Juliet "Night and Cupid are the only assistants at the spousal," does not represent the passage in its true light. It is merely narrative; the allusions to Night and Cupid are incidental and obvious, and are made, not at the time when hymeneal allusions were appropriate, but when Romeo and Juliet part at the Friar's cell.

"These said, they kisse, and then part to theyr father's house,
The joyfull bryde vnto her home, to his eke goth the spouse;
Contented both, and yet both uncontented still,

Till Night and Venus child geve leave the wedding to fulfill."

How the perception of a clever and a learned man may be perverted, is shown by the reference which Mr. Halpin makes to Juliet's supposition,

"Or if love be blind," &c.

which he thinks, "implies that she had already considered 'Love' in the correlative condition, and regarded him as able to see." But Juliet does not make reference here to the god of Love, but to a pair of lovers. Thus she says,

"Lovers can see to do their amorous rites

By their own beauties; or if love be blind," &c.

The fact that 'love' is spelled with a capital letter in no way confirms Mr. Halpin's supposition; because the word is so spelled in every instance in which it occurs in the soliloquy, as may be seen by reference to the passage as it is quoted above from the original folio. Thus "Love-performing," "strange Love grown bold," "true Love acted," "in Love with night," "the mansion of a Love" Evidently no one of these 'Loves' has any more reference to Cupid than the other; and this is still further shown, as far as the old typography can show it, by the fact that in the older

quarto the word is not spelled in this soliloquy with a capital letter in a single instance.

To leave no part of Mr. Halpin's argument unanswered, -his supposition that the numberless works of ancient art in which Cupid is represented as captured, imprisoned, caged, fettered and with his wings bound, are to be referred to "his notorious propensity to running away from his mother," is innocent indeed. He should have consulted female Counsel before venturing on such a plea. Women in classic days were, at heart, much like women of now-a-days ; and, then, as now, they would see Love bound, not for his mother's sake, but their own.

There is, it seems to me, not the least shadow of a reason for believing that Shakespeare would without having so much as made an allusion to Cupid, speak of him absolutely as 'runaway,' even supposing that he had any reason to expect that his audience would understand the epithet. This, we have seen, was not the case; and also, that he would not have understood it himself.

But besides all this, there is one other consideration which is in itself conclusive upon this point.

Let it be remarked, that the eyes in question were to close as the natural consequence of a previous act. Juliet says "spread thy close curtain love-performing Night,” in order that what? That Love's eyes may wink? The absurdity of the prayer is apparent. The argument for Cupid is worth absolutely nothing until it has been shown that the coming of Night would as a matter of course put him to sleep. But reason teaches and testimony establishes that night is exactly the time when that interesting young gentleman is particulaly wide awake. However much Juliet might desire even Love's eyes to close on that occasion, it is ridiculous to make the advent of "love-performing Night" the cause of his going to sleep; whereas it is entirely consistent

that she should wish Night to cause those prying or wandering eyes which are personified in Rumor's, to close, that Romeo may come to her "untalked of and unseen."

When we remember the vital importance of the secrecy of Juliet's nuptials, and the desire which must have been almost uppermost in her heart, that Romeo might be seen entering her chamber window by no one who would talk of or rumor it, and knowing, as we do, that Shakespeare and his audiences were in the habit of seeing such people typified in the person of Rumor, covered with open eyes, and painted full of tongues, can there be any doubt that "rumoures eyes" were the words written by the poet ?*

Thus the first folio and the quarto of 1609; but "pray" is evidently a misprint for pay, which appears in the earliest quarto, 1597; for, as Mr. Dyce has pointed out, the last words of Romeo's immediately preceding speech to the Apothecary were, "take this"-money, of course.

SCENE 3.

'Par. I do defy thy conjurations."

"Both Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier having rejected the reading conjurations' for the misprint commiseration,' and Mr.

The probability that the letter m held the place in manuscript which n takes in the printed word, is increased by the fact that in the carly quarto impressions the word is spelled "runnawayes."

Collier having observed that 'the sense of conjurations is not clear,' I adduced a passage from an early drama, where 'conju ration' signifies earnest entreaty (see Remarks, &c. p. 176). It may not be useless to notice here, that the word occurs in the same sense in a once-admired modern novel: 'the argument, or rather the conjurations, of which I have made use,' &c. Mrs. Sheridan's Sidney Bidulph, vol. v. p. 74."

Dyce's Few Notes, &c., p. 115.

This argument and citing of instances from ancient authors seems odd enough to Americans. It is almost as common in America, and has always been, to say 'I conjure you' to do thus or so, as 'I entreat you;' especially when the person addressed is earnestly entreated to do something for his own welfare, which is the case in the present instance. Romeo says:

"I beseech thee, youth,

Heap not another sin upon my head,
By urging me to fury:-0, be gone!

By heaven, I love thee better than myself:
For I come hither armed against myself:
Stay not, begone;-live, and hereafter say—

A madman's mercy bade thee run away.”

There cannot be the least question that Paris replies:

This is thy sheath; [stabs herself,] there rust, and let me die."

"There rust" is an obvious misprint for "there rest" which appears in the first quarto, 1597.

"Nor resumes no care," is quite surely a misprint for "no reserve, no care," which is the reading found in Mr. Collier's folio. But there is another confessed obscurity in this passage, in the last line, to obviate which I confidently offer the following correction of a very natural typographical error.

"Never miud,

Was truly so unwise, to be so kind,

Mr. Collier's folio offers surely, which is right as to sense, but not like enough in the trace of the letters.*

* Truly had been on the margin of my Shakespeare for a long time before the discovery of Mr. Collier's folio. I find in Mr. Singer's Vindication &c., that he has a corrected folio in which truly also appears.