May 21. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



497 



The art of adjusting the passions requires an 

 apprenticeship to virtue. The end to be attained 

 is the establishment of good habits. These good 

 habits, like any other skill, can only be attained by 

 practice. Therefore the practice of virtue is the 

 education of the passions. 



Ethics is the doctrine of habits ; but habits may 

 be good or bad. When good, they constitute 

 virtue ; when bad, licentiousness. 



The doctrine of checks is that branch of ethics 

 which teaches moral adjustment and restraint. 



Therefore checks and licentiousness are in better 

 antithesis to each other, than ethics can be to either, 

 because ethics includes both. 



The Aristotelian idea of adjustment, rather than 

 denial, of the passions, is well illustrated in the fol- 

 lowing passage from Plutarch's Morall Vertue, by 

 Philemon Holland, a cotemporary of Shakspeare : 



" For neither do they shed and spill the wine upon 

 the floure who are afraide to be drunke, but delay the 

 same with water : nor those who feare the violence of a 

 passion, do take it quite away, but rather temper and 

 qualifie the same; like as folke use to breake horses 

 and oxen from their flinging out with their heeles, their 

 stiti'enes and curstnes of the head, and stubburnes in 

 receiving the bridle or the yoke, but do not restraine 

 them of other motions of going about their worke and 

 doing their deede. And even so, verily, reason maketh 

 good use of these passions, when they be well tamed, 

 and, as it were, brought to hand ; without overweaken- 

 ing or rooting out cleane that parte of the soule which 

 is made for to second reason and do it good service. . . 

 "Whereas let passions be rid cleane away (if that were 

 possible to be done), our reason will be found in many 

 tilings more dull and idle : like as the pilot and master 

 of a ship hath little to do if the winde be laid and no 

 gale at all stirring ... as if to the discourse of reason 

 the gods had adjoined passion as a pricke to incite, and 

 a chariot to set it forward." 



Again, in describing the " Meanes," he says — 



" Now, to begin with Fortitude, they say it is the 

 meane between Cowardise and rash Audacitie ; of which 

 twaine the one is a defect, the other an excesse of the 

 yrefull passion : Liberalitie, betweene Nigardise and 

 Prodigalitie : Clemencie and Mildnesse, betweene sense- 

 lesse Indolence and Crueltie: Justice, the meane of 

 giving more or lesse than due : Temperance, a medi- 

 ocritie betweene the blockish stupiditie of the minde, 

 mioved with no touch of pleasure, and an unbrideled 

 loosenes, whereby it is abandoned to all sensualitie." — 

 The Philosophie of Plutarch, fol. 1603. 



It really does appear to me that there could not 

 be a happier or more appropriate designation, for 

 a philosophy made up in this way of " meanes" and 

 adjustments, so as to steer between the plus and 

 minus, than a system of checks — not fixed, or rigid 

 rules, as they are sometimes interpreted to be, but 

 nice allowances of excess or defect, to be disco- 

 vered, weighed, and determined by individual 

 reason, in the audit of each man's conscience, 



according to the strength or weakness of the pas- 

 sions he may have to regulate. 



I therefore oppose the substitution of ethics — 



1. Because we have the prima facie evidence of 

 the text itself, that checks was Shakspeare's word. 



2. Because we have internal evidence, in the 

 significance and excellence of the phrase, that it 

 was Shakspeare's word. 



Ethics was the patent title by which Aristotle's 

 moral philosophy was universally known ; there- 

 fore any ignoramus, who never dipped beyond the 

 title, might, and would, have used it. But no per- 

 son, except one well read in the philosophy itself, 

 would think of giving it such a designation as 

 checks ; which word, nevertheless, is moat happily 

 characteristic of it. 



3. Because, as before stated, Aristotle's checks^ 

 being the restrictive and regulating portion of 

 Aristotle's Ethics, is necessarily a more diametrical 

 antithesis to Ovid (and his laxities). 



4. Because I look upon the use of this phrase as 

 one of those nice and scarcely perceptible touches 

 by which Shakspeare was content rather to hint 

 at, than to disclose his knowledge, — one of those 

 effects whereby he makes a single word supply the 

 place of a treatise. 



With these opinions, I cannot but look upon 

 this threatened change of checks into ethics, as 

 wholly unwarrantable ; and I now protest against 

 it as earnestly as, upon a former occasion, 1 did 

 against the alteration of sickles into shekels, or, still 

 worse, into cycles or into circles. It is with great 

 satisfaction I compare four different views taken of 

 this word by Mr. Collier, viz. — in th^ note to the 

 text of his octavo edition of Shakspeare ; — in an 

 additional note in vol. i., page cclxxxiv. of that 

 edition ; — in the first announcement of his anno- 

 tated folio in the Athenceum newspaper, Jan. 31st, 

 1852 ; — and finally (after my remarks upon the word 

 in " N. & Q."), his virtual reinstatement of the 

 original sickle (till then supposed a palpable and 

 undeniable misprint) at page 46. of Notes and 

 Emendations, together with the production, suo 

 motu, of an independent reference in support of 

 my position. 



To return to this present substitution of ethics 

 for checks, a very singular circumstance connected 

 with it is the ignoring, by both Mr. Collier and 

 by the critic in the Gentleman's Magazine, of Sir 

 William Blackstone's original claim to the sugges- 

 tion, by prior publication of upwards of half a 

 century. At that time, notwithstanding the great 

 learning and acuteness of the proposer, the alter- 

 ation was rejected ! And shall we now be less wise 

 than our fathers ? Shall we — misled by the pres- 

 tige of a few drops of rusty ink fashioned into 

 letters of formal cut — place implicit credence in 

 emendations whose only claim to faith, like that 

 of the Mormon scriptures, is that nobody knows 

 whence they came ? 



