1632," when he rashly alters "dearest" to "clearest" only because, during his time, the former word had become rather obsolete in the sense which it bears here. That "dearest" is the true lection, and that Steevens explained it rightly, we have proof (if proof were required) in a line of Dekker, who applies to "spirits" an epithet synonymous with "dearest," "Call vp your lustiest spirits; the lady's come." If it be not good, the Diuel is in it, 1612, sig. c 3. Act ii. sc. 1. "Ros. No point, with my knife." The double negative of the French, with a quibble. (It occurs again in act v. sc. 2.) We occasionally meet with it in passages of our old plays where no quibble is intended. So in Jack Drums Entertainment; "I will helpe you to a wench, Mounsieur. Moun. No point, a burne childe feere de fire." Sig. c. ed. 1616. and in The Wisdome of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600; "Vat, you go leave a de bride? tis no point good fashion." Sig. D 2: and sometimes we find it when the speakers are Englishmen. Act ii. sc. 1. "His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see, On the first line of this passage the following notes are found in the Variorum Shakespeare:— "That is—his tongue being impatiently desirous to see as well as speak." JOHNSON. "Although the expression in the text is extremely odd, I take the sense of it to be, that his tongue envied the quickness of his eyes, and strove to be as rapid in its utterance, as they in their perception. Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786." STEEVENS. Now, it would be difficult to say which of these notes is least to the purpose. The context distinctly shews that the meaning is-His tongue, not able to endure the having merely the power of speaking without that of seeing. Again, on the fourth line we find, ibid. :— 66 Perhaps we may better read: To feed only by looking.'" JOHNSON. There is no necessity for any alteration. The meaning is-That they might have no feeling but that of looking, &c. Act iii. sc. 1. "Arm. How hast thou purchased this experience? Moth. By my penny of observation." The old eds. have " penne of observation." Hanmer, whose reading has been adopted by all later editors, altered "penne" to "penny."- But the manuscript-corrector of the folio, 1632, reads, "By my pain of observation,"—that is, says Mr. Collier (Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 85), "by the pains he had taken in observing the characters of men and women. What most militates against this alteration is the figurative use of the word 'purchased,' for obtained, by Armado." Instead of "What most militates against this alteration," Mr. Collier ought to have said, "What utterly annihilates this alteration." Act iii. sc. 1. "Dread prince of plackets." Concerning "placket," see Steevens's Amnerian note on King Lear, act iii. sc. 4; and Dict. of Arch. and Prov. Words, by Mr. Halliwell; who observes; "Nares, Dyce, and other writers, tell us a placket generally signifies a petticoat, but their quotations do not bear out this opinion." I still think that in the quotations referred to, as well as in the present passage, “placket" is equivalent to petticoat. A writer of the age of Charles the Second uses "plackets" in the sense of aprons (perhaps of petticoats); "The word Love is a fig-leaf to cover the naked sense, a fashion brought up by Eve, the mother of jilts: she cuckolded her husband with the Serpent, then pretended to modesty, and fell a making plackets presently." Crowne's Sir Courtly Nice, act ii. p. 13, ed. 1685. Act iv. sc. 1. "A stand where you may make the fairest shoot. Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow. Fair payment for foul words is more than due. For. Nothing but fair is that which you inherit. A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise." "The corrector of the folio, 1632, has it,— O, heresy in faith, fit for these days !' which is probably right, although Shakespeare, like many other poets of his time, uses 'fair' for fairness or beauty." Collier's Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 87. Surely the context proves the Manuscript-corrector to be altogether wrong. Here fair* is, of course, equivalent to-beauty; in which sense Milton (though his editors do not notice it) uses the word in Paradise Lost; "Dull. If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent." To the examples of talent used for talon the following may be added. "Or buying armes of the herald, who giues them the * Incredible as it may seem, the reviewer of my ed. of Beaumont and Fletcher, in a periodical called Churton's Literary Register, denied that fair ever meant-beauty. The following couplet in Sylvester's Du Bartas would be alone sufficient to determine that it did: 66 Himselfe, at ease, views and reviews her faire" [the original having ses diuines beautez"]. Bethulia's Rescue, p. 502, ed. 1641. Nash's Pierce Lion without tongue, taile, or talents." "The Griffin halfe a bird, and halfe a beast, Strong-arm'd with mightie beak, tallents, and creast." "A second Phoenix rise, of larger wing, Of stronger talent, of more dreadfull beake," &c. Dekker's Whore of Babylon, 1607, sig. F 2. Act iv. sc. 3. "Biron [aside]. O rhymes are gards on wanton Cupid's hose; Disfigure not his shape.” So Mr. Collier in his edition of Shakespeare (from a Ms. correction in Lord Ellesmere's copy of the first folio) for the misprint of the old copies, "shop." "A question has been agitated whether we ought to read shape or slop. Theobald was in favour of slop, and his conjecture is confirmed by the corrector of the folio, 1632." Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 89. I nevertheless am inclined to think that the right reading is "shape;" in the first place, because the poet would hardly have used the word slop immediately after hose; and secondly because, in Fletcher's Beggars' Bush, act v. sc. 1, the first folio has,— "who assur'd me, Florio Liv'd in some merchant's shop," a misprint which, in the second folio, is properly altered to "shape." (Shape was often anciently spelt shap,—a form occa |