382 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 156. 



vol. ii. p. 854.), terminated Dec. 20, 1714. On 

 Monday, January 3, 1715, the first number of the 

 ninth volume appeared, in a folio size, similar to 

 that of the preceding volumes, printed for Edward 

 Powell, instead of S. Buckley and J. Tonson, who 

 had printed the eighth volume. At the end of 

 the 54th No. of the ninth volume is a note : 



" N.B. — My readers having been several times dis- 

 appointed of the Spectator, which they have given me 

 so good reason to believe they are pleased witli, I 

 have in gratitude taken care to remedy that neglect by 

 chasing diligent Mrs. Burleigh for my publisher." 



It is thenceforward printed and sold by R. Bur- 

 leigh in Amen Corner. It closed on Wednesday, 

 August 24, 1715, and contains in all, as originally 

 published in folio, sixty-two numbers, not fifty- 

 nine as Chalmers, or sixty-one as Dr. Drake has 

 mentioned. The last number seems singularly 

 enough to have escaped the attention of the pub- 

 lisher who collected the whole into a volume. In 

 the seventli edition of the ninth volume (Dubl. 

 1735, 12mo.), the last number is 695, answering 

 to 61 of the folio edition. In the original folio, of 

 which I possess a copy, there are no letters or 

 si^o'natures at the end of the different papers to 

 designate the several writers. These, it appears, 

 were afterwards ailded when the numbers were 

 collected into a volume. The letter B is sub- 

 joined to twenty-six numbers, W to six, O to 

 four, L to three, M to two, and I B, T W, G, 

 N T, "W B, S, and H, to one number each. If B 

 be intended for the editor, William Bond, he was 

 by no means so inferior a writer as he has been 

 represented. He afterwards joined Aaron Hill in 

 the Plain Dealer, and incurring the ire of Pope 

 ■was pilloried in the Dunciad. There is a most 

 touching letter from him in the Prompter (6th 

 June, 1735), a periodical of unfrequent occur- 

 rence, of which I have a copy, predicting his own 

 death whilst acting Luslgnan in the tragedy of 

 Zara, and which, when the play came to be per- 

 formed, really occurred. This letter has not been 

 noticed in the BiograpJiiaDramatica, or Chalmers's 

 Biographical Dictionary, article " Bond," but 

 ought certainly to be given at length in any future 

 life of him. The ninth volume of the Spectator, 

 which he edited, deserves, perhaps, more attention 

 than it has hitherto received ; and it would be 

 desirable to ascertain the contributors as far as it 

 can be done, amongst whom Aaron Hill, I have 

 no doubt, will be found to be one. Dr. George 

 Sewell, we are told, in Cibber's Lives of the Poets 

 (vol. iv. p. 188.), "was concerned in writing the 

 ninth volume of the Spectator," but there is no 

 particular reference to the papers which he fur- 

 nished. I cannot but think that I trace Swift in 

 the paper No. 4. in the folio, and No. 639. in the 

 collected edition, in which a poor man gives a 

 humorous account of the metamorphosis of his 



clothes into articles of food and other necessaries. 

 The letter W is, however, subjoined to this paper. 



Jas. Ckossley. 



READINGS IN SHAKSPEABE, KG. VI. 



" Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 

 And, by opposing, end them." 



Mamlefs Soliloquy. 



A sea of troubles is, in this passage, one of those 

 doubtful expressions of which the genuineness is 

 necessarily suspected, because of incongruity with 

 the context ; while in itself It is sufficiently po- 

 etical and harmonious to satisfy the ear more than 

 it offends the sense. 



Hence, to have a chance of success, any pro- 

 posal for its alteration must present a more than 

 ordinary combination of appositeness and proba- 

 bility ; and hence the several alterations hitherto 

 proposed have all failed, because none of them 

 presented a sufficiently close resemblance to the 

 existing word to justify the supposition of a mis- 

 print. 



Pope proposed the substitution of a siege : 

 " To take arms against a siege of troubles." 

 Warburton proposed assail : 



" To take arms against assail of troubles." 



And, in an old copy of the 4th folio, now before 

 me, the line is thus corrected (in MS. writing of 

 the true time-browned, rusty-iron, hue) : 



" To take arms against assailing troubles," 



accompanied by this unassuming marginal note, 

 " So changed by some to preserve y'^ metaphor.^^ 



Theobald, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, and 

 others, who support the present reading, have 

 thrown away great pains and learning to prove, 

 what no person denies, that " a sea of troubles " is 

 in itself a perfectly correct and Intelligible me- 

 taphor ; but they have not attempted to explain 

 the real difficulty, that to take arms against a sea 

 neither presents an intelligible idea in itself, nor 

 assists in carrying on the general allusion to 

 offensive and defensive warfare. They do not 

 even explain in what sense arms should be un- 

 derstood, whether as artificial weapons, like Dame 

 Partington's broom, or as the natural appendages 

 of the human frame, as interpreted by the Spanish 

 translator of Hamlet — 

 " Aponer los brazos a este torrente de calamidades." 



Slings and arrows are figurative of armed ag- 

 gression, againjt which to have recourse to arms 

 in opposition is a natural sequence of idea ; but 

 if these arms are to be directed against a sea of 

 troubles, the sequence is broken, and the whole 

 allusion becomes obscfii'e and uncertain. Here it 

 is that sound steps in in default of sense, and the 

 superficial examiner is satisfied. 



