314 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



text, except as to a palpable misprint, here and there. 

 Two of these we have already cited. There is one other, 



" p. 46, line 10. Inconstant. An error for incon 

 stant." Wherever there is a real difficulty, he leaves us 

 in the lurch. For example, iu. " What you Will," he 

 prints without comment, 



"Ha! he mount Chirall on the wings of fume ! " 



(Vol. I. p. 239.) 



which should be " mount cheval," as it is given in Mr. 

 Dilke's edition (Old English Plays ; Vol. II. p. 222). We 

 cite this, not as the worst, but the shortest, example at 

 hand. 



Some of Mr. Halliwell's notes are useful and interest 

 ing, as that on " keeling the pot," and a few others, 



but the greater part are utterly useless. He thinks 

 it necessary, for instance, to explain that "to speak pure 

 foole, is in sense equivalent to ' I will speak like a pure 

 fool,' " that " belkt up " means " belched up," that 

 " aprecocks " means " apricots." He has notes also upon 

 "meal-mouthed," "luxuriousnesse," "termagant," "fico," 

 " estro," " a nest of goblets," which indicate either that 

 the " general reader " is a less intelligent person in Eng 

 land than in America, or that Mr. Halliwell's standard of 

 scholarship is very low. We ourselves, from our limited 

 reading, can supply him with a reference which will ex 

 plain the allusion to the " Scotch barnacle " much bet 

 ter than his citations from Sir John Maundeville and 

 Giraldus Cambrensis, namely, note 8, on page 1 79 

 of a Treatise on Worms, by Dr. Kamesey, court physician 

 to Charles II. 



We tarn now to Mr. Hazlitt's edition of Webster. We 

 wish he had chosen Chapman ; for Mr. Dyce's Webster 

 is hardly out of print, and, we believe, has just gone 

 through a second and revised edition. Webster was a 



