"It was gravely," says Mr. A., "almost magisterially, proposed by one of the disputants [Mr. Singer] to corrupt the concluding lines by altering their the pronoun into there the adverb, because (shade of Murray!) the commentator could not discover of what noun their could possibly be the pronoun, in these lines following:
'When great things labouring perish in their birth,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;'
and it was left to Mr. Keightley to bless the world with the information that it was things."
In all the modern editions that I have been able to consult, these lines are thus printed and punctuated:
"Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;
When great things labouring perish in the birth:"
and their is referred to contents. I certainly seem to have been the first to refer it to things.
Allow me, as it is my last, to give once more the whole passage as it is in the folios, unaltered by Mr. Collier's Magnus Apollo, and with my own punctuation:
"That sport best pleases, that doth least know how,
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Dyes in the zeal of that which it presents.
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth,
When great things labouring perish in the birth."
My interpretation, it will be seen, beside referring their to things, makes dyes in signify tinges, imbues with; of which use of the expression I now offer the following instances:
"And the grey ocean into purple dye."
"Are deck'd with blossoms dyed in white and red."
"Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes."
"And it was dyed in mummy."
"O truant Muse! what shall be thy amends
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?"
For the use of this figure I may quote from the Shakspeare of France:
"Mais pour moi, qui, caché sous une autre aventure,
D'une âme plus commune ai pris quelque teinture."
"The house ought to dye all the surrounding country with a strength of colouring, and to an extent proportioned to its own importance."—Life of Wordsworth, i. 355.
Another place on which I had offered a conjecture, and which Mr. A. takes under his patronage, is "Clamor your tongues" (Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.) and in proof of clamor being the right word, he quotes passages from a book printed in 1542, in which are chaumbreed and chaumbre, in the sense of restraining. I see little resemblance here to clamor, and he does not say that he would substitute chaumbre. He says, "Most judiciously does Nares reject Gifford's corruption of this word into charm [it was Grey not Gifford]; nor will the suffrage of the 'clever' old commentator," &c. It is very curious, only that we criticasters are so apt to overrun our game, that the only place where "charm your tongue" really occurs, seems to have escaped Mr. Collier. In Othello, Act V. Sc. 2., Iago says to his wife, "Go to, charm your tongue;" and she replies, "I will not charm my tongue." My conjecture was that clamor was clam, or, as it was usually spelt, clem, to press or restrain; and to this I still adhere.
"When my entrails
Were clemmed with keeping a perpetual fast."
"I cannot eat stones and turfs: say, what will he clem me and my followers?"—Jonson, Poetaster, Act I. Sc. 2.
"Hard is the choice when the valiant must eat their arms or clem." Id., Every Man Out of his Humour Act III. Sc. 6.
In these places of Jonson, clem is usually rendered starve; but it appears to me, from the kindred of the term, that it is used elliptically. Perhaps, instead of "Till famine cling thee" (Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.), Shakspeare wrote "Till famine clem thee." While in the region of conjecture, I will add that coasting, in Troilus and Cressida (Act IV. Sc. 5.), is, in my opinion, simply accosting, lopped in the usual way by aphæresis; and that "the still-peering air" in All's Well that Ends Well (Act III. Sc. 2.), is, by the same figure, "the still-appearing air," i. e. the air that appears still and silent, but that yet "sings with piercing."
One conjecture more, and I have done. I do not like altering the text without absolute necessity; but there was always a puzzle to me in this passage:
"Where I find him, were it
At home, upon my brother's guard, even there,
Against the hospitable canon, would I
Wash my fierce hand in 's blood."
Why should Aufidius speak thus of a brother who is not mentioned anywhere else in the play or in Plutarch? It struck me one day that Shakspeare might have written, "Upon my household hearth;" and on looking into North's Plutarch, I found that when Coriolanus went to the house of Aufidius, "he got him up straight to the chimney-hearth, and sate him downe." The poet who adhered so faithfully to his Plutarch may have wished to preserve this image, and, chimney not being a very poetic word, may have substituted household, or some equivalent term. Again I say this is all but conjecture.
P.S.—It is really very annoying to have to reply to unhandsome and unjust accusations. The Rev. Mr. Arrowsmith first transposes two lines of Shakspeare, and then, by notes of admiration, holds me up as a mere simpleton; and then A. E. B. charges me with having pirated from him my explanation of a passage in Love's Labour's Lost, Act V. Sc. 2. Let any one compare his (in "N. & Q.," Vol. vi., p. 297.) with mine (Vol. vii., p. 136.), and he will see the utter falseness of the assertion. He makes contents the nom. to dies, taken in its ordinary sense (rather an unusual concord). I take dyes in the sense of tinges, imbues with, and make it governed of zeal. But perhaps it is to the full-stop at presents that the "that's my thunder!" applies. I answer, that that was a necessary consequence of the sense in which I had taken dies, and that their must then refer to things maugre Mr. Arrowsmith. And when he says that I "do him the honour of requoting the line with which he had supported it," I merely observe that it is the line immediately following, and that I have eyes and senses as well as A. E. B.
A. E. B. deceives himself, if he thinks that literary fame is to be acquired in this way. I do not much approve either of the manner in which, at least to my apprehension, in his opening paragraph, he seems to insinuate a charge of forgery against Mr. Collier. Finally, I can tell him that he need not crow and clap his wings so much at his emendation of the passage in Lear, for, if I mistake not, few indeed will receive it. It may be nuts to him and Mr. Arrowsmith to know