"Ah! dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair? I will believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous;
And that the lean, abhorred monster keeps
Thee in the dark here, to be his paramour."

Hear the towering passion of Coriolanus, when, a few moments before he is slain by the infuriated rabble, some one calls him a "boy of tears:

"Boy! False hound!

If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there,

That like an eagle in a dovecote I
Flutter'd your Volces in Corioli."

Hear Constance, wailing for her lost Arthur :

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form," &c

Hear Claudio, with mingled grief and indignation, upbraiding Hero:

"Thou pure impiety and impious purity!
For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love;

And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,

To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm," &c.

Hear Hotspur, maddened by King Henry :

"By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap,

To pluck bright honour from the pale fac'd moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks," &c.

Well may Worcester say of him,

"He apprehends a world of figures here,

But not the form of what he should attend."

Could words be made more figurative than they are in all of these expressions of excited feeling, which are not a tithe of those which Shakespeare's dramas would afford, of a like kind? Claudio's "on my eyelids shall conjecture hang," is one of the strongest, as well as one of the most beautiful figures in the whole range of poetry. It has a bolder beauty than those two lovely lines of which it reminds us, in Spenser's description of Una:

It is not true, I venture to assert, that passion avoids figures of speech. Its utterance is always direct and forcible; but sometimes the most direct and forcible medium of expression is to be found in a metaphor. So, at least, thought Shakespeare; which is all that, in this case, needs to be established.

With regard to the confusion of sounds which is supposed to account for the alleged error in the original line, Mr. Collier himself admits it "to be possible that the old corrector, not understanding the expression, Whose mother was her painting,' might mistake it for Who smothers her with painting!" This possibility is made certainty by a passage in Hamlet, which the able opponent of the new reading, Mr. Halliwell, who has made it the subject of a special pamphlet, has not noticed. In the second scene of Act I., Hamlet's mother asks him why a father's death seems so particular to him. He replies,

"Seems, madam! Nay, it is: I know not seem
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black," &c.

Now, it is remarkable that in the fifth quarto impression of this play, published in 1611, these lines are printed thus:

"Seemes, maddam, nay it is, I know not seemes,

'Tis not alone my incky cloake could smother," &c.

Here is proof positive that "good mother" not only could be, but was, misunderstood, could smother; a mistake, in its principal feature, identical with that made by the corrector of Mr. Collier's folio, and which suggests another mode of accounting for the manuscript correction. It is evident that whoever made the emendations in that volume, studied the quartos thoroughly; indeed, Mr. Collier frequently claims that such was the case. Now, it is not at all improbable that the corrector, finding this mistake of could smother, in the quarto, for "good mother” in the folio, took from it the hint for the change of "whose mother," into who smothers; and thus was enabled to make a sense for a passage which had before been to him meaningless. It is somewhat strange that this correlative error, almost conclusive in itself, has not occurred to either of Mr. Collier's learned opponents. Under all these circumstances, it is impossible to receive the new reading, plausible as it seems at first.

These are but a very few indeed of the instances in which the corrector of the folio of 1632 has shown his inability to apprehend the poetical thoughts of the author whose works he undertook to amend. Passages which prove his incapacity in other respects, and which establish the late date of his labors, and the remaining points which go to show the entire inadmissibility of the claims which Mr. Collier sets up for him, might be quoted to an extent which would fill the remainder of this volume; but a con

* As I know of no original impression of either of the quarto copies of this play in America, I am obliged to content myself with Steevens's reprint, which is from the edition of 1611. I therefore cannot say whether this strange and important error appeared in the editions of 1604, 1605, and

1609.

sideration for the patience of my readers must limit my selections. One or two instances which clearly establish a point are as conclusive upon the authority of his corrections. as a hundred.

He cannot appreciate Shakespeare's humor. For instance, after the lamentation of Bottom (as Pyramus) over the death of Thisbe, Theseus says,

"This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad;"

the humor of which consists in coupling the ridiculous fustian of the clown's assumed passion, with an event which would, in itself, make a man look sad. The corrector extinguishes the fun at once, by reading,

"This passion on the death of a dear friend,” &c.

And, incomprehensible as it is, Mr. Collier sustains him by saying, that the observation of Theseus "has particular reference to the passion' of Pyramus on the fate of Thisbe!"

In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice, being sent to call Benedick, he asks her if she takes pleasure in the office. She replies,

"Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point, and choke a daw withal."

This, our precise and literal corrector ruins, by inserting 'not,' and reading:

"Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point and not choke a daw withal."

In Antony and Cleopatra, Act I., Sc. 3, Charmian advising Cleopatra how to keep the love of Antony, says"In each thing give him way, cross him in nothing."

To which Cleopatra replies :

"Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him."

Meaning, of course, "You are a fool, girl; that is the way to lose him;" but this the corrector changes to,

"Thou teachest, like a fool, the way to lose him;"

a reading which makes, in substance, the same assertion as the original, but which destroys all the delicate and characteristic humor of the gay queen's reply.

So when, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV., Sc. 5, poor Simple, mistaking 'conceal' for 'reveal,' says, in reply to Falstaff, "I may not conceal them, Sir," and the Host, after his waggish fashion, bewilders yet more the serving man's feeble brain, by turning his own blunder upon him, and saying, "Conceal [i. c. reveal] them, or thou diest," Mr. Collier's folio expurgates all the fun from the passage by retaining an obvious typographical error of the original, and making Falstaff and the Host use "conceal" in its legitimate and sober sense.*

The corrector's obtuseness as to dramatic propriety is equally obvious with his incapacity to appreciate poetry and humor. In Act IV., Sc. 4, of the Merry Wives of Windsor, Sir Hugh Evans, talking of Falstaff, with Page and Ford and their wives, remarks of the plot to entice the knight to another meeting,

"You say he has been thrown into the rivers, and has been grievously peaten, as an old 'oman: methinks there should be terrors in him that he should not come:" &c.

The old corrector makes the parson say, "You see he has been thrown," &c., and Mr. Collier sustains the change, by the remark that "the other persons in the scene had said nothing of the kind." But the corrector and his backer were obviously blind to the fact that the scene opens with the

*This has also been pointed out by Mr. Singer in his "Text of Shakespeare Vindicated," &c.