The Press.
London, England, 1856-03-29 00:00:00

.11.111111

An earnest conj•iration from the King,
As England was his faithful tributary;
As love between them like the palm might flourish,
And Peace should still her wheaten garland wear,
And stand a comma 'tween their amities.

Why comma? The only signification attached
to " comma " is that of a point to note the
separation of clauses of a sentence, and its
meaning is therefore directly opposed to the
whole idea of the above passage. Besides, it has a
strictly technical sense ; it is confined to punc-
tuation, and can have nothing to do with any
bond of union between the two countries.
Yet " comma" is preserved even in Mr.
Knight's edition now before us. Mr. Singer
proposes to read " co-mere." Mere is an old
English word for boundary or landmark. In
this sense it is used by Lord Bacon :
The mislayer of a mere-stone is to blame ; but it is the
unjust judge that is the capital remover of landmarks who
defineth amiss of lands.
If we adopt this reading, the signification is
that Peace shall stand as a mutual landmark
between the two countries. Whether is it
more probable that Shakespeare wrote this
than that he wrote that a note of punctuation
should stand between them ? Mr. Singer
observes justly that an elephant would make
as good sense of the passage as comma.
The word is undoubtedly corrupt, and we can
hardly question that Mr. Singer has with rare
sagacity restored the true reading. His
emendation strikes us as singularly felicitous,
and if it stood alone, it would entitle him to
an undisputed place among Shakesperian
commentators.

To show the corruption of the first folio, Mr.
Singer quotes a passage from The Comedy of
Errors, act ii., sc. 1. Adriana, lamenting her
supposed desertion by her husband, ex-
claims :
I see the lewell best enameled
Will loose his beautie; yet the gold bides still
That others touch, and often touching will,
Where gold and no man that bath a name,
By falsehood and corruption doth it shame?
The passage, at first sight, seems hopelessly
corrupt, but successive editors have brought it
into shape, and in a late edition it reads :
I see the jewell best enamelled
Will lose his beauty ; and though gold bides still
That others touch, yet often touching will
Wear gold; and so no man that bath a name
But falsehood and corruption doth it shame.

The passage is obviously much improved ;
some points in it are not satisfactory, but the
weakest part is " That others touch." Mr.
Singer proposes to read—" The trier's touch."
The passage would, with some minor altera-
tions, then read :

I see the jewell best enamelled
Will lose his beauty ; yet though gold bides still
The trier's touch, an often touching will
Wear gold; and no man that hath a name
But falsehood and corruption doth it shame.

The last line but one is so obviously short of
a syllable, that the particle "so " may he con-
veniently admitted into it. The passage is
then so different from that of the folio that we
cannot positively affirm it to be what Shake-
speare wrote ; but there are so many proba-
bilities in its favour, and it is so like Shake-
speare's manner, that in the absence of any
better suggestions, which we think improbable,
the lines as amended by Mr. Singer ought to
constitute the text.

We might carry these details to much
greater length, but the instances we have
given will show the value of Mr. Singer's
labours. Other emendations brought to light
in our day are of great value in clearing the
text. Both Mr. Singer and Mr. Knight ac•
knowledge the value of Mr. Collier's folio cor-
rection iu Timon of Athens, act iv., sc. 3, where
Timon, asserting that it is position which gives
honour, exclaims :

Raise me this beggar, and deny't that lord
The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,
The begar native honour ;
It is the pa-tore lards the brother's sides,
The want that makes him lean.
So in the folio ; but the MS. corrector alters
" brother" to " rother," a word explained by
Mr. Knight in his glossary :

Phillips, in his " World of Worlda" (11;98), says—" Rollser
beasts, a word used in old statutes, and still in the
northern parts of England for horned beasts, as cows, oxen,
steers, heifers, Scc."
The correction here is unquestionable, and
of great value. It is of importance to re-enrich
(do to speak) our language with words whose