the thief of the world. So Queen Margaret calls Gloster eminently the slave of nature. In a subsequent speech of the Queen's in this Scene, the change in Mr. Collier's folio of "bottled spider" to "bottle spider," seems a judicious correction of a probable typographical error. ACT III. SCENE 3. "Rat. Make haste, the hour of death is expiate." Steevens proposed expirate for "expiate ;" and it seems to me imperatively necessary to receive it into the text. There is no meaning to be extracted from the line in its present condition. Shakespeare is made to use 'expiate' in one other instance, which is quoted by Malone in defence of the continuance of the word in this passage. "Then look I death my days should expiate." Sonnet XXII. But I believe that the same typographical error took place in the last, as in the first, on account of Shakespeare's use of this peculiar and quaint termination, of which he was fond :-he uses 'festinate,' 'combinate,' and 'conspirate.' It is remarkable that "expiate" has no possible meaning in either of these passages: and that expirate fully completes the sense of both. ACT IV. SCENE 4. "K. Rich. Well! as you guess?" If there be two words for the use of which, more than any others, our English cousins twit us, they are 'well,' as an interrogative exclamation, and 'guess.' Milton uses both, as Shakespeare also frequently does, and exactly in the way in which they are used in America; and here we have them both in half a line. Like most of those words and phrases which it pleases John Bull to call Americanisms, they are English of the purest and best, which have lived here while they have died out in the mother country. KING HENRY VIII. ACT I. SCENE 1. "Buck. I am the shadow of poor Buckingham; This passage appears thus in all editions, although it is palpably nonsense, and that it is so has been confessed by all, and although the obvious typographical error has been pointed out by Johnson, Blackstone, and Monck Mason. Read, "I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this instant cloud puts out, By darkening my clear sun." That is, 'even the form of whose shadow is obliterated by a cloud passing over the sun of my prosperity.' She had ne'er known pomp, though it be temporal; It from the bearer," &c. The change of "quarrel" to cruel in Mr. Collier's folio seems plainly to be required, and to be for the better. Mr. Collier's folio reads, with reason, in my judgment, Grace the conjunction!" "Now may all joy My correspondent in Maine clings to the old reading, for these reasons: "It is to be noticed that the exclamation of Surrey was called forth, not so especially by the marriage itself as by the circumstances attending it. He saw, in that marriage, which was opposed by Cardinal Wolsey, a means by which the Cardinal would lose his witchcraft over the King,' and by which, in consequence of the King's withdrawal from under that witchcraft, he himself might be revenged upon the Cardinal; hence his joyful expression,-' Now all my joy grace the conjunction,'— which was the expression written by Shakespeare, I have no doubt.' This is ingenious, and has some plausibility; but is rather too subtle and recondite a meaning for the passage, which is plainly, I think, but a mere expression of good wishes. Mr. Singer and Blackwood's Magazine both approve of this emendation in the famous folio. The second line has hitherto been amended to read thus: "And of an earthly cold! Mark you her eyes!" But Mr. Collier's folio, in reading, "And of an earthly coldness: Mark her eyes!" deviates less both from the letter and the meaning of the original. Many and diverse have been the projects for the correc tion of this passage. But what objection is there to read ing thus ? "But we all are men; In our natures frail and culpable. Of our flesh, few are angels." That is, 'according to the flesh, few of us are angels:' 'frail and culpable, in our natures' needs no explanation. |