Act iv. sc. 2.

"I spied

An ancient angel coming down the hill.”

"The word 'angel' has produced various conjectural emendations, the one usually adopted being that of Theobald, who proposed to read 'ancient engle;' but we are to recollect that the person spoken of was on foot, and we have no doubt that the word wanting [wanted?] is ambler, which we meet with in the margin of the corrected folio, 1632. As to engle or ingle, which means a person of weak understanding, how was Biondello to know that the Pedant' was so, by merely seeing him walk down the hill? he could see at once that he was an ambler. How ambler came to be misprinted' angel' is a difficulty of perpetual recurrence." Collier's Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 151.

I never felt quite satisfied with the emendation "enghle" (ingeniously as it is supported by Gifford, note on B. Jonson's Works, ii. 430); nor does that of the Manuscript-corrector appear to me so certain as it does to Mr. Collier.

After all, is "angel" the right reading (though not in the sense of messenger, which is quite unsuited to the passage),—" an ancient angel" being equivalent to an ancient worthy, or simply to an old fellow? I must not be understood as answering this query in the affirmative when I cite from Cotgrave's Dict. " Angelot à la grosse escaille. An old Angell; and by metaphor, a fellow of th' old, sound, honest, and worthie stamp."

,,་

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

Act i. sc. 3.

"Diana, no queen of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight to be surprised, without rescue, in the first assault, or ransom afterward.”

The words "Diana, no" and "to be" were supplied by Theobald, and have been adopted by all succeeding editors.

In my Remarks on Collier's and Knight's editions of Shakespeare, p. 69, I cited a passage from Drayton, in support of my assertion that Theobald had unnecessarily introduced the words " to be." That quotation, I understand, has been considered as insufficient to settle the point; and I now subjoin three other passages, which will leave no doubt in the mind of any reader that, according to the phraseology of our early authors, "to be" is a superfluous addition.

"If I in this his regall royall raigne

Without repulse should suffer him remaine.”

King Carassus,-A Mirrour for Magistrates, p. 188, ed. 1610..

66

By

which her fruitful vine and wholesome fare

She suffer'd spoil'd, to make a childish snare.”

Marlowe's Hero and Leander,-Works, iii. 61, ed. Dyce.

"Least we should be spotted with the staine of ingratitude, in suffering the princesse iniury vnreuenged.” Greene's Penelope's Web, sig. D 3, ed. 1601.

Act ii. sc. 1.

"Hel. What I can do, can do no hurt to try, Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy.

He that of greatest works is finisher,

Oft does them by the weakest minister:

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,

When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown
From simple sources; and great seas have dried,

When miracles have by the greatest been denied.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits,

Where hope is coldest, and despair most shifts."

In the last line the misprint of the old copies, "shifts," was altered by Pope to "sits." Mr. Collier in his edition of Shakespeare gave "fits," from a manuscript correction in a copy of the first folio belonging to Lord Ellesmere : "fits" is also the reading of the Manuscript-corrector of the folio, 1632; and doubtless the true one.

Mr. Knight puts back into the text the long-discarded "shifts;" and, after telling us that it means "resorts to expedients, depends upon chances, catches at straws,"— he proceeds thus; "Why, then, should not the word stand? A rhyme, it is said, is required to hits. Is it so? Have we a rhyme to this line?—

'Oft expectation fails, and most oft there.'

The couplets are dropped; and we have three lines of blank verse. As well that as one line without a corresponding line." Now, if Mr. Knight had been more familiar with our early dramatists, he would have known that, in such speeches," one line without a corresponding line" is not unusual, just before the closing couplet. So

K

in The Travailes of the Three Shirleys, 1607, by Day, W. Rowley, and Wilkins;

"Good mindes know this, imprisonment's no shame,
Vnlesse the cause be foule which blots the name.
Then all the griefes in my remembrance bee,
Is that my father's eyes should weepe for mee
And my misfortune: for mine owne mishapps
Are to my minde as are heauen's thunder-claps,
Who cleares the ayre of fowle infection,

And in my thoughts do onely publish this,
Affliction's due to man as life and sin is."

Sig. G 4.

Act v. sc. 3.

"Count. Which better than the first, O dear Heaven, bless! Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cesse!"

TWEFTE-NIGHT.

3.

Amis 3.

"Sir And Axis, and it does indiffer flame-coloured suck.”

"Pope was wrong in his change colour'd stock: the old editions have stock,' which the manuscript-correcto" to be 'dun-colour'd stock."" Coliner dations, &c. p. 172.

But it does not follow that Pe

the Manuscript-corrector hi from his. (When, in a sc. 5, " And with what wi Manuscript-corrector subsi Mr. Collier, I presume is quite "wrong," and "stannyel," is perfectly lant of the first water, should in a "dun-coloured st moment.

LAN with MALVOLIO."

brought upon the scene by Fabian, particular stage-direction, obedience been intended to produce a ludicrous dience: Enter Malvolio, as from prison, m; in order to show the nature of the ich the poor conceited victim had been er's Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 180. rn stage, Malvolio, in this scene, always "straw about him ;" and such probably invariable custom since the play was first well remember that, when Twelfth-Night