So the second folio.-The first folio has "the state of a man," &c., which Malone and Mr. Knight defend, though the "a" evidently crept in by the mistake of the transcriber or compositor. If Mr. Knight will turn to his National Edition of Shakespeare, he will find that, in act iv. sc. 3 of the present play, his printer has thus falsified the text by inserting the article,— "I said an elder soldier, not a better:

Did I say a better?"

P. 311. (17)

"For if thou path, thy native semblance on," &c.

Here the reading "path" is somewhat doubtful; for,—not to lay any stress on the folio having no comma after that word,—in the two passages which Steevens ad l. cites from Drayton, "path" is a verb active ("her passage Way doth path," "Pathing young Henry's unadvised ways").—Southern (in his copy of the fourth folio) altered "path" to "put;" and Coleridge proposed the same alteration. Mr. Grant White observes; "The quarto of 1691 reads, 'For if thou hath thy native semblance on,' &c.

I do not mean to say that hath is the [right] word; but neither do I believe that it is a mere misprint in the old quarto. 'Hath' is very frequently used by Shakespeare and his contemporaries for 'have,' &c." Shakespeare's Scholar, &c. p. 396.

P. 315. (18)

"the honey heavy dew of slumber," &c.

The folio has "the hony-heauy-Dew of," &c.: but this, I apprehend, belongs to that class of passages in which (as I have distinctly shown,-see vol. iii. p. 265, note (42)) the folio introduces the hyphen improperly. If the words stand in the right order, they must be understood as equivalent to-the honied and heavy dew of slumber.-The two Ms. Correctors,-Mr. Collier's and Mr. Singer's,―make a transposition here," the heavy honey-dew of slumber," &c.

P. 319. (19)

"Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;

The noise of battle hurtled in the air,

Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan;

And ghosts did shriek," &c.

The word "fight" in the first line, though not questioned by any of the editors, would seem from what follows (" Which drizzled blood," &c.) to be an error for "fought;" since we cannot suppose that here the poet used "fight" as a past tense. In the fifth line the folio has "Horses do neigh," &c., which the editor of the second folio properly corrected. ("The tenses," says Mr. Knight, "we have no doubt, are purposely confounded, in the vague terror of the speaker"!)

P. 320. (20)

"We are two lions litter'd in one day," &c.

So Upton (and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector).—The folio has "We heare two Lyons," &c.-Theobald printed "We were two lions," &c.

The folio has “statue," &c.—See vol. iv. p. 196, note (43).

P. 321. (22)

"And these does she apply for warnings, and portents,
And evils imminent," &c.

Has been altered to

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- for warnings, portents

Of evils imminent," &c.

(and there is certainly nothing in Henley's assertion-that the alteration of "And" to "Of" tends to weaken the force of the expressions, &c.)

The folio has "Enter the Soothsayer," and subsequently prefixes to his speeches in this scene "Sooth.”—“The introduction of the Soothsayer here is unnecessary, and, I think, improper. All that he is made to say should be given to Artemidorus; who is seen and accosted by Portia in his passage from his first stand to one more convenient." TYRWHITT.-Here the alteration of "the Soothsayer" to "Artemidorus” was made by Rowe, and adopted by Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, and Warburton; nor do I well see how any one can read the dialogue which follows, without being convinced that Portia is not speaking to the Soothsayer.

Has been altered to "our purpose," &c., - and rightly perhaps, as Casca, a little above, speaks of "our purpose:" but in the preceding act, p. 315, Brutus says, "Let not our looks put on our purposes," &c.

In the folio these words stand as the commencement of the next speech.— Ritson saw the impropriety of their being uttered by Cæsar; and proposed making them a portion of the preceding speech.-With Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector, I have transferred them to Casca, in whose mouth they form a very natural rejoinder to what Cinna has just said.

Here Hanmer and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector substitute "These crouchings,"

&c., unnecessarily.

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Couching had the same meaning as crouching; thus Huloet: cowche, like a dogge; Procumbo, Prosterno." Singer's Shakespeare Vindicated, &c. p. 246.

So Johnson (and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector).-The folio has "Into the lane of children."

Here Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector alters "crooked" to "crouched:" but "Lowcrooked is the same as low-crouched; for Huloet has crooke-backed or crowchebacked, and to crook was to bow." Singer's Shakespeare Vindicated, &c. p. 246.

So the second folio.-The first folio has "In state," &c.

So the second folio.-The first folio has "lye along," &c.

P. 330. (32)

"For your part,

To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony:
Our arms, in strength of malice, and our hearts," &c.

