"By the discovery,

We shall be shorten'd in our aim."

Act i. sc. 2.

In the present play, act v. sc. 7, p. 131, Mr. Collier rightly

prints,

"In fellest manner execute your aims."

on which reading he observes;

So the quarto belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, and not arms, as it stands in the other quarto, nor arm, as it is given in the folio."

,

In Hamlet, act iv. sc. 7, vol. vii. 314, are these lines;

so that my arrows,

Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,
Would have reverted to my bow again,

And not where I had aim'd them,”—

on which Mr. Collier observes;

"The quartos, 1604, &c. are right in giving aim'd' instead of arm'd,' as it is misprinted in the folio."

There can be no doubt that in the following passage of the Second Part of King Henry VI. act iv. sc. 9, vol. v. 205, the word "arms" (which none of the modern editors have questioned) ought to be "aims;"

"And still proclaimeth, as he comes along,

His arms are only to remove from thee

The duke of Somerset, whom he terms a traitor."

SCENE 3.-C. p. 54.

"Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery!"

Meaning folly. Fools were often of old called patches, on account of their dress." COLLIER.

6

No, no. "Patchery" means something quite opposed to folly, viz. a patching up to deceive, -roguery.' The word occurs again in a passage of Timon of Athens (on which Mr. Collier has no note);

"Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble,

Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him,

Keep in your bosom; yet remain assur'd,
That he's a made-up villain.”

Act v. sc. i. vol. vi. 580.

'Agam. Let it be known to him that we are here,

We sent our messengers; and we lay by

Our appertainments visiting of him," &c.

"The quartos read, 'He sate,' and the folio, 'He sent.' The ordinary reading since the time of Theobald has been, 'He shent,' or rebuked our messengers; but, as Mr. Barron Field observes to me, Achilles had not rebuked any messengers, and the mistake is not in the word sent, as it stands in the folio, but in the word He, which was a mere transcriber's error for 'We.'" Collier.

"We sent our messengers"-a simple declaration that Agamemnon had sent messengers to Achilles, without any mention of the treatment which those messengers had received from the latter,- by no means suits with what immediately follows in the sentence. Theobald's correction may not be the genuine reading; but it appears to me greatly preferable to that now adopted. The objection brought against it in Mr. Collier's note, viz. that "Achilles had not rebuked any messengers" (meaning, I presume, that the said rebuking is not previously mentioned in the play), forms really no objection at all; for neither is there previously the slightest hint of messengers having been sent by Agamemnon to Achilles; yet from the present passage (whichever reading be adopted) it is clear that they had been sent; and as we are expressly told (act i. sc. 3) that Achilles used to take pleasure in seeing Patroclus "pageant" Agamemnon, we surely may suppose that he would treat his messengers with any thing but respect.

Besides, the word shent is frequently employed by Shake

speare.

SCENE 3.-C.
p. 59.

"No, this thrice-worthy and right valiant lord
Must not so stale his palm, nobly acquir'd;

Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit,

As amply titled as Achilles is, by going to Achilles:
That were to enlard his fat-already pride,” &c.

Here Mr. Collier follows the old eds., where a line and a hemistich happen to be run together by a mistake of the original compositor. The usual modern arrangement,

That were to enlard his fat-already pride," &c.

is doubtless preferable to a line of seventeen syllables.

ACT III.

SCENE 1.-C. p. 65.

"These lovers cry-Oh! oh! they die!

Yet that which seems the wound to kill,
Doth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he!
So dying love lives still :

Oh! oh! a while, but ha! ha! ha!

Oh! oh! groans out for ha! ha! ha!-hey ho!"

66

Mr. Collier's adherence to the old eds. in this instance is perfectly unaccountable, because it necessarily destroys the rhyme. Hey ho," which the original compositor had by mistake put into Italic type and made the concluding word of the song, is an exclamation of Pandarus after he has finished his ditty.

In Hamlet, act iv. sc. 5 (vol. vii. 310), Ophelia, after singing three lines of a song, says, "Fare you well, my dove;" on which Mr. Collier remarks, "In the folio, these words are erroneously printed in Italics, as if part of the song." Yes; and the very same error has taken place in the present passage of Troilus and Cressida.

ACT IV.

SCENE 5.-C. p. 102; K. p. 375.

"Nor dignifies an impair thought with breath."

Mr. Knight also prints "impair,"—and without any comment!! Mr. Collier has the following note;

"A thought unworthy of him, not equal to him. It is printed impare in the quarto impressions, and hence the Rev. H. Barry sug

gests that the true reading may have been impure, but we adhere to the ancient authorities. Chapman uses "impair" in his 'Shield of Achilles,' 1598; and in the folio the word is spelt impaire." Collier.

In the first place, long before the Rev. H. Barry was born, Johnson had observed, "This word [' impair'] I should have changed to impure, were I not overpowered by the unanimity of the editors and the concurrence of the old copies." Secondly, the passage in Chapman's Achilles' Shield,-— which was first pointed out by Steevens, and which I now subjoin entire,—is nothing to the purpose, for in it "empaire” is a

SUBSTANTIVE:

"To the vnderstander.

"You are not euery bodie, to you (as to one of my very few friends) I may be bold to vtter my minde, nor is it more empaire [i. e. impair, impairment] to an honest and absolute mans sufficiencie to haue few friendes, then to an Homericall Poeme to have few commenders, for neyther doe common dispositions keepe fitte or plausible consort with iudiciall and simple honestie, nor are idle capacities comprehensible of an elaborate Poeme."

Steevens's unfortunate illustration, " So in Chapman's preface," &c. has misled not only the other editors of Shakespeare, but also Nares, Todd, and Richardson, who, in their respective works, assert that Chapman uses impair as an adjective!!

The right reading in the passage of our text is, of course,

"Nor dignifies an impure thought with breath."

Impure (like complete and several other words) was often accented on the first syllable by our early writers ;

"For shame and modesty I name them not;
But let their black soules beare the impure blot
Of falshood, periury," &c.

The Praise of Hemp-seed, p. 81,-Taylor's

Workes, ed. 1630.

ACT V.

SCENE 2.-C. p. 114; K. p. 387.

"You flow to great distraction.”

Some misprint may be suspected in the word 'flow."" COLLIER. So far from perceiving any reason to suspect a misprint, I think the expression very striking and poetical.

Messrs. Malone and Knight give, with the 4tos, "destruction"-a mere misprint, as the other speeches of Ulysses might have shewed them;

“You are mov'd, prince : let us depart, I pray you,

Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself

To wrathful terms."

"You have not patience; come."

"You will break out."

"Possibly," says M. Mason, "we ought to read destruction, as Ulysses has told Troilus just before,

But what is the meaning of "GREAT destruction"? Malone explains it (foolishly enough)" imminent danger;" and Steevens (ten times more foolishly) "noble death from the hand of Diomedes"!

SCENE 11.-C. p. 134.

"Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed!

Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy!"

"So the old copies, quarto and folio. Sir T. Hanmer read smite at Troy,' with some plausibility; but we adhere to the old text, taking 'smile at Troy,' as meaning 'smile' in derision. COL

LIER.

The main objection to "smile," as Mason observes, is "frown" in the preceding line. But compare a passage of Beaumont and Fletcher;

And troubled hearts, the dull twins of cold spirits,

They [the gods] sit and smile at.”

Bonduca, act iii. sc. 1.