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A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

Act i. sc. 2.

"I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split."

The expression "make all split," and the similar one, "let all split," are often met with in early writers.—It has not, I believe, been remarked that they are properly nautical phrases: "He set downe this period with such a sigh, that, as the Marriners say, a man would haue thought al would have split againe." Greene's Neuer too late, sig. G 3, ed. 1611.

Act ii. sc. 1.

"The cowslips tall her pensioners be;

In their gold coats spots you see," &c.

The Manuscript-corrector of the folio, 1632, alters "tall" to "all," and "coats" to "cups." See Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 100.

The second of these alterations may be right. But the first is more than questionable; and when Mr. Collier defended it by observing that "cowslips are never ' tall,'' he ought to have considered, that, however diminutive they may appear to himself, as he gathers them in those sylvan scenes to which (unfortunately for his friends and acquaintances) he has now withdrawn, they might never

theless seem 66 tall" to Titania and her elves in the Athenian forest; just as the tulip was "lofty" to certain other fairies, who held their revels in Kensington Gardens, before nature (or rather art) had produced people of fashion; ;

"Beneath a lofty tulip's ample shade

Sat the young lover and th' immortal maid."*

In a note on the present passage of Shakespeare, the following stanza from Drayton's Nymphidia is not inaptly cited by Johnson;

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"Her dotage now I do begin to pity;

For meeting her of late, behind the wood,

Seeking sweet savours for this hateful fool," &c.

So Malone, Mr. Knight, and Mr. Collier, read with the folio and Roberts's quarto. The other quarto has "favours;" which (though Mr. Collier says "savours' seems preferable") I think decidedly right. Titania was

* Tickell's Kensington Gardens.

seeking flowers for Bottom to wear as favours: compare Greene; "These [fair women] with syren-like allurement so entised these quaint squires, that they bestowed all their flowers vpon them for fauours." Quip for an Vpstart Courtier, sig. B 2, ed. 1620.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

Act ii. sc. 5.

"Fast bind, fast find;

A proverb never stale in thrifty mind."

"The proverb with which the speech ends is given [by the Manuscript-corrector of the folio, 1632] differently both from quartos and folios; for instead of Fast bind, fast find,' we have 'Safe bind, Safe find.'" Collier's Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 115.

The Manuscript-corrector seems to have made the change "for variation's sake."--Compare Cotgrave's Dict. sub Bon. "Bon guet chasse malaventure: Pro. Good watch preuents misfortune; fast bind, fast find, say we.”

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Mr. Collier, in his ed. of Shakespeare, having observed, "It is clear that he [the Messenger] was not a mere servant, not only from the language put into his mouth, but because, when he asks, 'Where is my lady?' Portia replies, 'Here; what would my lord?' The Messenger was a person of rank attending on Portia,"-I maintained that the reply of Portia was nothing more than a sportive re

joinder to the abrupt exclamation of the Messenger, and I cited similar passages from Shakespeare's First Part of Henry IV. act ii. sc. 4, and from his Richard II. act v. sc. 5 (Remarks on Collier's and Knight's editions of Shakespeare, p. 55). I have since found the same sort of pleasantry in another dramatist;

"Enter Peter with a candle.

Pe. Where are you, my Lord?

Hog. Here, my Lady."

The Hogge hath lost his Pearle, by R. Tailor, 1614, sig. H.

Act iii. sc. 1.

"it was my turquoise."

"Men," says Greene, "weare not jems onely to please the sight, but to be defensiues by their secret operations against perils." Farewell to Follie, sig. в 2, ed. 1617 and Steevens's note has made it plain that Shylock valued his turquoise, not only as being the gift of Leah, but on account of the imaginary virtues ascribed to the stone. The following lines of Donne may be added to Steevens's illustrations of the passage;

"As a compassionate Turcoyse, which doth tell,

By looking pale, the wearer is not well."

Anat. of the World,-Poems, p. 247, ed. 1633.

Act v. sc. 1.

"look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold."

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