308 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



"Once Albion lived in such a cruel age 

 Than man did hold by servile vilenage : 

 Poore brats were slaves of bondmen that were borne, 

 And marled, sold : but that rude law is torne 

 And disannuld, as too too inhumane." 



This should read 



" Man man did hold in servile villanage ; 



Poor brats were slaves (of bondmen that were born) " ; 

 and perhaps some American poet will one day write in 

 the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of his fore 

 fathers. 



We will give one more scrap of Mr. Halli well's text : 



" Yfaith, why then, caprichious mirth, 

 Skip, light moriscoes, in our froliek blond, 

 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, " Eeader, know I have perused this coppy, to make 

 some satis faction for the first faulty impression ; yet so ur 

 gent hath been my business that some errors have styll passed, 

 which thy discretion may amend" 



Literally, to be sure, Mr. Halliwcll has availed him 

 self of the permission of the poet, in leaving all emen 

 dation 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. Sup 

 posing 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 1 The expansive force 



