"Mar. For God's sake, sir, be private in this business; You have undone me else. Oh, God, what have I done?"

My answer is that to have put a note of admiration after "Oh, God," would have been what printers call stiff punctuation;-the hemistich is half exclamatory, half interrogatory, and the interrogation-point at the end of the line is sufficient. Next, Mr. Collier wishes to know "why I put a note of admiration after 'Lazarillo, thou art happy,' in this passage of The WomanHater ?"

"Laz. Lazarillo, thou art happy! thy carriage hath begot love, and that love hath brought forth fruits," &c. &c.

and I reply, that I did so (as, I believe, the preceding editors had done) to indicate the excessive self-gratulation of the speaker.

66

So much for what Mr. Collier terms my mistakes" in punctuation;"every editor is liable to such mistakes"! (Here unquestionably the note of admiration finds its proper place.)

P. 20. (39)

"Enter BANQUO, preceded by FLEANCE with a torch."

The wording of the folio is "Enter Banquo, and Fleance, with a Torch before him ;" and though, in the stage-directions of old plays, "a Torch" sometimes means a torch-bearer (as "a Trumpet" means a trumpeter), I agree with Mr. Collier that the usual modern alteration here, "Enter Banquo and Fleance, and a Servant, with a torch before them," ought to be rejected. Mr. Collier observes, "Fleance carried the torch before his father. When Macbeth [presently] enters with a servant, the 'servant with a torch' is expressly mentioned in the stage-direction of the folios, and Macbeth has to send a necessary message by him to Lady Macbeth-' Go, bid thy mistress,' &c."

P. 21. (40)

"Sent forth great largess to your officers:

This diamond he greets your wife withal,

By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up
In measureless content."

The folio has ".
to your Offices," &c.; a sheer misprint, though defended
by Steevens, Mr. Knight, and Mr. Collier.- Malone observes; "Mr. Steevens,
who has introduced so many arbitrary alterations of Shakespeare's text, has
here endeavoured to restore a palpable misprint from the old copy: 'officers'
means servants in this passage. So before, p. 20,

66

'what not put upon

His spongy officers,'

i.e. his chamberlains. So also in The Taming of the Shrew, vol. iii. p. 150, 'Is supper ready, &c., the serving-men in their new fustian, their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on?" (Here the second folio has and shut it up," &c.; which, to my surprise, Mr. Hunter (New Illust. of Shakespeare, ii. 182) brings forward as the true lection, understanding “shut it up" to mean-shut up the diamond in its case.) 1865. Mr. W. N. Lettsom would read " as shut up," &c. G

VOL. VII.

P. 22. (41) "The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates" Here the folio omits "now," an insertion first made by Davenant (in his alteration of Macbeth), and which I greatly prefer to the reading recommended by Steevens, Ritson, Walker, and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector,— "The curtain'd sleeper; witchcraft celebrates;" for I agree with Mr. Grant White that "curtain'd sleeper" is somewhat detrimental to the poetic sense; and I cannot forget that Milton, with an eye to the present passage, has written,

P. 22. (42)

"steeds,

That draw the litter of close-curtain'd sleep." Comus, v. 554.

"With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.-Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear"

The folio has

"With Tarquins rauishing sides, towards his designe Moues like a Ghost. Thou sowre and firme-set Earth Heare not my steps, which they may walke, for feare." Here Pope altered "sides" to "strides," and proposed (in a note) the alteration of "sowre" to "sure:" Rowe altered "they may" to "way they." (The two last emendations are also made by Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector.)

P. 22. (43)

"th' attempt, and not the deed,

Confounds us."

"This," says Mr. Hunter (New Illust. of Shakespeare, ii. 182), "is usually printed with a comma after 'attempt.' This is wrong. An unsuccessful attempt would produce to them infinite mischief-an attempt without the deed."-To me at least it is plain that here the attempt" is put in strong opposition to "the deed," and that" Confounds" has no reference to future mischief, but solely to the perplexity and consternation of the moment.

P. 23. (44)

"As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands,
Listening their fear :"

"I agree with Rowe, Capell, Walker, and Grant White, that 'Listening their fear' should be taken with what goes before." W. N. LETTSOM.

i. e. the bird that loves the dark.-Walker (Crit. Exam, &c. vol. ii. p. 244) would read "the obscene bird."

P. 27. (46) "The great doom's image! Malcolm! Banquo!""

Mr. W. N. Lettsom proposes 66

Banquo! all!"-Hanmer did not scruple

to substitute" Donalbain" for "Banquo."

But Theobald saw that the words "Ring the bell" are a stage-direction : "in proof of this," he adds, "we may observe that the hemistich ending Macduff's speech, and that beginning Lady Macbeth's, make up a complete verse."―The players, as Malone remarks, having mistaken" Ring the Bell" for a portion of Macduff's speech, inserted the stage-direction “Bell rings.”

