to obviate which I suggest a couple of sma ditions likely enough to have been in the genuine text: one sand another Not more resembles: that's the sweet rosy lad Guiderius chimes in: "The same dead thing alive." The last emendation I have to suggest in this play requires merely the change of a letter-I had almost said of the third part of a letter-in the received text. Belarius says to Cymbeline: "Stay, sir king: This man is better than the man he slew; As well descended as thyself; and hath More of thee merited, than a band of Clotens Had ever scar for." Act v. sc. 5. "Had ever scar for" has no meaning whatever; but substitute o for c and you immediately create one: Had ever soar for. Dr. Johnson defines the noun soar, flight." "towering It is not needful to offer any further considerations in support of the proposed change, as I have already made some remarks on soar as a noun, in a note on a passage in "Hamlet.” Modern slang would phrase it, "had ever pluck for." TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. A MOST extraordinary expression meets us early in this play. Troilus, praising the whiteness and softness of Cressida's hand, says: "To whose soft seizure The Cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of sense Act i. sc. 1. Notwithstanding the efforts of the commentators to retain this phrase, spirit of sense, by enduing it with some apt signification, they have failed to do So. To me it seems in this place utterly spurious. It is manifest that the writer had in view some very soft substance, not some abstraction; and I am led to suppose it was silk, probably a silken glove. In "Coriolanus" there occurs an expression which may possibly help us here: "When steel grows Soft as the parasite's silk.” There is not, indeed, sufficient warrant in the slight resemblance of the two phrases for substi perore us an appropriate meaning, winicn it now wants. The same might be said of the substitution of the single word sarcenet for the objectionable phrase. It may be added, that the expression spirit of sense occurs again in this play, but with an application which lends no support whatever to its genuineness here. In Act iii. sc. 3, the eye is designated, "that most pure spirit of sense," by which is signified, I presume, the superiority of the sight over the other senses, especially in seeming to come less in contact with matter, and therefore to be more spiritual. The annotators have been alive to some imperfection in the last of the following lines, but they have missed what appears to me a simple rectification of it. Paris says to Diomedes: "Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do— As no intention to sell was in question, this is evidently wrong.. Dr. Warburton's proposal is to read, We'll not commend what we intend not sell, which gives the right meaning, but, as Malone remarks, "intend not sell sounds very harsh.” CUMU VIWU IOU VI 23 22L 33 NULL where that, as is common enough, stands for who; and this reading will more closely agree than Dr. Warburton's with the line in the 21st sonnet, which has been cited in support of the latter; viz.: "I will not praise that purpose not to sell"; PERICLES. THIS play strikes me as exceedingly corrupt in its text. The first error I have to notice is in a passage pronounced by Steevens, after a very elaborate note upon it, to be incurably depraved. He candidly adds that he considers his own attempts to restore it as decidedly abortive. Pericles, on the entrance of the daughter of Antiochus, exclaims: "See where she comes, apparell'd like the spring, Act i. sc. 1. The reading I venture to introduce in the place of this spurious one may at first sight appear improbable; but when it is perceived how exactly it fits the place and supplies significance to an unmeaning clause, the difficulty of accounting for the error, whatever it may be, will not be considered as fatal to the emendation. I propose to read: |