308 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



" Once Albion lived in such a cruel age 

 Thau man did hold by servile vilenage: 

 Poore brats were slaves of bondmen that were borne, 

 And marted, sold : but that rude law is torne 

 And disannuld, as too too mhumaue." 



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 ia 

 the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of his fore- 

 fathers. 



We will give one more scrap of Mr. Halliwell's text : — 



" Yfaith, why then, caprichious mirth, 

 Skip, light moriscoes, in our frolick 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 satisfaction for the first faulty impression ; yet so ur- 

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

 which thy discretion may amend." 



Literally, to be sure, Mr. Halliwell 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 

 ix)tes to explain ^qi-pont and / um give us a kind of 

 standard of the highest intelligence which Mr. Halliwell 

 dares to take for gi'anted in the ordinary reader. Sup- 

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

 liitherto unconceived depths of cold obstruction can he 

 find his zero-point of entii^e idiocy % The expansive force 



