tract. "Portent-like," the common reading, is better than either potent like or potently, (Blackwood's Magazine, p. 195). "Sheer ale," and not shire ale, (Blackwood's Magazine, p. 198), should hold the text. Katherine's answer to Petruchio (Blackwood's Magazine, p. 199) is all right and ought not to be changed. "Supplications in the quill" ought to keep its place in the text against Mr Singer's in the coil, (Blackwood's Magazine, September, p. 315). "In the quill," simply means in writing, as Steevens long ago told us. We observe nothing more that we feel called upon to retract.
This deduction leaves, as nearly as we can count them, thirty new readings at the credit of the old corrector. We believe that the whole of these might be placed in the text without the risk of damaging it in any very perceptible degree; a few of them would improve it: indeed, some of the best of them were introduced into it long ago, while others have been suggested independently of the old corrector. So that his contributions to the improvement of Shakespeare are, after all, not very considerable. The only two really valuable and original emendations which he has proposed seem to us to be—these welling heavens, for "the swelling heavens," (Blackwood's Magazine, p. 310), and thirst complaint, for "first complaint," (Blackwood's Magazine, p. 321.)
This, then, is all that we obtain after winnowing this old savage's "elements of criticism:" two respectable emendations out of twenty thousand (for at that figure Mr Collier calculates them) blundering attempts, all of which, except these two and a very few others, hit the nail straight upon the point, instead of right upon the head. One thing we at any rate now know, that the conjectural criticism of England must have been at its lowest possible ebb during the seventeenth century, if this nameless old Aristarchus is to be looked upon as its representative, or was president of the Royal Society of Literature.
The concluding question is,—What rank is this scholiast entitled to hold among the commentators, great and small, on Shakespeare? And the answer is, that he is not entitled to hold any rank at all among them. He cannot be placed, even at a long interval, behind the very worst of them. He is blown and thrown out of the course before he reaches the distance-post. He is disqualified not only by his incompetency, but by his virtually avowed determination not to restore to Shakespeare his original language, but to take away from Shakespeare his original language, and to substitute his own crudities in the place of it. We are as certain that this was his intention and his practice, as if we had been told so by himself. That he was an early scholiast is certain. It is also in the highest degree probable—indeed, undoubted, as Mr Knight has suggested—that he was in his prime (his prime!) during the Commonwealth, when the Puritans had the ascendancy, and the theatres were closed. That he had been a hanger-on of the theatres in bygone days, and that he hoped to be a hanger-on of them again, is also pretty clear. So there he sat during the slack time polishing away at Shakespeare, "nursing his wrath to keep it warm" biding his time till Charlie should come over the water again, and theatricals revive. We can have some sympathy with that, but none with the occupation in which he was engaged—paring and pruning the darling of the universe—shaving and trimming him; taming down the great bard in such a way as to make him more acceptable to the tastes, as he thought, of a more refined, if not a more virtuous generation. For this kind of work we have no toleration. This critic was evidently the first of that school of modernisers of the text of Shakespeare which, commencing with him, culminated and fell in Davenant and Dryden, never more, it is to be hoped, to rise.
With regard to Mr Collier we shall just remark, that although he has obviously committed a mistake ("to err is human," &c.) in attaching any value to these new readings, and has plainly been imposed upon in thinking them restorations of Shakespeare, still his mistake is not irretrievable, and ought not to make the public forgetful of the antecedent services which he has rendered to our genuine Shakesperian literature. His learn-