P. 27. (48)

"Re-enter MACBETH and LENNOX."

Here Mr. Collier observes; "The folio adds and Rosse' to this stage-direction; but Rosse has not been on the stage in this act, and he is employed in the next scene."-There seems an impropriety in his absence (as well as in that of Angus,-see p. 16) on the present occasion: but I do not see by what arrangement he can be introduced in this scene early enough to accompany Macbeth and Lennox to the chamber of the king.

P. 30. (49)

"his bloody stage :"

“Perhaps this bloody stage.'" Walker's Crit. Exam. &c. vol. ii. p. 224.

P. 30. (50)

66

“And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp :" Here Mr. Collier, misled by a correspondent, retains the old spelling the trauailing Lampe."-Now, in this speech no mention is made of the sun till it is described as "the travelling lamp,"-the epithet "travelling" determining what "lamp" was intended: the instant, therefore, that “travelling” is changed to "travailing," the word "lamp" CEASES TO SIGNIFY THE SUN. That Shakespeare was not singular in applying the epithet travelling to the sun might be shown by many passages of our early poets: so in Drayton;

"The Sunne that mounted the sterne Lions back,
Shall with the Fishes shortly diue the brack,

But still you keepe your station, which confines

You, nor regard him trauelling the Signes."

On his Ladies not Comming to London,-Elegies, p. 185, appended to The Battaile of Agincourt, &c. 1627.

And so. too in a later poet;

"The travelling Sun sees gladly from on high," &c.

Cowley's Davideis, B. ii.,- Works, vol. i. p. 349, ed. 1707.

Even modern writers describe the sun as a traveller;

"I could not but offer up, in silence, on the altar of my heart, praise

and adoration to that sovereign and universal mind, who produced this glorious creature [the sun], as the bright image of his benignity, and makes it travel unweariedly round," &c. Amory's Life of Buncle, vol. ii. p. 178, ed. 1766.

I must add, that this "puerile idea," as Mr. Collier's correspondent terms it, is to be traced to Scripture,-Psalm xix. 5.

i.e. horses.-The folio has "Horses."-Corrected by Walker, Crit. Exam,&c. vol. iii. p. 254.

P. 30. (52) "Thine own life's means!-Then 'tis most like
The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth."

"We should arrange, I think,

'Thine own life's means!-Then 'tis most like the sov'reignty
Will fall upon Macbeth.'

999

"The change was suggested by Sir W. D'Avenant's alteration of this play [which has

'Your majesty layes your command on me,

To which my duty is to obey']." MALONE.

So too Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector.-Mason proposes "Set your highness'," &c.

The folio has "Cæsar." But compare our author elsewhere on the same subject;

"Read (with Capell and Collier's Corrector) 'wearied.'" W. N. LETTSOM.

P. 36. (59) "Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace," "The old copy reads Whom we, to gain our peace -The emendation [which consists in the change of a single letter] was made by the editor of the second folio." MALONE." The possessive pronoun 'our' is fatal to the reading 'to gain our peace.' Besides, Macbeth did not kill Duncan in order to gain peace, but to gain power, grandeur, dignity, &c., in a word, royalty. The editor of folio 1632 could not have been offended by a quibble, for he must have been to the manner born.' He, no doubt, felt that the notion of obtaining peace by murdering a king was absurd, and could never have entered into the head of a public man." W. N. LETTSOM.-Compare what Lady Macbeth has previously said, p. 16;

"you shall put

This night's great business into my dispatch;

Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom."

(A modern critic, on whom Mr. Halliwell bestows high praise, writes as follows; "The editor of the second folio wrongly changed 'our peace' into 'our place.' Macbeth's entire frame is here shaken by an agonizing desire for peace of mind; and the pith of the sentence is, that it is better to be with the dead, because they have the peace of mind we desired to gain. The alteration destroys the force of the original antithesis, as the dead have not place," &c. &c.)

P. 37. (60)

"Light thickens; and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood :"

"On this passage Steevens has all the annotation to himself, and so he criticises his own criticisms, and corrects his own emendations. 1st, rooky is reeky or damp; 2dly, it is a rookery; 3dly, to rook, or to ruck, is to roost; therefore the line is to stand,

'Makes wing to rook i' th' wood :'

and he calls this reforming the passage, which, like some other reforms in Church and State, leaves things much worse than they were before. But it must surely be known to the general reader, that the 'crow' is the common appellation of the 'rook,' the latter word being used only when we would speak with precision, and never by the country people, as the word 'crowkeeper' will serve to show, which means the boy who keeps the rooks (not