Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 074.djvu/476

472 Singer, "has adduced (in Gnats and Queries, vol. vii. p. 400) numerous instances of the use of perseverance for discernment." The MS. substitution of "perverse errant" seems, therefore, to be quite uncalled for.

Scene 2.—Arviragus says that the redbreast will bring flowers—

That is, the corse of Imogen, who is supposed to be dead. "To winter-ground a plant," says Steevens, "is to protect it from the inclemency of the winter season by straw, &c." This is quite satisfactory, and renders the correction winter-guard unnecessary. The change of "so" into lo maybe accepted in the speech of Imogen when she awakens from her trance.

Act V. Scene 1.—The last passage on which the old corrector tries his hand is this. He can make nothing of it, nor can we, nor, so far as we know, can any one else. Posthumus, addressing the gods, says—

There is no difficulty with "elder;" it, of course, means, each crime being worse than its predecessor. "And make them dread it," &c.; this may mean—and make them go on inspiring dread, to the profit of the doer; or, as Steevens explains it, "To make them dread it is to make them persevere in the commission of dreadful crimes." This, it must be confessed, is not satisfactory; but we like it quite as well as the MS. emendation. "And make men dread it, to the doer's thrift." But whatever may be the merit of this new reading, the change of "elder" into later is, at any rate, quite uncalled for. Neither can we assent to Mr Singer's amendment of the place, which is—

On the whole, it is certainly safest to let the old text stand as it is, until something better can be suggested.

Having now washed our hands as clean as we possibly could of the old MS. corrector, we must, in proceeding to dry them—that is, to sum up—first of all notice whether there be not very small specks of dirt still sticking to them. We are sorry to say that there are several. In our anxiety to do every justice to the old scholiast, and in our determination to redeem to the uttermost the pledge which we came under to him and to our readers—namely, to bring forward everything which told in the remotest way in his favour—we find that we have somewhat overshot the mark; we have fulfilled our obligation in terms too ample; we have been too indulgent to this shadowy sinner, whose very skeleton Apollo and the nine muses are now, no doubt, flaying alive in Hades, if they have not done so long ago. In a word, we have something to retract: not, however, anything that has been said against him, but one or two small things that have been said for him. And, therefore, as we are not altogether a character like old Kirkaldy of Grange, whom the chronicles describe as "ane stoute man, and always ready to defend at the point of the sword whatever he had said," we may as well eat in our leek at once, without more ado.

We speak at present only of those readings (and fortunately they are very small and very few) which we countenanced or recommended for the text on the authority of the old MS. corrector. In most cases, any mere favourable opinion which we may have expressed of some of the new readings we shall allow to stand, for such opinions are unchanged, and the expression of them was very far from being a recommendation of these readings for the text. It is only the text which we are now solicitous about; and, therefore, insignificant as the sentiments of any humble reviewer may be, still, for the credit of the periodical in which he writes, and also lest the text of Shakespeare should run any risk of being compromised at his hands, it is his duty to retract his opinions to whatever extent he may feel that they have been rather inconsiderately advanced.

We approved, in the first instance, of "get" for let, (Blackwood's Magazine, Aug., p. 188); that approbation we