July 23. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



75 



apparatus as in Arnold's edition of Thucydides : 

 the varice lectiones in the middle of the page, and 

 the comment in a different type below it. But 

 I repeat, it would be better still to give us the 

 digest without the comment. All would go into 

 one large volume. And it cannot be doubted 

 that such a volume, if thoroughly well done, would 

 furnish at once a sort of textus receptus, and a 

 critical basis, from which future editors might 

 commence their labours. It would also be an 

 Indispensable book of reference to all who treat of, 

 or are interested in, the poet's text. Such, I say, 

 would be its certain prospects if the editor were 

 at once an accurate, painstaking scholar, and a 

 man of true poetical feeling. The labour would 

 be great, but so would be the reward. It is only 

 ■what the ablest scholars have proudly undertaken 

 for the classics, even in the face of toils far more 

 severe. Would that Mr. Dyce could be roused 

 to attempt it ! B. 



[Some such edition as that alluded to by our corre- 

 spondent has been long desired and contemplated. A 

 proposal in connexion with it has been afloat for some 

 time past, and we had hoped would have been publicly 

 made in our pages before now. There are difficulties 

 in the way which do not exist in the parallel instances 

 from classical literature, and which do not seem to have 

 occurred, to our correspondent ; but the project is in 

 good hands, and we hope will soon be brought to 

 bear. — Ed. ] 



Emendations of Shakspeare. — I am sadly afraid, 

 what with one annotator and another, that we, 

 in a very little time, shall have Shakspeare so 

 modernised and weeded of his peculiarities, that 

 he will become a very second-rate sort of a per- 

 son indeed ; for I now see with no little alarm, 

 that one of his most delightful quaintnesses is 

 to give way to the march of refinement, and 

 be altogether ruined. Hazlitt, one the most 

 original and talented of critics, has somewhere 

 said, that there was not in any passage of Shak- 

 speare any single word that could be changed to 

 one more appropriate, and as an instance he gives 

 a passage from Macbeth, which certainly is one of 

 the most perfect and beautiful to be found in the 

 ■whole of his works : 



" This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 

 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 

 Unto our gentle senses. 



This guest of summer, 

 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 

 By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath 

 Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, buttress, 

 Nor coin of vantage, but tliis bird hath made 

 His pendent bed, and procreant cradle : where they 

 Most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air 

 Is delicate." 



There are some who difier from Hazlitt in the 

 present day, and assert that there is an error in 



the press in Dogberry's reproof of Borachio for 

 calling him an " ass." The passage as it stands is 

 as follows : 



" I am a wise fellow ; and which is more, an officer, 

 and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as 

 pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one 

 that knows the law, go to ; and a rich fellow enough, 

 go to ; and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that 

 hath two gowns, and everything handsome about him." 



His having had losses evidently meaning, though 

 he was then poor, that his circumstances were at 

 one time so prosperous, that he could afford to 

 hear losses ; and he, even then, had a superfluity 

 of wardrobe in " two gowns, and everything hand- 

 some about him." But this little word losses, the 

 perfect Shakspearian quaintness of which is uni- 

 versally acknowledged, is to be changed into 

 leases ; if it should be leases, how is it that it does 

 not follow upon " householder," instead of being 

 introduced so many words after ? as, if leases were 

 the proper word, it would assuredly have sug- 

 gested itself immediately as an additional item to 

 his respectability as a householder : for a moment 

 only fiincy similar corrections to bo introduced ia 

 others of Shakspeai-e's plays, and FalstafF be made 

 to exclaim at the robbery at Gad's Hill, " Down 

 with them, they dislike us old men," instead of 

 " they hate us youth ;" for FalstafF was no boy at 

 the time, and this might be advanced as an au- 

 thority for the emendation. But seriously, if this 

 alteration is sent forth as a specimen of the im- 

 provements about to be effected in Shakspeare, 

 from an edition of his plays lately discovered, I 

 shall, for one, deeply regret that it was ever res- 

 cued from its oblivion ; for with my prejudices 

 and prepossessions against Interpolations, and la 

 favour of old readings, I shall find It no easy 

 matter to reconcile my mind to the new. Strip 

 history of its romance, and you deprive it of its 

 principal charm ; the scenery of a play-house Im- 

 poses upon us an illusion, and though Ave know it; 

 to be so, it is not essential that the impression 

 should be removed. I remember once travelling 

 at night In Norfolk, and a part of my way was 

 through a wood, at tlie end of which I came upon 

 a lake lit up by a magnificent moon. I subse- 

 quently went the same road by day : the wood, I 

 then found, was a mere belt of trees, and the lake 

 had dwindled to a duck-pond. I have ever since 

 wished that the first impression had remained un- 

 changed ; but this Is a digression. There is no 

 author so universal as Shakspeare, and would that 

 be the case If he was not thoroughly understood ? 

 He Is appreciated alike in the closet and on the 

 stage, quoted by saints and sages, in the pulpit 

 and the senate, and your nostrum-monger ad- 

 vertises his wares with a quotation from his pages; 

 does he then require interpreting who is his own 

 Interpreter ? Johnson says of him that — 

 " Panting Time toil'd after him in vain." 



