Silly is not here used in any modern acceptation. It is a term of affection, not of reproach. It denotes that which appealed to the stronger sex for protection in its innocence and simplicity. We have it in the New Testament; "leading captive silly women." In pastoral composition it is often applied to one of the most defenceless and innocent of animals. Daniel applies it very happily to an unambitious abode.

To have some silly home is my desire,
Still loth to warm me by another's fire.

It would be better to adopt a different orthography, as seely, and to give the word a different pronunciation, when it is found in this obsolete sense.

We want the word in its old signification. But words of this kind, in England at least, cannot keep their ground. Silly, which originally betokened amiable defencelessness, now denotes ignorance and folly. Simple, which originally denoted single-mindedness, integrity, now denotes utter unacquaintedness with the ways of the world, and with the justifiable arts of self-advancement. Caitiff, from denoting a person poor and infirm, has become the representative of the wicked and abandoned. Even innocent has acquired a bad sense, which promises in time to efface the original meaning of this beautiful Latin compound. These changes in language, indicating as they do so much of the heart of society, are little creditable to human nature, especially when it is placed under the guidance of Christian in

structors.

Still ours is not the only language in which these discreditable changes have taken place: enons, which must once have denoted the well-disposed, occurs in the Greek writers generally in the sense of weak, foolish, imbecile.

V. 4. VALENTINE.

Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale's complaining notes

Tune my distresses, and RECORD my woes.

A better illustration of the word record than any in the notes is supplied by a contemporary poet.

Now as abroad the stately courts did sound
Of trumpets, shagbots, cornets, and of flutes,
Even so within, there wants no pleasing sound
Of virginal, of viol, and of lutes;

Upon the which persons not few were found
That did record their loves and loving suits,
And in some song of love, and wanton verse,
Their good or ill successes did rehearse.

HARINGTON'S ARIOSTO, Canto vii. St. 18.

Harington, in another passage, applies the same terms to the singing of the nightingale :

Where nightingales did strain their little throats,
Recording still their sweet and pleasant notes.

Canto vi. St. 21.

How palpably is the beginning of this speech of Valentine the original of the beautiful speech of the banished duke in As You Like It. "Now, my comates and fellows in exile,"

&c.

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,

I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.

Indeed the commentators have very justly remarked that we may find in this play the germ of more laboured passages in later plays, which appears to me to be a kind of evidence that Shakespeare regarded this play as abandoned, and would not have included it in any edition of his works, had one been prepared by himself.

198

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

The history of the successive editions of this play is not anywhere that I know of so fully and distinctly exhibited as it ought to be.

The commentators, early and recent, have shewn from the Register of the Stationers' Company that a play with this title was entered to John Busby on January 18, 1601, which is stated to be 1601-2. It was afterwards assigned by Busby to Arthur Johnson, by whom a play so entitled was printed in quarto, having the date 1602 in the title-page. This, however, is not the play as we now have it, being scarcely half the length, and differing from the play in material respects in passages which are common to both.

No copy of this edition was known to Steevens when in 1766 he published in four volumes 8vo. reprints of the quartos of twenty plays, a work very exactly done, and most exceedingly useful to those critics on Shakespeare's text to whom the original quartos are only occasionally accessible. But since the date of Steevens' publication four copies of this edition have become known to inquirers in this department, and from one of them a reprint has been prepared by Mr. J. O. Halliwell, and published by the Shakespeare Society, 8vo. 1842.

But though Steevens had not seen a copy of this edition, Theobald had; and had taken the pains of entering the results of a collation of that edition with another quarto printed in 1619, containing the play in the same contracted or imperfect state, in the margin of that other quarto. Theobald's copy of this second edition came into the hands of Steevens after

he had printed his copy of the said second edition. The variations between the editions of 1602 and 1619 appeared to him so immaterial that he thought it unnecessary to give more of it in his own than the title-page, which he gave chiefly, as he says, because it confirmed the report of the play having been performed before Queen Elizabeth; and a comparison of the two editions shews that the second is but a reprint of the first, with such variations only as are attributable to the carelessness with which the book was printed.

This edition of 1619 came from the same publisher as that of 1602, namely, Arthur Johnson. It may be found in the first volume of Steevens' reprints of the quartos.

Next came the folio of 1623. Here we have, for the first time, the play in its full proportions.

Lastly, of the early editions we have a quarto printed for R. Meighen in 1630, which is said in the title-page to be "newly corrected." This is also to be found in Steevens' reprints; but it can be regarded in no other light than as a copy from the folio.

A material and very curious question arises upon all this,― namely, in what light the editions of 1602 and 1619 are to be regarded; whether, as Mr. Halliwell contends, they present the play in its original state, a sketch, as it were, of a finished picture, or, as Mr. Collier maintains, they exhibit only such a copy of the original as might be made by a person or persons who resorted to the theatre for the purpose of taking down the play as the words fell from the actors; that, in short, the copy entered to Busby and published by Johnson was obtained surreptitiously, and circulated without any communication with the author or the company whose property the work was, and, consequently, without any opportunity of consulting the original manuscript.

There are difficulties pressing against either supposition.

Р

In the first place, there is the testimony of Johnson's titlepage that the play as he gives it is "as it hath been divers times acted by the Right Honourable my Lord Chamberlain's servants, both before her Majesty and elsewhere." But if we reason upon this we ought to know what reputation Johnson the publisher had established for himself. Again, it is said in a tradition first publicly noticed by Dennis that the play was completed in a fortnight, to which tradition the play in its imperfect or its shorter state may be thought to correspond better than in the finished and perfect form in which we find it in the folios. But, on the other hand, Shakespeare was a rapid composer, and when it is said that the play was finished in a fortnight (supposing the tradition to be worthy of belief) is it necessary to suppose that it might not afterwards receive additional touches from the author's hand? It has been supposed that there are indications of changes having been made in this play subsequently to the death of Elizabeth, as if there had been a revision in the reign of her successor; and one passage is particularly dwelt upon as leading to this conclusion,-namely, where in the first scene of the first act Falstaff says, "You'll complain of me to the King," which in the shorter copy stands thus: "You'll complain of me to the council." This appears, however, but uncertain ground, "King" being the word much to be preferred to "council," and suiting the historical period to which Sir John Falstaff belongs. The argument on the mention of the Cotswold games, which, it is said, did not exist till the reign of James the First, and therefore could not find a place in any play written in the reign of Elizabeth, is founded on an historical misapprehension concerning those games. Warton has a long note respecting them, in which he argues from the passage that this portion of the play was not written before the reign of James the First.