LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 227 



Yfaith, why then, caprichious mirth, 

 Skip, light moriscoes, in our frolick blood, 

 Flagg d veines, sweete, plump with fresh-infused joyes ! 



which Marston, doubtless, wrote thus: 



I faith, why then, capricious Mirth, 

 Skip light moriscoes in our frolic blood ! 

 Flagg d veins swell plump with fresh-infused joys ! 



We have quoted only a few examples from among the scores 

 that we had marked, and against such a style of editing we 

 invoke the shade of Marston himself. In the Preface to the 

 Second Edition of the Fawn he says, Reader, know I have 

 perused this coppy, to make some satisfaction for the first faiilty 

 impression; yet so urgent hath been my business that some errors 

 have styll passed, which thy discretion may amend? 



Literary, to be sure, Mr. Halliwell has availed himself of the 

 permission of the poet, in leaving all emendation to the reader ; 

 but certainly he has been false to the spirit of it in his self- 

 assumed office of editor. The notes to explain up-pont and / 

 um give us a kind of standard of the highest intelligence which 

 Mr. Halliwell dares to take for granted in the ordinary reader. 

 Supposing this nousometer of his to be a centigrade, in what 

 hitherto unconceived depths of cold obstruction can he find his 

 zero-point of entire idiocy ? The expansive force of average wits 

 cannot be reckoned upon, as we see, to drive them up as far as 

 the temperate degree of misprints in one syllable, and those, too, 

 in their native tongue. A fortiori, then, Mr. Halliwell is bound- 

 to lend us the aid of his great learning wherever his author has 

 introduced foreign words and the old printers have made^zV of 

 them. In a single case he has accepted his responsibility as 

 dragoman, and the amount of his success is not such as to give 

 us any poignant regret that he has everywhere else left us to 

 our own devices. On p. 119, vol. ii., Francischina, a Dutch 

 woman, exclaims, O, mine aderliver love. Here is Mr. 

 Halliwell s note. Aderliver. This is the speaker s error for 

 alder-liever, the best beloved by all. Certainly not the speaker s 

 error, for Marston was no such fool as intentionally to make a 

 Dutchwoman blunder in her own language. But is it an error 

 for alderliever? No, but for alderliefster. Mr. Halliwell might 

 have found it in many an old Dutch song. For example, No. 

 96 of Hoffmann von Fallersleben s * Niedcrlandische Volkslieder 

 begins thus: 



Mijn hert altijt hecft verlanghen 

 Naer u, die alderliefste mijn. 



But does the word mean best beloved by all ? No such 



