2'«« S. N* 113., Feb. 27. '68.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



163 



can only suppose that Alinon was weary of pro- 

 secutions, had become nervous; whereas Miller, 

 though he too had been prosecuted, had no fears. 

 I will add, for the benefit of the speculative, 

 that Junius also knew that Miller had no fears. 

 When he sent his famous letter on this same law 

 of libel to the Public Advertize?', he wrote pri- 

 vately to the printer, " If you should have any 

 fears, I entreat you to send it early enough to 

 Miller to appear to-morrow night in the London 

 Evening Post. .... Miller, I am sure, will have 

 no scruples." Finally, the writers were contem- 

 poraries ; both wrote for many years anonymously, 

 with general agreement on great political and 

 constitutional questions, and with curious points 

 of agreement on minor matters and in personal 

 opinions ; both were bitter against the govern- 

 ment ; the writings of both were prosecuted by the 

 government ; both aroused public attention to a 

 degree unknown before or since ; both remained 

 unknown even to their publishers ; both died 

 without confessing authorship ; and both took 

 such eflfectual means for concealment that they 

 remain unknown to this day. D. E. 



SHAKSPEABIANA. 



Shdkspeare and his Adulterators. — 



" Blron. And, when love speaks, the voice of all the 

 gods 

 Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony." 



Loves Labour's Lost, Act III. Sc. 3. 



It was Erasmus, I believe, who said that when 

 he read the Scriptures in the naked text, he found 

 them very easy and very pleasant ; but that when 

 he afterwards began to study the commentators, 

 then the Scriptures became difficult to him, then 

 he began not to understand them. Though this 

 be eminently true of the sacred writings, it is 

 likewise in great measure true of Shakspeare also. 



The two lines quoted above seem, one might 

 think, absolutely to defy misconception, especially 

 when read in connexion with the ten preceding 

 them : yet Warburton, Steevens, Tyrwhitt, Far- 

 mer, and Musgrave (how many others besides is 

 unknown to me), have written notes more or less 

 long in explanation ; not one of which, I will be 

 bold to say, has hit the meaning. These notes 

 are too prolix for insertion in " N. & Q. ;" but 

 any reader, curious to see a knot of learned men 

 groping at noonday, may refer to them for himself. 

 Johnson makes no comment, but faithfully records 

 the ancient reading to be " make heaven," and that 

 reading should not have been altered. Shak- 

 speare was altogether regardless, if not quite ig- 

 norant of the thraldom to a mechanical concord 

 which now obtains, and which imparts a certain 

 stiffness of structure, a prim regularity to the 

 freest sentences of the most fluent writer of later 



times. The only syntax that he appears to have 

 recognised was intellectual, not grammatical ; go- 

 verned indeed by the same principles upon which 

 the laws of grammar are based, agreeable to its spirit, 

 not letter ; a syntax of the thoughts he designed 

 to convey, not of their mere verbal vehicles. Thus 

 the word voice is singular, and taken absolutely 

 requires a singular verb ; but the voice of all the 

 gods is not singular; its sense, I say, is not singular, 

 but plural : therefore it takes a plural verb, make. 

 The question, be it observed, is not whether ours 

 or his be the better grammar, but simply whether 

 Shakspeare shall be allowed to express his mean- 

 ing in his own way; whether, in a word, Shakspeare 

 shall be Shakspeare, or his editor, or annotator, 

 or reader shall be Shakspeare. I am of course 

 aware of the convenient shift by which the critic 

 avoids placing himself in contradiction to Shak- 

 speare — "it is the blundering old folio" — a sub- 

 terfuge that amounts to this; — because the old 

 folio is not free from errors, therefore it may ever- 

 more be made the passive drudge, or hobby-horse, 

 by turns, to defect of learning, dulness of appre- 

 hension, counterfeit antiquity, and jaunting self- 

 conceit. I quote a few instances of Shakspeare's 

 use of the concord exemplified by restoration of 

 his genuine text in the above passage, with a view 

 to silence gainsayers ; and only a few, altliough 

 they might be multiplied almost indefinitely, lest 

 some twelve months hence a fresh race of Shak- 

 speare-botchers should make them a pretext for 

 further corruption of his writings ; or a young- 

 Adam, new-old commentator, creep forth to prac- 

 tise on the credulity of an unbookish age, that 

 at length nothing of Shakspeare should be left 

 but disjecta membra poetcB ; his remains so mangled 

 that one could not say " this is Shakspeare ; " or 

 this noblest monument of the English tongue be 

 subjected to that last indignity, be emasculated by 

 critics into a "reading-made-easy" for themselves 

 and boarding-school misses. 



" C<zs. Antony, 

 The posture of your blows are vet unknown." 



Jul. Cws., Act V. Sc. 1. 



" P. King. The violence of either grief or J03', 

 Their own enactuies with themselves destroy.'" 



Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2. 



" Pant. To morrow, may it please j'ou, Don Alphonso 

 With other gentlemen of good esteem 

 Are journeying to salute the emperor. 

 And to commend their service to his will." 



7wo Gent, of Verona, Act I. Sc. 3. 



" For. I am glad this parcel of wooers are so very 

 reasonable." — Merck, of Venice, Act I. Sc. 2. 



Might not the pedant tribe of Murray " come 

 into court," as Portia says, " and swear she had a 

 poor pennyworth in the English ? " 



" Ant. . . . For not alone 

 The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches. 

 Do strongly speak to us." — Ant. and Cleop., Act I. Sc. 2. 



Having pleaded thus far as counsel for the old 



