Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 074.djvu/461

1853.] ''Act II. Scene 2.—A construction very similar to the one we lately met with (to be, for in being'') occurs in the following lines, which certainly require no amendment. Flavius, Timon's steward, complaining of his master's extravagance, says that he

The corrector reads—

"To take no reserve" is surely more awkard and ungrammatical than the language which Shakespeare employs. And as for the substitution surely, it is very far from being required. The construction is—never did a mind exist, being so unwise, in order to be so kind.

These two lines as amended by the old corrector—

seem to be an improvement upon

The old copies read "behoove." But it would not be safe to alter the received text without further deliberation. We cannot accept Mr Singer's behood.

''Act IV. Scene 2''.—Flavius, when his master is ruined, moralises thus,

If the expression of these verses be somewhat elliptical, they are quite intelligible, and the MS. corrector certainly does not improve them. He writes the four last lines thus—

What is the meaning of "to be so mocked with glory as to live but in a dream of friendship?" A man may be so mocked with glory as to live only in a dream of glory. But a dream of friendship is nonsense—or, rather, the change of "or" into as, makes nonsense of the passage. The other changes are not so irrational, but they are quite unnecessary, and cannot, in any respect, be recommended for the text.

Scene 3.—To change "a bawd" into abhorred, as the MS. corrector has done, proves that he was unable to construe the English language. We shall merely refer our readers to Dr Johnson's note on the place, which explains it thoroughly.

In this same scene Timon rebukes Apemantus in these terms—

Mr Corner writes, " 'The passive drugs' of the world surely cannot be right. Timon is supposing the rich and luxurious to be, as it were, sucking freely at the 'passive dugs' of the world, and an emendation in manuscript which merely strikes out the superfluous letter supports this view of the passage, and renders needless Monk Mason's somewhat wild conjecture in favour of drudges." Reader, look out the word "drug" in Johnson's Dictionary—a work which does not deal much in wild conjectures, and which, whatever its disparagers may say, is still the best authority going for the use and meaning of the English language—and you will find that one of the meanings of "drug" is drudge. There cannot be a doubt that drugge is the old way of spelling drudge, and just as little can there be a doubt that "drugs" in the passage before us means drudges. To "command" the dugs of the world, would indeed be a wild way of speaking. Scene 4.—In the following lines, where it is said that it is not right to take vengeance on the living for the crimes of the dead, Shakespeare writes,

For "not square" the new reading is