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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9< s. v. FEB. 17, 1900.

have taken the liberty of giving (I trust he will pardon me for doing so), would he so kind as to supply Miss THOMSON with full information respecting Corney House, if that is the house referred to. S. ARNOTT.

^ was at Chiswick, Middlesex, some

time the residence of Earl Macartney. John Towneley, uncle of the famous anti- quary Charles, also lived there, his book- plate describing him as of " Corney House, Chiswick, in the county of Middlesex, Esq." The house was pulled down in 1823 (see Walford's ' Old and New London,' vol. vi. p. 566). JAMES ROBERTS BROWN.

[Many similar replies received.]

WORDSWORTH'S 'EXCURSION,' BOOK I. 91- 102 (9 th S. v. 68). The simple meaning of this passage is : This man was of a retiring disposition ; but, as he had a superior mind, he was beloved and honoured by those who knew him. The line that puzzles MR. FORD might read "So not without distinction he had lived." To take " had he lived " as sub- junctive is merely to force oneself into a difficulty. It is not obvious how MR. FORD makes " not without distinction " mean "highly distinguished." The only occasion on which these words can be so inter- preted is when they are used by some local magnate in reference to himself.

CHARLES S. BAYNE.

The Wanderer's graces were un revealed to the noisy world but yet [so] far as he was known, he had lived not without distinction, beloved and honoured. This, and not the other (pace MR. FORD), seems to me the obvious sense. Surely it is more to the point to tell us concerning him what was than what might have been. The whole tenor of the description shows the Wanderer as a man who in his limited range was, in fact, distin- guished by the love and honour of all those who knew him, the writer himself included.

C. B. MOUNT.

[Many other correspondents, with whom we agree, point out that vixerat, not vixiwet, is the sense.]

S. iv. 419, 523; v. 10). -I find, on looking again at the letter from Wordsworth to Mr Peace which alludes to the work in question that I was not justified in saying that Words- worth was thanking him for a copy, as the language used may simply imply a wish t( thank him for having written the work.
 * AN APOLOGY FOR CATHEDRAL SERVICE' (9 th

I may add that " seventieth birthday " wai a lamus calami for "seventy-seventh birth day, ' the poet having been born in 1770.

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

PICTURE BY LAWRENCE (9 th S. v. 68). The ull-length portrait of Elizabeth Farren, the ,econcl wife of the twelfth Earl of Derby, minted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, is, I >elieve, in the possession of her grandson, Wilton. EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

ISjjimt llmtom.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

A New Variorum Edition of Shakesjieare. Edited

by Horace Howard Furness, M.A. Vol. XII.

Much Ado about Nothing. (Philadelphia, Lippin-

cott.)

STEADILY and earnestly Dr. Furness plods on in his pleasant, important, and self-imposed task. Of this >est and most serviceable of variorum editions of Shakespeare a work to which, as we have pre- viously said, nothing in this country exactly corre- sponds a dozen volumes, containing eleven plays, "lave now appeared. Considering the amount of work nvolved in each volume, this may be held to repre- sent as much productive labour in the study of the poet as is to be credited to any Shakespearean cholar of past or present days. Dr. Furness is, nowever, still alive and full of work, and further boons are confidently to be anticipated. In this case, as in previous plays, the text is that of the First Folio, which, however, but for a few " trivial typographical errors, 3 ' and one or two judicious corrections, is the same as the Quarto of 1600. Practically the two texts are identical, the greatest improvement effected in the Folio being the substi- tution at the close of the following distich of "dombe" for "dead":. Hang thou there vpon the tombe Praising her when I am dombe [in the Quarto

"dead"].

In another case in which Dr. Furness finds a "heightened dramatic effect" in a repetition of the word "those," we are disposed to join issue with him, and to regard the duplication of the word as an instance of a familiar form of mistake. After a close study of both texts and after making due allowance for the objections of Heminge and Condell to the Quartoes, which they denounce as " stolen and surreptitious," Dr. Furness holds that the text of the First Folio is " taken from a copy of the Quarto which probably contained some manu- script changes," and that the variations between the two are mainly accidental. It is, of course, impossible to deal with the views of the latest- editor as to the species of injunction which appears in the Stationers' Register opposite the plays ' As You Like It,' ' Henry V.,' ' Every Man in his Humour,' and other similar subjects. He will none of "the idea of A. E. Brae, partly favoured by Mr. Fleay, that 'Much Ado about Nothing' is 'The Love's Labour Won' mentioned by Meres. The general opinion is, of course, that the play so named is, in fact, 'All's Well that Ends Well.' The cheery view more than once enunciated as to the adequacy at least, from the negative standpoint of our knowledge of Shakespeare is put forth. Shake- speare's life, Dr. Furness holds, had little that was

mysterious to his contemporaries, by whom it was probably regarded as unusually dull and common- place. " Shakespeare never killed a man as Jonsqn

did ; his voice was never heard, like Marlowe's, in