Has he throughout his works given us reason to suspect him, on any evidence short of his own hand and seal, of making these two lads, burying their adopted stripling brother by the mouth of their cave in the primeval forest, close their dirge with such a wish as,

"Quiet consummation have,

And renowned be thy grave!"

That Mr. Knight should speak of these stiff, formal, artificial rhymes, worthy only of a verse-crazed cit affecting the pastorals, as "free, natural lyrics," is incomprehensible. The lines are the production of some clumsy prentice of the Muse. Collins's well known ode for this Scene, "To fair Fidele's grassy tomb," is a pretty thing in itself, but is quite as unsuited to the situation, and smacks of 1750, not of 1600. Think of Guiderius and Arviragus singing,

"But shepherd lads assemble here,

And melting virgins own their love!"

No man could have written those lines who had not seen his mother's portrait painted by Kneller in a three-story head-dress and a hoop, and with a crook in her hand.

You snatch some hence for little faults; that's love

To have them fall no more: you some permit

To second illes with illes, each elder worse

And make them dread it, to the dooers thrift."

Thus the original text, in the last line but one of which, "elder" is evidently a misprint for ill the, as Zach

ary Jackson suggested. This idiomatic use of the comparative, as in 'each worse than the other,' 'each uglier than the other,' &c., is not uncommon, and is very expressive. Read,

"you some permit

To second ills with ills, each ill the worse," &c.

The original text has been justified, and interpreted to mean that "each crime is worse than its predecessor;" but this cannot be. If "the elder" be "the worse," then each crime is not worse than its predecessor. With regard to the last line, I admit that it is among the few, the signification of which is not obvious to me. I cannot divine what "dread it" refers to, or what it is which is to be to "the doer's thrift." The line is evidently corrupt, and no attempt to amend it has been successful.

This

passage, which appears thus incomprehensibly corrupted in the original, has defied all attempts to reduce it to sense; and the recent editors, after all the labors of their predecessors, have been obliged to content themselves by printing it just as it is given in the folio, with the exception of a semicolon after "constrained." Does any one believe that if the corrections in Mr. Collier's folio had been made from a copy of better authority than that from which the

first folio was printed, such a passage as this would have been left in this chaotic state?

should have been so.

It is impossible that it

Upon this passage Samuel Johnson, LL. D., lexicographer and great moralist,' remarks "This equivocal use of bonds is another instance of our authour's infelicity in pathetick speeches." I have heard that there are bigoted admirers of Dr. Johnson, though having never met one, I am loth to believe in the existence of such a phenomenon ; but from the resentment which such may feel at the manner in which I have spoken of their ponderous idol, I shelter myself behind the bulwark of wrath which such a note as this will excite in the bosom of every man who has Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, and can read and understand the English language. Shakespeare's "infelicity in pathetic speeches" is good, excellent good.

Of the rhyming dialogue in the Apparition in this Scene, I had merely written on my notes, before having read any comments upon the play--'this, beyond a doubt, is not Shakespeare's.' I found, however, that it had been so judged by almost all the critical students of his works. This was inevitable. The passage is evidently the production of some one about the theatre who had been in the habit of writing

such doggerel for the comedies in fashion just before Shakespeare took possession of the stage; and Shakespeare probably consented to its introduction for peace sake, to please the author or a brother manager,-knowing, too, that there were those in his audience to whom it would be acceptable. It is ineffably flat, and altogether superfluous; but it must not be removed from the place in which it appears in the authentic copy.

SCENE 5.

"Iach. Your daughter's chastity-There it begins. He spake of her, as Dian had hot dreams,

And she alone were cold.

See in this passage that Imogen's purity was not the mere accompaniment of a passionless nature, that contemptible nothing which some would elevate into a virtue. What is virtue worth which is not virtue of its own will,which is the mere index of a want of capacity to be otherwise? Imogen was chaste because she knew every thrill of passion. Had she been passionless, she would have been only an imperfect woman, and continent only, not chaste; and continence is not a virtue: else our mothers were all vile.

PERICLES.

ACT I. SCENE 1.

"Aub. At whose conception (till Lucina reign'd)
Nature this dowry gave to glad her presence,
The senate house of planets all did sit," &c.

Commentators and editors find difficulty in this word conception." Mason thinks it means 'birth;' Steevens would change it to concession, and Malone would introduce a long parenthesis. But is not the signification of the passage, taken together, very clear? and does it not evidently mean, that during the pregnancy of Thaisa's mother,-i. e. from conception till Lucina reigned,—the senate house of planets all did sit ?

SCENE 4.

"Cle. This Tharsus o'er which I have government,

(A city on whom plenty held full hand),

For riches strew'd herself even in the streets."

There have been some efforts to clear the obscurity of the last line, but no one has noticed Jackson's reasonable correction of a very easy typographical error, in reading,