68 ERRATA RECEPTA. 



emendations have at last been admitted which, notwithstanding their 

 self-evident correctness, were previously to be seen only in appended 

 foot-notes. IS evertheless, the obelus still appears by the side of a 

 passage here and there where, as yet, in the opinion of the editors, 

 no admissable improvement has been proposed, or where lacunse 

 occur too great to be filled up with any approach to certainty by con- 

 jecture. As a kind of contrast to the very enjoyable Globe edition, 

 we may notice here an elaborate typographical curiosity, having 

 relation also to the name of Shakspeare. This is Mr. Booth's 

 reprint (1864), on paper of three several forms, of the folio of 1623. 

 The announcement of the publisher in respect to this work, will be 

 read with mingled feelings of pain and pleasure : — " This beautiful 

 volume is the most perfect re-production that could be imagined or 

 desired of the first and only authoritative edition of Shakspeare' s 

 Works. So great pains have been taken to secure accuracy that 

 every head-piece, ornament and line has been carefully copied, and 

 every broken or deformed letter preserved. Though the book has 

 now been nearly two years before the public, not a single inaccuracy 

 has been discovered." A production thus remarkable for its accurate 

 inaccuracy appropriately finds a place in a catalogue of errata recepta. 

 Another cognate, and in a scientific point of view, more interesting 

 publication should also be noticed. Not only has the folio of 1623 

 been thus, with all its faults, minutely edited and carefully printed ; 

 it has also been brought out complete and in perfect fac-simile by the 

 process of photozincography. The literary man may thus have upon 

 his own private shelves a copy of Shakspeare in a manner identical 

 with one of the original folios of Heminge and Condell — a copy 

 actually struck off from the face of one of them by the all but mira- 

 cle of solar typography. 



All students of English are interested in the text of Shakspeare. 

 Its perfect purity is a thing greatly longed after. Every rational 

 contribution to this end meets with a welcome. I venture then upon 

 a remark on three several passages which continue to be obelized as, 

 after various treatment by the commentators, incurable. In regard 

 to each respectively I offer a reading, which, as it has struck me, 

 may be really the original one. 



" Siquid novisti rectius istis 

 Candidus imperii ; si non, his utere mecum." 



In each case I have been more or less led to the suggestion made 