In spite of Steevens's ingenious explanation of this passage, the old text is not a little doubtful. The same critic conjectured, and Capell printed,

"For your part,

To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony,

Our arms no strength of malice; and our hearts,” &c.—

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Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector, without altering the punctuation, changes malice" to a word which no way resembles it in the ductus literarum,—“ welcome."

Here Theobald and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector alter "lethe" to "death:" but see Steevens's note ad l. (Nares, Gloss. sub "Lethe," observes that the word when used, as it is here, in the sense of death, "must be formed from lethum, not lethé.")

P. 332. (3) "Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!”

Qy. "Woe to the hands that," &c.? Antony has previously (p. 329) said to the conspirators,

P. 332. (35)

"Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek," &c.

"A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber," &c.

Here the expression, "the limbs of men," is questionable in the extreme (though defended by Capell, Steevens, and Malone,-Steevens citing from Phaer's Æneid “limmes of men,” as if the words were not easily to be found in a hundred other books!).-Hanmer reads "the kind of men;" Warburton "the line of men;" and Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector, "the loins of men;" emendations which hardly deserve to be mentioned.-Johnson conjectures "the lives of men;" a highly probable reading,-Antony first declaring generally that a curse is to light upon the inhabitants of Italy, and then proceeding to specify particularly in what that curse is to consist.

So the second folio.-The first folio has "from mine eyes," &c.

Mr. Collier prints "Shall now be crown'd," &c., by an oversight doubtless,— the "now" being a modern interpolation. But the integrity of the old text here is far from certain.

P. 338. (39)

"Even at the base of Pompey's statua.”

The folio has " Statue." See vol. iv. p. 196, note (3).—(Here Mr. Knight remarks: "In this passage, and in a previous instance, the word statua has been substituted for the English word. What we gain in the harmony of the verse we lose in the simplicity of the expression, by this alteration." But he forgets that when Shakespeare wrote, statua was quite as common as statue, even in the most vulgar prose.)

The folio has "neyther writ nor words," &c. (which more than one editor has retained," writ" meaning "penned or premeditated oration" !!).-The correction was made in the second folio.

P. 341. (4) "I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Cæsar,

And things unlucky charge my fantasy," &c.

The folio has "unluckily ;" which Warburton rightly altered to "unlucky.” (Mr. Collier's Ms. Corrector substitutes "unlikely;" of which Mr. Collier approves, because "Why should Cinna consider it unlucky to dream of feasting with Cæsar ?" Steevens has given the reason ad l.: “I learn,” he says, "from an old black-letter treatise on Fortune-telling, &c. that to dream ‘of being at banquets, betokeneth misfortune, &c.'"

P. 343. (42)

"one that feeds

On abject orts and imitations,
Which," &c.

The folio has "On Obiects, Arts, and Imitations," &c.-I adopt Theobald's correction, "On abject orts,” &c.,—“i.e. on the scraps and fragments of things rejected and despised by others,”—a correction which Capell (Notes, &c. vol. i. P. ii. p. 110) calls "decisive" on account of the preceding "feeds," and which at least is strongly supported by that word. (Shakespeare elsewhere has, "The fractions of her faith, orts of her love," &c.

Troilus and Cressida, act v. sc. 3. "It is some poor fragment, some slender ort of his remainder," &c. Timon of Athens, act iv. sc. 3.

"Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave," &c.

Rape of Lucrece.)Steevens, who brought back the old reading, first asserts that " objects" means “speculative knowledge," and that "arts" means "mechanic operations;" and then adds "objects, however, may mean things objected or thrown out to him:" but of what follows,

Which, out of use," &c.,—

"and imitations,

he prudently takes no notice, for it is quite sufficient to prove that his explanations are nonsense.- Malone too adheres to the original text: "objects," he says, "means, in Shakespeare's language, whatever is presented to the eye [which it generally means in every body's language]. So, in Timon of Athens, 'Swear against objects,""&c.- Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight also retain the lection of the folio; Mr. Collier, without any remark; and Mr. Knight, with a note, in which, after declaring that the whole difficulty of the passage has been created by the modern editors putting a semicolon, instead of a comma, after "imitations," he proceeds thus; "It is marvellous that the editors have not seen that Lepidus is called barren, because, a mere follower of others, he feeds

'On objects, arts, and imitations,

Which, out of use, and stal'd by other men,
Begin his fashion."

And can Mr. Knight seriously believe that the substitution of a comma for a semicolon materially affects the sense of the passage, or renders it a whit