moving, as it is of those in a calenture that their heads run on green fields. The variation from table to talked is not of very great latitude; though we may come still nearer to the traces of the letters by restoring it thus—'for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields.' "—(Vide Singer's Shakespeare Vindicated, p. 127.)
This, then, is now the received reading; and there can be no doubt that it is highly ingenious—indeed, singularly felicitous. But the MS. corrector's emendation is also entitled to a hearing. He reads: 'for his nose was as sharp as a pen on a table of green frieze." This, it must be admitted, is a lamentable falling off, in point of sentiment, from the other conjectural amendment. We sympathise most feelingly with the distress of those who protest vehemently against the new reading, and who cling almost with tears to the text to which they have been accustomed. We admit that his babbling of green fields is a touch of poetry, if not of nature, which fills up the measure of our love for Falstaff, and affords the finest atonement that can be imagined for the mixed career—which is now drawing to a close—of the hoary debauchee. It is with the utmost reluctance that we throw a shade of suspicion over Theobald's delightful emendation. Nevertheless, we are possessed with the persuasion that the MS. corrector's variation is more likely to have been what Dame Quickly uttered, and what Shakespeare wrote. Our reasons are—first, the calenture, which causes people to rave about green fields, is a distemper peculiar to sailors in hot climates; secondly, Falstaff's mind seems to have been running more on sack than on green fields, as Dame Quickly admits further on in the dialogue; thirdly, however pleasing the supposition about his babbling of green fields may be, it is still more natural that Dame Quickly, whose attention was fixed on the sharpness of his nose set off against a countenance already darkening with the discoloration of death, should have likened it to the sharpness of a pen relieved against a table, or background, of green frieze. These reasons may be very insufficient: we are not quite satisfied with them ourselves. But, be they good or bad, we cannot divest ourselves of the impression (as we most willingly would) that the marginal correction, in this instance, comes nearer to the genuine language of Shakespeare than does the ordinary text.
Should, then, the MS. corrector's emendation be admitted into the text of the poet? That is a very different question; and we answer decidedly—No. its claim is not so absolutely undoubted as to entitle it to this elevation. It is more probable, we think, than Theobald's. But Theobald's has by this time acquired a prescriptive right to the place which it enjoys. Although originally it may have been a usurpation, it is now strong with inveterate occupancy: it is consecrated to the hearts of all mankind, and it ought on no account to be displaced. It is part and parcel of our earliest associations with Falstaff, and its removal would do violence to the feelings of universal Christendom. This consideration, which shows how difficult, indeed how injudicious, it is to eradicate anything which has once fairly taken root in the text of Shakespeare, ought to make us all the more scrupulous in guarding his writings against such innovations as the MS. corrector usually proposes; for, however little these may have to recommend them, succeeding generations may become habituated to their presence, and, on the plea of prescription, may be indisposed to give them up.
"Principiis obsta, sero medicina paratur."
Act III, chorus.
"Behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea."
"Borne" is here a far finer and more expressive word than "blown," the MS. corrector's prosaic substitution.
Act IV. Scene 1.—In the fine lines on ceremony, the MS. corrector proposes a new reading, which at first sight looks specious, but which a moderate degree of reflection compels us to reject. The common text is as follows
"And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that sufferest more
