ART. VII.-Conjectures on some of the corrupt or obscure passages of Shakespeare.

Forty or fifty years ago, commentatorship on England's greatest poet was much over-valued; but the danger now is lest the elucidation of Shakespeare should be unduly despised. Some passages in his works are still so corrupt as to defy the most ingenious conjecture; but a few of them have been happily converted not only into sense, but into poetry. Such is Theobald's alteration of Falstaff's death-scene-"a babbled

of green fields." This phrase has passed almost into a proverb; but all the old editions of Shakespeare read, "a table of green fields," which means nothing. How many of us think we are quoting Shakespeare when we say of Music

"O! it came o'er my ear like the sweet south;"

whereas the poet's text is "the sweet sound," which Pope felicitously changed to "South." Dr. Johnson altered Macbeth's prosaic "way of life"

Is fall'n into the sear and yellow leaf,

to the poetical "May of life." Everybody remembers the following beautiful description of poetry in "Timon of Athens ;" but Pope and Johnson ought to share the credit of it with Shakespeare:

"Poet. Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes

From whence 'tis nourish'd. The fire i' th' flint

1 Mr. Douce is of opinion that sound is right, and Mr. Gifford thinks that Shakespeare wrote way of life, that being (he says) a phrase of the times. It is a phrase of all times; but Shakespeare was, at that time,

Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame

Provokes itself."

The old copies of Shakespeare read

"Our poesy is as a gowne

which uses."

Can anything be more unpoetical? Pope discovered the gum, and altered uses to issues. This was very happy; but Dr. Johnson came afterwards, and more happily suggested oozes.' Within the past year or two, Mr. Singer has made a most fortunate correction of the following line in "Timon of Athens," upon which the commentators had wasted whole pages:

"It is the pasture lards the brother's sides."

He strikes out the b, and we have rother, a provincial word to this day for horned cattle. And we are indebted to Bishop Warburton, the most arbitrary, but the most sagacious of critics, and who had come nearest to the last restoration by suggesting wether, for reading in "Hamlet," "If the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a God-kissing carrion," instead

writing poetry, not prose. Mr. Collier retains this, and Mr. Knight both these, unmeaning words; but the stage and the public voice will ever cry South and May.

1

1 Here both Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight adopt the amendments. Will it be believed that anybody should prefer the old gown? Mr. Knight tells us that Professor Tieck, the German novelist, does, and thus explains it: "The art, the flattery of this poet of occasions, which is useful to those who pay for it. The expression is hard, forced, and obscure, but yet to be understood." Not by me, especially with the interpretation. I suspect that the Professor thought that uses from meant being useful to. We are very grateful to these Germans for their high opinion of our great poet, but it is impossible for a man to be a competent verbal critic in any language but his own.

of a "Good," as the old copies have it: "a noble emendation (Dr. Johnson calls it) which almost sets the critic on a level with the authour."

These things are almost at an end now. No literary reputation can any longer be acquired by publishing a volume of notes on Shakespeare. Commentatorship of all sorts has seen its best days. The great book-evil culminated in twenty-one octavo volumes, to which amount Mr. Reed had brought Johnson and Steevens's edition, and Mr. Boswell had brought Malone's. Mr. Collier has now published the whole of the poet's works in eight volumes, with notes sufficient to make him completely, and even learnedly, intelligible.

The following articles are not composed entirely of comments upon the commentators, or of black-letter illustrations, in addition to the too many we already possess. I do not pretend to have discovered the meaning of prenzie, or arm-gaunt, or charge-house, or Ullorxa, or cyme, or an-heires, or scamels, or strachy, or to make ropes in a scar;2 but I have ventured a guess

'This is mere pomp of words, engendered between gratitude to the man and reverence for the prelate; but it will be recollected that the commentators had not yet begun to think Shakespeare their literary superior, and that these were times when Warburton himself could speak of our great poet as follows:—

"These, such as they are, were among my younger amusements, when, many years ago, I used to turn over these sort of writers, to unbend myself from more serious applications."

Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight retain "good," and understand the dead dog to be the good kissing carrion; but this seems to me somewhat too much meaning for the words to be licensed to carry. That the Sun is the osculist, and not the dog, is confirmed by the following passage from I. Hen. IV., ii., 4; "Did'st thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter ?" and by the phrase, "common-kissing Titan," in Cymbeline, iii., 4.

2 A scar is a rock. The relievo of Shakespeare in front of the British Gallery looks as if it would be thankful to "make a rope in such a scar."

at land-damn, and skains-mates, and pajock, and Ithink I have had the good luck to make a few plausible conjectures in several other corrupt or obscure passages in our poet; and I deem it the first duty of every member of our Society to contribute his mite to the probable restoration of Shakespeare's

text.

THE TEMPEST.

ACT III., SCENE 2.

"Trinculo. Why, thou debosh'd fish, thou!

It is disputed between Mr. Collier and the Rev. Mr. Dyce whether the spelling of this word should be modernized to debauch'd. Its etymology is contested. Beaumont and Fletcher have it deboist. In Baxter's "Life and Times," as late as 1664, we find deboist and debauched too. I think the original English word was deboist, corrupted to debosh'd, and then spelt debauch'd, out of conformity to the French word, from which it is by no means certain that we derive it. Under these circumstances, I am for retaining the old orthography, with Mr. Dyce, till more light shall be obtained.

ACT IV., SCENE 1.

"And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.”

The word rack or wrack (for orthography was in Shakespeare's times arbitrary, and all the following words were spelt both ways) had three or four meanings, all of which are confounded by the variorum commentators :—1. The rack, or reek, the highest clouds. 2. What we now spell wreck. 3. To rack, or stretch; and 4. The craic, of the Norman language, a seaweed.

ACT. V., SCENE 1.

"Prospero. Now does my project gather to a head; My charms crack not; my spirits obey; and Time Goes upright with his carriage."

Mr. Becket says, that this means, not as Mr. Steevens would have it, "Time carries a burthen," but "Time carries himself well-the hour is every way favourable to me." But Mr. Steevens's view of the word carriage is supported by the following passages of scripture, in the authorized translation : 1 Sam., xvij., 22; Acts, xxi., 15.

Mr. Becket laboured under the monomania, with which he was bitten by his idol Warburton, that Shakespeare sometimes wrote in the French language; but neither his notes, nor Mr. Pye's, nor Mr. Seymour's, nor Mr. Jackson's, should have been so very much overlooked as they have been by Messrs. Collier and Knight. Something may be gleaned from every book, even from Mr. Pye. Lord Chedworth was said to be deranged in his mind; but there is no madness in his notes on Shakespeare. Mr. Seymour was an actor, Mr. Jackson a printer. Each of them brought his professional bias to the task the actor was anxious only that the blank verse should not halt: the printer thought he had found a clew to the principles of press-errors, which is something like writing a book on the laws of storms.

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

ACT IV., SCENE 4.

"Julia. Since she respects my mistress' love so much."

The objection in Mr. Malone's note, that the disguised Julia is calling herself her own mistress, after the exit of Sylvia, may be obviated by placing the "Exit Sylvia" after this line, which Julia speaks to herself in Sylvia's presence.