'Supposed Speech of John Adams', with the inflective scheme which we were taught to apply to it:

Sínk or swim, líve or dìe, survive or pèrish, I give my hánd and my heart to this vote.

I recall, too, the fact that the big boys who declaimed on Friday afternoons, along with 'Rienzi's Address to the Romans,' 'Rolla's Address to the Peruvians,' 'The Burial of Sir John Moore,' 'Hohenlinden,' 'Patrick Henry's Speech,' 'Marco Bozzaris,' 'Pitt's Reply to Sir Robert Walpole,' 'Catiline's Defiance,' 'Lord Chatham on the American War,' and other heirlooms of eloquence, would one of them, about once a month, spout the 'Supposed Speech.' And I remember as if I heard it yesterday, the formal, heavy, brusque effect that the employment of the McGuffey formula gave to the three alternative clauses. Good old Doctor McGuffey would probably have justified his marking by the principles of antithesis, of alternative, and of emphatic repetition.

Many years ago, I gave a good deal of study and experiment to the reading of this sentence, and at length reached a conclusion on which I rested content.

The three opening clauses say the same thing three times, in different words. The repetition is for the sake of greater impressiveness, no doubt about that. The utterance of the same thought twice, in the same or different words, upon the same inflective and melodic scheme, might be made very impressive, with appropriate changes of pitch, time, force, and quality; but a third repetition, in the same contour, is out of the question.

I decided to treat the three clauses as a climax series, I preserved the opposition of inflections in the first two clauses,

but reversed their order, making the falling concrete on 'sink' and 'live', and the rising on 'swim' and 'die'; the gradual but distinct rise of melody, the increasing force and volume, and the terminal rising concretes indicating the formative motive and the growing earnestness; then, 'survive' a rising sweep and 'perish' a strong falling sweep:

(^)\Sink or swím, +Vlive or díe, +/survive, or +\pèrish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.

If there is a better plan of intonation for this sentence, I have so far failed to find it.

2.

'BLAZE WITH YOUR SERRIED COLUMNS,'

AGAIN.

On page 331 a notation was given of a line from 'The Seminole's Defiance,'—

Blaze with your serried columns!

The line or half-line-was considered for the moment as a literal imperative, for the purpose of illustrating a general melodic principle. To interpret the clause in its place, at the opening of the poem, it is probably better to regard it as a scornful, defiant invitation; the following clause being correlated with it in melody. The intonation will consist of two falling successions of rising-wave sweeps, thus:

(Blaze with your not bend the knee!

Vsĕrried columns! \+I will

Lear's 'Pour on; I will endure!' is a similar case.

3. AND DAREST THOU, THEN,' ETC. Two Renderings Compared.

And darest thou, then,

To beard the lion in his den,

The Douglas in his hall?

By using the rising melody throughout the three lines above,―as, I believe, they are usually read,-equality of

formidable character between the lion and the Douglas is expressed.

But: Give a vivid rising melody to the first two lines; then, a bold falling sweep, with falling slides and abrupt stress, to 'Douglas in his hall',-striking the accent of 'Douglas' at a high pitch: and the Douglas asserts his own dangerous temper and physical prowess as indefinitely beyond those of the king of the desert.

The downward contrasting melody might be restricted to 'Douglas in his', and 'hall' rise, by wave or slide, to restore the interrogative motive; but it would weaken the expression of overbearing pride and resolution.

4.

SELF-CONDEMNATION, INTERRUPTING A DRIFT OF DIRECT INTERROGATION. From Othello.

✓Drunk? -✓and speak -✓părrot? -✓squabble? -Vswǎgger? -✓swear? -/and discourse +\fùstiàn with one's own ✓shadów?

Read as suggested above,-'fustian with one's own shad-' a strong falling sweep from a high pitch,-Cassio's last question voices his self-disgust and self-contempt. With the last syllable, '-dow,' strongly rising, as marked, the attitude of incredulous surprise is indicated. If the syllable completes and confirms the falling movement, the question is self-answered, and disgust is intensified to condemnation. With the melody rising throughout the clause, the attitude is that of inquiry, with the feeling of bewildered surprise.

5. 'WOO'T WEEP? WOO'T FIGHT? WOO'T FAST?' Rush's and Murdoch's Readings Compared.

Doctor Rush was a man of decided opinions, though his opinions were, I believe, seldom hasty or ill-considered. The Doctor fervently held that our English spelling should be simplified, and bravely put his theory in practice. The

'Philosophy'-especially the seventh, the last revised edition, -is studded with new spellings; some of them so changed from their ordinary look as to become word puzzles to the unaccustomed eye. In presenting his treatment of the two lines from Hamlet,

Zounds, show me what thou'lt do. Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?— I follow his spelling.

The readings proposed in this esay are for ilustration; and their purpose may be fulfiled, even if they may not exactly acord with comon opinion. There is a best in the works of every art; but the latitude of admisible variation, within the reach of principles, makes an ample and liberal grant, that sometimes generously admits even cases of unsucesful search after the highest excelence. Over such failures the inteligent critic of another age will be neither quarelsome nor severe.

The emphasis of the octave by a change of radical pitch, is exemplified in the folowing lines.

Zounds, show me what thou'lt do. Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?

The exasperated energy of Hamlet, in his encounter with Laertes, calls for the highest pitch of interogation on the words here marked; but these words do not admit of the slow concrete. To fulfil the purposes of expresion, they are to be imediately transfered by radical change to an octave above the word 'woo't' which in its several places, is at the comon level of the melody. The emphatic sylable, when raised, is still further indued with the character of an interrogative interval, by the rapid flight of the concrete octave, described in the seventeenth section. In the first seven words of the second line the voice does skip, alternately ascending and descending, between the extremes of the octave.

While these lines are before us, we may notice the contrast between the two movements of pitch in the octave; for the word 'tear', having an indefinite quantity