"I never felt quite satisfied with the emendation 'enghle' (ingeniously as it is supported by Gifford, note on B. Jonson's Works, ii. 430); nor does that of the Manuscript-corrector appear to me so certain as it does to Mr. Collier. After all, is angel' the right reading (though not in the sense of messenger, which is quite unsuited to the passage),— an ancient angel' being equivalent to an ancient worthy, or simply to an old fellow? I must not be understood as answering this query in the affirmative when I cite from Cotgrave's Dict. 'Angelot à la grosse escaille. An old Angell; and by metaphor, a fellow of th' old, sound, honest, and worthie stamp."" A Few Notes, &c. p. 71. Plausible and well supported as engle is, this forbids us to make the change; for here is a perfectly apt and congruous signification for the original word, furnished by a contemporary English lexicographer.* SCENE 4. "Tran. I thank you, sir: Where then do you know best We be affied?" &c. The suggestion in Mr. Collier's folio that we should read, We be affied?" "Where then do you hold best seems to be an ingenious and judicious correction of a probable error of the press. * Mr. Dyce, writing only for critics, thinks it needless to give any information about Cotgrave's Dictionary. It is a very carefully compiled and copious French and English Lexicon, published in London in 1611. The author, Randle Cotgrave, appears from passages in his dedication of the work to "Sir WILLIAM CECIL Knight, Lord Burghley and sonne, and heire apparent vnto the Earle of Exeter," to have been a tutor in the family of that Nobleman. This line, about which some have found sufficient obscurity to alter "see" to fee, and which even Mr. Knight interprets," I'll notice you when you stand up," seems to me very easy of comprehension, and to mean 'I would have thee to stand up.' What is the meaning of the last line and the previous half-line? With every help I can make out nothing which approaches intelligibility, unless we read with Boswell, 66 nor worse of worst extended." Even this is obscure, and can hardly be received as Shakespeare's. But it should be remarked that this blindest of passages, the one which, perhaps, is most hopelessly cor The jests of Rosalind and Celia, however, are decidedly and intrinsically indelicate, and would be so in any age,because they are jests: the idea is brought in for the mere sake of a joke upon a forbidden subject. To allude to the relations of the sexes and their consequences, needlessly, and in a manner which calls attention to their forbidden nature, must ever be immodest; to do so necessarily, honestly and simply, can never be justly so considered. I have noticed this passage at some length, because the comments which change the text of the original, and call forth my remarks, encourage the spurious modesty too prevalent already, as it seems to me. Better even the blunt, coarse honesty and obtruded knowledge of the relations of sex which prevailed in Elizabeth's day, than the affected and spurious delicacy of 1850, which awakens more attention, provokes more thought, and shows more consciousness. But best-a simple and direct utterance of that which is needful, and an ample knowledge of that which is inevitable in such matters, guided by a modesty springing from within, rather than a propriety imposed from without. Nevertheless, such modesty will always forbid its possessor to trespass needlessly beyond the bounds of the conventional propriety of the day. The idea of trespass is incon sistent with modesty. But, whatever may be the abstract merits of the question, in regulating Shakespeare's text we must be guided, not by what we think, or by the public sentiment of our day, but by what he thought, if we can discover it; and it so happens that he has left us his own explicit testimony that he did not think it immodest or indelicate for a maiden to wish to be called mother by the children of the man she loves, even when he does not love her. In his Sonnets, addressed to that mysterious youth whom he urges to marry, not only does he say, "For where is she so fair, whose unear'd womb Sonnet III. but in a subsequent address, he thus breaks forth: "Now stand you on the top of happy hours; And many maiden gardens, yet unset, With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers, Much liker than your painted counterfeit." Note first that glorious first line. It is almost equal to "jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top." And yet Steevens could sneer at Shakespeare's sonnets! But, to return to the subject,-see that Shakespeare not only makes blooming maidens wish to bear living flowers to his friend, but that he sets aside all cavil at the character of their desire by explicitly saying, that, in his estimation, they did this with "virtuous wish." The names of Rowe, Coleridge, and Mr. Knight, are entitled to respect; but when Shakespeare's own testimony is against them, they must go to the wall; and Mr. Collier's anonymous folio corrector, who thought with them, must of course go with them. It certainly merits remark, that if the alleged error were the result of a printer's transposition of the words 'father's' and 'child,' as the advocates of the new reading claim, the line would have appeared, "No, some of it is for my child fatheres," instead of, "No, some of it is for my childes father;" which is the reading of the first folio. The melancholy Jaques grieves at that; Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out Duke S. But what said Jaques ? Did he not moralize this spectacle? 1 Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping in the needless stream; Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a testament As wordlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much: Then being alone, Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends; 'Tis right, quoth he; this misery doth part The flux of company: Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, And never stays to greet him; Ay, quoth Jaques, Yea, and of this our life; swearing, that we |