ERRATA RECEPTA. 71 



causing him to put tte alternative : " Wilt drink ap Nile, or eat a 

 •crocodile ? " 



The mad challenge of Hamlet is to drink up even Nilus, a house- 

 hold word for a stream extravagant in its overflowings. The name, 

 Nihis, thus given at full length, occurs elsewhere in Shakspeare ; as, 

 for example, in Titus Andronicus, iii., lines 70-1 :— 



" My grief was at its height, before thou earnest; 

 And DOW, like Ifilus, it disdaineth bounds." 



3. My third correction is in the eighth line of the Hundred-and- 

 'Twelfth Sonnet. I read — 



" That steel'd am I 'gainsjt censure, right or wrong." 

 The editors confess that this line, as usually printed, yields hut little 

 meaning : — 



" That my steel'd sense or changes right or wrong." 

 Like some other portions of the Sonnets and plays of Shakspeare, 

 this line has, I think, first been taken down wrongly, from dicta- 

 tion, and then inaccurately printed ; not only with particular letters, 

 points, and marks of elision mistaken, but with a confusion of order 

 in the words. By printing, as I have suggested, we recover the excel- 

 lent Shakspearean term " censure," and get rid of the expression 

 " sense ; " which is not likely to have been written here, when it 

 occurs so immediately afterwards, at the end of the tenth line of the 

 Sonnet.* 



As a final remark, I add that I think there ought to have been ad- 

 mitted, without further hesitation, into the Globe edition, the follow- 

 ing corrections : " Seamews," for " seamels " (ells), in 1. 176, Act ii. 

 sc. 2, Tempest ; " bollen bag-pipe," for " woollen bag-pipe," in 1. 

 56, Act iv., sc. 1, M. of Venice; and, "Ethics" (ickes), for "checks" 

 (eckes), in 1. 32, Act i., sc. 1, T. of the Shrew. 



* In regard to the apparent violation of grammar, in the eleventh line, where 

 the nominative to " are " is " sense " in the preceding line, the reader is to ob- 

 serve that " adders' sense," in this place, having the meaning of " ears," is to be 

 taken as a noun of multitude. Thus, " power," as an equivalent to " forces," is 

 used as a plural, in K. John, v. 6. 39 — 41 :— 

 " Half- my power, this night. 

 Passing the flats, are taken by the tide — 

 These Lincoln Washes have devoured them." 

 The above proposed amendment in Sonnet cxii , has been once before suggested 

 'by me, in the little publication entitled "Shakspeare — the Seer — the Interpreter." 

 Vide Note x., p. 69. 



