584 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 164. 



■"s said to be of great rarity, not more than five or 

 six copies having been circulated. To account for 

 this, the printer's son informed me, that his father 

 dying soon after the sheets were printed, the exe- 

 cutors sold the whole impression for waste paper ; 

 and further, that after the copperplates had been 

 engraved they were found to be such wretched 

 performances that it was not thought advisable to 

 bind them up with the few copies of the work that 

 were issued. This story, however, does not seem 

 very probable ; for, as the work was printed for 

 the author, who lived five years after it was com- 

 pleted, he would doubtless have looked a little 

 more closely after his own property, and not have 

 permitted it to be sold as useless rubbish by the 

 printer's executors. 



About one-third of the work was written by 

 Edward Spelman, the great-great-grandson of Sir 

 Henry, who relinquished the task, and gave his 

 manuscripts to Lemon, upon engaging in the 

 translation of The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius 

 Halicarnassensis. This is the best written part of 

 the history ; but Lemon had the advantage of the 

 assistance of his brother, who was chief clerk of the 

 Record Office in the Tower, and who appears to 

 have supplied him with copies of some original 

 documents. Altogether the work is of some, 

 though not very great value ; and if of the rarity 

 I have been led to suppose, will not be devoid of 

 interest to many of the readers of the " N. & Q." 



George Munfoed. 



East Winch. 



SHAKSPEARE EMENDATIONS. 



(Vol. vi., pp. 468. 495.) 



I am of course much flattered by Mr. Collier's 

 approbation and confirmation of my correction of 

 the word capable in As You Like It; which was, I 

 may say, m palpable that it is only surprising it had 

 not long since been generally adopted ; especially 

 as it had been before the world for at least a quar- 

 ter of a century, in the edition I gave of the part 

 in 1825. This was the reason why I only glanced 

 at it, as occurring in the same page with the other 

 error of all for rail. 



I must further gratify Mr. Collier with another 

 proposed emendation in the same play. Act IL 

 Sc. 7., which I feel confident will have his plaudite. 

 In the well-known speech of Jaques, the folios 

 read thus : 



" Why who cries out on pride, 

 That can therein taxe any private party ? 

 Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea, 

 Till that the wearie verie meanes do ebbe." 



Pope substituted " very very means do ebb," — 

 a reading, though not so senseless as that of the 

 old copy, yet sufficiently flat, and no great im- 

 provement. 



It is quite obvious that the printer is here again 

 in fault, and that we should read : 



" Why who cries out on pride. 

 That can therein tax any private party ? 

 Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea, 

 Till that the wearer's very means do ebb ? " 



The compositor's eye glanced on the termination 

 of vene in the MS., and put weane instead of 

 wearer's. The whole context shows this to be 

 the poet's word, relating as it does to the extra- 

 vagant cost of finery, bestowed by the pride of the 

 wearers on unworthy shoulders, " until their very 

 means do ebb." 



We may hope, therefore, that this spirited bit of 

 satire, by the cynical Jaques, will never again be 

 vitiated by the absurd weary of the old copies, or 

 by the platitude of Pope's substituted very. I will 

 add, that I fully concur with Malone in thinking 

 that we should read, a few lines lower, " Where 

 then," instead of " There then." 



Another instance of the carelessness of the 

 printer of the first folio is afforded by the singular 

 variation pointed out by Sir Frederick Madden 

 in the copy belonging to our mutual friend Mr. 

 Henry Foss. Supposing the poet to have written, 



" O, thou dissembling cub ! what wilt thou be 

 When time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy face ? " 



and that the word by accident got jumbled Into 

 cafe, it is quite evident that no reference to the 

 copy from which he was printing could have been 

 made when it was corrected to case, as it stands, I 

 believe. In all other copies known of the first folio : 

 " When time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case ? " 



The confusion of the long f and f has indeed led 

 to other corruptions of the text ; but I must con- 

 fess that I have my doubts whether case was not, in 

 this Instance, the poet's word. These doubts I 

 mentioned to Mr. Foss some time since. It seems 

 tome, from the words "dissembling cub" and "thy 

 craft," that the allusion is to the crafty wiles of the 

 fox, which are proverbially known to be increased 

 by age, when his fur becomes grey, or " when time 

 hath sow'd a grizzle on his case." 



That the poet would have used the word case. If 

 the allusion Is as I suppose, may be gathered from 

 his use of it in All's Well that Ends Well, where 

 ParoUes Is unmasked, and one of the Lords says, 

 " We will make you some sport with the fox ere 

 we case him." 



For these reasons I should hesitate to adopt the 

 word face upon such slender grounds as we at 

 present possess for discarding the received reading; 

 for the second folio has case as well as the first. 



S. W. Singer.. 



Mickleham. 



