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Page 157 158 159 160 161 162 162 MANUAL OF BRITISH ZOOLOGY FOR ISLES. By P. H. GOSSE, A.L.S. This work gives in plain English terms, the characters by which to determine the class, order, family, and genera of every animal known to inhabit the British seas. Every genus is illustrated by a figure, drawn by the author, principally from nature, and is accompanied by a list of the recognised species. Every class is introduced by a résumé of the most interesting points of its natural history, with notes of the localities frequented by the species, and directions for identifying them. JOHN VAN VOORST, 1. Paternoster Row. "The finest we ever saw."-Art-Journal. "One of the wonders of the age.""-Britannia. TEREOSCOPES. Immense Reduction in Price. In Mahogany 48. 6d., Lenses warranted. PHOTOGRAPHIC VIEWS, 11s. per dozen. Italian Scenes, Ruins, Old Castles, &c., by the First Artists. Orders for 11. and upwards Carriage Free. STEREOSCOPE COMPANY, 313. 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On the Title and Office of Cursitor-Baron of the Exchequer. By Edward Foss, Esq., F.S.A. Presents received and Expenses incurred at the On a Vase representing an Adventure of Per- Account of the Convent of English Nuns for- By J. Y. On the supposed submerged City of Vineta. By R. H. Major, Esq., F.S.A. A further Notice of Vineta. By K. R. H. Mackenzie, Esq.. F.S.A. Account of a Manuscript, by Thomas Norton, M.P for, and Remembrancer to. the City of London, relating to the ancient Duties of the Lord Mayor and Corporation, By J. Payne Collier, Esq. Further Particulars of Thomas Norton, and of Excavations on the Site of Roman Buildings at Account of the Unrolling of a Mummy at Notes upon the Sculptures of a Temple discovered at Bath. By George Scharf, Jun., Esq., F.S.A. Silver Rings and Coins discovered near Worcester. By J. Y. Akerman, Esq., F.S.A., Secretary. Discovery of a Tesselated Pavement, Feb. 10, 1854, under the late Excise Office. By William Tite, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A. 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Plan of the Excise Office, showing the Site of the Roman Pavement discovered there in 1854. 19. Plan of the Pavement. 20. Plan of London and its vicinity to the south-east, &c. London: Sold at the Society's Apartments in Somerset House: and by JOHN HENRY Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.: "Mach. I have almost forgot the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool'd To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir As life were in't: I have supt full with horrors; To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterday's have lighted fools "She should have dy'd hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word," "This passage has very justly been suspected of being corrupt. It is not apparent for what word there would have been a time, and that there would or would not be a time for any word, seems not a consideration of importance sufficient to transport Macbeth into the following exclamation. I read, therefore, 'She should have dy'd hereafter There would have been a time for - such a world It is a broken speech, in which only a part of the thought is expressed, and may be paraphrased thus: The queen is dead. Macbeth. Her death should have been deferred to some more peaceful hour; had she lived longer, there would at length have been a time for the honours due to her as a queen, and that respect which I owe her for her fidelity and love. Such is the world. Such is the condition of human life, that we always think to-morrow will be happier than to-day, but to-morrow and to-morrow steals over us unenjoyed and unregarded, and we still linger in the same expectation to the moment appointed for our end. All these days, which have thus passed away, have sent multitudes of fools to the grave, who were engrossed by the same dream of future felicity, and, when life was depa ting from them, were, like me, reckoning on to-morrow. Such was once my conjecture, but I am now less confident. Macbeth might mean that there would have been a more convenient time for such a word, for such intelligence, and so fall into the following reflection: We say we send word when we give intelligence."Johnson & Steevens' Shakspeare, in 10 vols., London, 1778, vol. iv. pp. 599, 600-1. The reader has here transcribed at full Dr. Johnson's paraphrase; and as I am not aware that its soundness has been questioned by succeeding annotators, I presume it is one generally acquiesced in. The whole comment is very in structive; it well illustrates the temerity with which editors betake themselves to emendation, fain to drag down no less an author than Shakspeare to their own capacity, when they do not at once succeed in elevating that to him. In such cases the reasoning appears to be very summary. He does not understand his author; what then? doubt his own intellect, his own researches ? Never. Pronounce the passage corrupt; correct it, and claim credit for acuteness and ingenuity. This may be a very pretty exercise, but in the meantime what becomes of Shakspeare? what becomes of the English tongue ? No need, I trow, for him to study that who can new-mould and fashion it at will. I have oftentimes mused how the Garricks and Kembles could personate the dogged fatalist suddenly metamorphosed, according to the received interpretation of this most characteristic passage, into a maudlin sentimentalist. Their elocution and aspect must surely have savoured more of a Matthews or a Liston, chopping from one character to another, than of their own great selves. As little can I divine how the reputed moralist Johnson could ever have persuaded himself that the homily of his paraphrase was in unison with Macbeth's antecedents, or with the immediate context; that it was, I say, of a piece with the reflections issuing from the lips, and passing through the brain, of this remorseless butcher of the widow and the orphan, who now, hardened by guilt, and to all good feeling reprobate, at length brought to bay, bids sullen defiance to whatever can betide him. Mark, reader, the current of the story. To Macbeth, contrasting his then callous indifference in the apprehension of real calamities with his former sensitiveness, when a night-shriek or tale of imaginary woe would have awakened groundless fears, Seyton announces the death of his wife: apparently absorbed in his own thoughts, and exhibiting no more consciousness of the other's presence than to make the subject of his report the cue for the farther pursuit of his own meditations, the usurper continues his soliloquy, and with unaltered mood sees in that event nothing but an inevitable necessity. And so far is he from regarding one time as more convenient than another, that the whole tenor of his subsequent remarks evinces his convictions to be, that it makes no odds at what point in the dull round of days man's life may terminate. If she had not died now, reasons he, she should have died hereafter there would have been a time when such tidings must have been brought, such a tale told. The word was of course the word brought by Seyton of the queen's decease. “The queen, my lord, is dead." Here, as we have seen, the lexicographer made a trip, but recovered himself. He took a foul fall at should, and was incurably foundered. blunder grew out of obliviousness or inadvertence His |