104 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 144. 



with them in love."- 

 Halhead, 1690. 



Sufferings and Passages of Myles 



It is not easy to understand Myles' assertion 

 that " none was found amongst you that woukl be 

 seen to plead the cause of the innocent :" for it 

 must be acknowledged to the credit of the parlia- 

 mentarians, that several of their leading men did 

 sometimes interfere openly and successfully to 

 restrain the persecution which the early "Friends" 

 •continually drew upon themselves by their bold 

 Jind frequent denunciations of a Iiireling clergy, 

 •sometimes uttered in the market-place, sometimes 

 ,in the very parish church. 



William Penn gratefully records — 



'' the tender and singular indulgence of Judge 

 IJiadshaw and Judge Fell ..... 

 especially Judge Fell, who was not only a check to 

 their [the clergy's] rage in the course of legal proceed- 

 ings, but otherwise upon occasion, and finally coun- 

 tenanced this people; for his wife receiving the trutli 

 with the first, it had that influence upon his spirit, 

 7>eing a just and wise man, and seeing in his own wife and 

 "family a full confutation to all the popular clamours 

 against the way of trutli, that he covered them what he 

 could, and freely opened his doors and gave up his 

 house to his wife and her Friends." 



George Fox also mentions that — 



" the said Judge Fell was very serviceable in his day 

 and time, to stop the rage of the priests, justices, and 

 rude multitude." 



And he relates further that, upon one occasion in 

 the year 1652, when — 



*' Many priests appeared against me and Friends ; 

 Judge Fell, and Justice West, stood up nobly for us 

 and the truth; and our adversaries were confounded ; 

 so that he was as a wall for God's people against them. 

 And afterwards he came to see beyond the priests, and 

 at his latter end seldom went to hear them in that 

 [Ulverston] parish." 



Moreover the Protector himself, on being in- 

 formed in the year 165G that George Fox, and 

 others, were ill-used in Cornwall, sent down an 

 order to the governour of Pendennis Castle to 

 examine the matter ; and Fox says : 



" Tliis was of great service in the country : for after- 

 wards Friends might have .spoken in any market-place 

 or steeple- house thereabouts, and none would meddle 

 with them." 



To this may be added, that after the deaths of tlie 

 lord president Brad.shaw, Judge Fell, and Oliver 

 Cromwell, the soldiers being rude and troublesome 

 at Friends' meetings, General Monk gave forth an 

 order, dated 9th March, 1659, requiring 



" All officers and soldiers to forbear to disturb the 

 peaceable meetings of the Quakers, they doing nothing 

 prejudicial to the parliament or commonwealth." 



J. Lewelyn Curtis, 



1 EARLY MANUSCRIPT EMENDATIONS OF THE TEXT 

 OF SHAKSPEARE. 



(Vol. vi., p. 59.) 



In my turn I am rather surprised at the surprise 

 expressed by your Leeds correspondent, A. E. B., 

 that I have not yet answered " Mr. Lettsom's 

 question," addressed " directly " to me in the 

 Athenceum of the 17th April last. I find no 

 question addressed "directly" to me there, but 

 merely a speculative inquiry in this form : "If Mr. 

 Collier's copy reads guiled, the different copies of 

 the second folio vary among themselves; if it reads 

 guilded, not merely Mr. Halliwell's argument 

 falls to the ground, but we have an additional 

 reason," &c. Owing to an accident, I did not see 

 Mr. Lettsom's paper on Mr. Walker's emendations 

 until some time after it was published, and I cer- 

 tainly did not understand him to put any direct 

 question to me, whether my copy of the folio 1632 

 read guiled or guilded, in the place referred to in 

 The Merchant of Venice, more especially as I had 

 said in my letter in the Athenceum, on the passage 

 regarding " an Indian beauty," that in tlie folio 

 1623 the word was guiled, and in the folio 1632 

 guilded. Moreover, I said that in my folio, 1632, 

 guilded was altered to guiling, a circumstance that 

 by no means satisfies me (as I stated) that Shak- 

 speare's word was not guiled, as we find it in the 

 folio 1623. At the same time, guiling. In the sense 

 of beguiling, appears to me preferable in some 

 points of view to guiled, and it might seem so, par- 

 ticularly to more modern ears than those our great 

 dramatist addressed. 



Your correspondent A. E. B. will see, therefore, 

 that I gave no hint that my copy of the folio, 1632, 

 read, unlike others, guiled instead of guilded, and 

 all the copies of that edition I have ever seen have 

 uniformly guilded and not guiled. If I have been 

 guilty of any want of courtesy In not taking Mr. 

 Lettsom's language to mean a direct question, I 

 assure him and A. E. B. that I never meant It. In 

 my copy of the folio 1632, guilded is altered in 

 manuscript to guiling, by striking out the three 

 last letters and inserting three others in the 

 margin. Whether this change make for or against 

 the supposition that other emendations In my folio 

 1632 are conjectural, I do not pretend to decide; 

 I dare say there are many such : some that I could 

 readily point out, and that will be found pointed 

 out In my forthcoming volume, bear that aspect; 

 others confirm in a remarkable manner the spe- 

 culative proposals of Theobald, Pope, &c., but the 

 great majority are not only entirely new, but, 

 as I think, self-evident. It is astonishing that 

 during the last century and a half (to go no farther 

 back) these plays sliould have passed through so 

 many hands, not a tcyf of them the most acute 

 critics of any age, and yet the strangest blunders 

 remain undetected. If the corrections in the copy 



