the corrector of the folio, 1632; but three lines lower, we come to a passage hitherto passed over, but which evidently requires the emendation which it has received from the same authority. The lines are commonly printed, "The extreme parts of time extremely form All causes to the purpose of his speed." The passage is corrupt, and the manuscript alteration made in the folio, 1632, thus sets it right, and renders the sense distinct: the Princess is on the point of hastily quitting Navarre, on the news of the death of her father, and the King observes, "The extreme parting time expressly forms All causes to the purpose of his speed." Another error occurs in the answer of the Princess to the request of the King, that she would not forget his love-suit: the reading has been, "I understand you not: my griefs are double." She did not understand him, because her sorrows had deadened her faculties, and the line, as we find from the manuscript-correction in the folio, 1632, ought to be,— "I understand you not: my griefs are dull," the copyist mishearing "double" for dull. Biron then takes up the subject, and when, among other things, he says, "As love is full of unbefitting strains, As wanton as a child," we ought to read strangeness for "strains," which is quite consistent with what he adds just afterwards when he tells us that love is “Full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms;" instead of "straying shapes," as it is misprinted in the folios. Both these words are altered by the old corrector. P. 378. It seems clear that Biron meant to conclude his address in rhyme, but it closes thus in all editions of the play : "We to ourselves prove false, By being once false for ever to be true To those that make us both,-fair ladies, you: Thus purifies itself, and turns to grace." Read, with the corrector of the folio, 1632, and the sense is precisely the same, while the rhyme is restored, "And even that falsehood, in itself so base, P. 379. The six lines in all the old copies, which read only like an abridgment of the penance imposed afterwards by Rosaline on Biron, are expunged by the corrector of the folio, 1632, as a needless and injurious reduplication. P. 380. Rosaline tells Biron that he is "Full of comparisons and wounding flouts, "Will exercise" is the plausible manuscript-correction in the folio, 1632. P. 381. There can, we apprehend, be no doubt that, instead of the following, "Then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, And I will have you and that fault withal," we ought, with the old corrector, to read,— "Then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dire groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue them, And I will have you and that fault withal; But if they will not, throw away that spirit," &c. Dire for "dear" and them for "then" are slight changes, but editors have hitherto been unwilling to make them in the face of the old impressions. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. ACT I. SCENE I. P. 391. Rowe was the first editor who changed the old reading, "And then the moon, like to a silver bow, Now bent in heaven," to "new bent in heaven;" but the corrector of the folio, 1632, was of the same opinion as Rowe, although it is in vain to inquire whence he derived his knowledge. P. 392. By a very trifling emendation he makes Theseus end his speech with a couplet, which seems so naturally led to, that it is a wonder the alteration should never before have suggested itself: “But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph, and with revelry," the common reading being "with revelling.” The old corrector also renders it quite clear that "Stand forth, Demetrius," and "Stand forth, Lysander," lower down in the same page, are parts of the speech of Egeus, and not more stage-directions, as they are printed in the ancient editions in quarto and folio. The corrector placed carets where the words ought to come in, and drew a line from the carets to the words, adding in the margin directions for the performers to step forward, Still lower, he reads "stubborn hardness" for "stubborn harshness," which is more in accordance with the rest of the sentence. P. 394. Capel's emendation, "But earthly happier is the rose distilled," which has been generally adopted since his time, is supported by a similar correction in the folio, 1632. The old reading is, "But earthlier happy," &c. P. 396. We here meet with a confirmation of Theobald's change of “love” to low, in "O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low." The line in the old copies, three lines farther down,— "Or else it stood upon the choice of merit," is evidently misprinted, and friends has ordinarily been substituted for "merit;" but men, inserted in the margin by the corrector of the folio, 1632, is more likely to have been the real word misheard by the copyist : "Or else it stood upon the choice of men." P. 398. The corrector of the folio, 1632, gives the subsequent line differently from any other early authority, viz.— "His fault, fair Helena, is none of mine." Fisher's quarto has it,— "His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine;" and Roberts' quarto and the folios,— "His folly, Helena, is none of mine." P. 399. Near the end of Helena's speech occurs this couplet, where she is stating her determination to inform Demetrius of the intended flight of Lysander and Hermia :"and for this intelligence, If I have thanks, it is a dear expense;" which is only just intelligible, but the old corrector singularly improves the passage by the word he substitutes : "and for this intelligence, If I have thanks, it is dear recompense." It cannot be doubted that the original reading is thus restored, although here, as in many other places, it is difficult to understand how the corruption crept into the text. P. 400. In the first scene of the actors of the burlesque tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, a question has arisen out of the words of the old copies, at the end of Bottom's second speech, "and so grow on to a point." The expression has not been well understood, and it appears that, when the corrections in the folio, 1632, were made, it was deemed a misprint, and that the words ought to be, "and so go on to appoint;" that is, to appoint the different actors to their parts, which, in fact, is done immediately afterwards. P. 401. Bottom's declaration that if he play Pyramus, "let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms," is amended in manuscript in the folio, 1632, to "I will move stones;" and when the word was written "stormes," it was not an unlikely blunder for a printer or scribe to make: either word will do. ACT II. SCENE I. P. 403. The words, "Take pains; be perfect; adieu," are given to Quince by the old corrector, as well as "At the Duke's oak we meet," and they seem to belong to him, as the manager of the play, rather than to Bottom. P. 404. The Fairy, soon after meeting Puck, says, speaking of Titania, "The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see: Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours." There seem several objections to this passage as it has stood in all editions. First, cowslips are never "tall," and, next, the crimson spots are not in their "coats," or on the petals, but at the bottom of the calix, as Shakespeare has himself told us in "Cymbeline," Act II. Scene II., |