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, in " What you Will," he 

 prints without comment, — • 



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



(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 pur t 

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

 fool,'" — that "belktup" 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 179 

 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 bad 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 



