"A beggar's book
Outworths a noble's blood."
The margins offer—
"A beggar's brood
Outworths a noble's blood."
This emendation looks plausible; but read Johnson's note, and you will be of a different way of thinking. He says—"that is, the literary qualifications of a bookish beggar are more prized than the high descent of hereditary greatness. This is a contemptuous exclamation very naturally put into the mouth of one of the ancient, unlettered, martial nobility." In scene 2, the change of "trembling contribution" into "trebling contribution," where the increase of the taxes is spoken of, is a proper correction, and we set it down to the credit of the MS. corrector as one which ought to go into the text.
Act II. Scene 3.—What a fine poeticism comes before us in the use of the word salute in the lines where Anne Bullen declares that her advancement gives her no satisfaction.
"Would I had no being,
If this salute my blood a jot,"
—that is, this promotion is not like a peal of bells to my blood; it is not like the firing of cannon; it is not like the huzzaing of a great multitude: it rather weighs me down under a load of anxiety and depression; or, as she herself expresses it—
"It faints me
To think what follows."
The MS. corrector, turning, as is his way, poetry into prose, reads—
"Would I had no being,
If this elate my blood a jot."
This must go to the debit side of the old corrector's account.
In Scene 4 of the same act, the queen, on her trial, adjures the king, if she be proved guilty—
"In God's name
Turn me away; and let the foul'st contempt
Shut door upon me, and so give me up
To the sharpest kind of justice."
The MS. corrector writes—"to the sharpest knife of justice." But the queen is here speaking of a kind of justice sharper even than the knife—to wit, the contempt and ignominy which she imprecates on her own head if she be a guilty woman; and therefore "kind of justice" is the proper expression for her to use, and the MS. substitution is unquestionably out of place.
Act III. Scene 2.—Mr Singer says, " 'Now may all joy trace the conjunction,' instead of, 'Now all my joy,' &c. is a good conjecture, and may, I think, be safely adopted." We agree with Mr Singer.
Act III. Scene 2.—The following is one of the cases on which Mr Collier most strongly relies as proving the perspicacity and trustworthiness of his corrector. He brings it forward in his introduction (p. xv.), where he says, "When Henry VIII. tells Wolsey—
'You have scarce time
To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span
To keep your earthly audit,'
he cannot mean that the cardinal has scarcely time to steal from 'leisure,' but from 'labour' (the word was misheard by the scribe); and while 'leisure' makes nonsense of the sentence, labour is exactly adapted to the place.
'You scarce have time
To steal from spiritual labour a brief span.'
The substituted word is found in the margin of the folio 1632. This instance seems indisputable." Did Mr Collier, we may here ask, never hear of learned leisure, when he thus brands as nonsensical the expression "spiritual leisure"? Is it nonsense to say that the study of Shakespeare has been the occupation of Mr Collier's "learned leisure" during the last fifty years, and that he has had little time to spare for any other pursuit? And if that be not nonsense, why should it be absurd to talk of the "spiritual leisure" of Cardinal Wolsey, as that which left him little or no time to attend to his temporal concerns? Spiritual leisure means occupation with religious matters, just as learned leisure means occupation with literary matters. Leisure does not necessarily signify idleness, as boys at school (σχολη—leisure) know full well. It is a polite synonym, perhaps slightly tinged with irony, for labour of an unmenial and unprofessional character. It stands opposed, not to every kind of work, but only to the work of "men of business," as they are called. And it is used in this place by Shakespeare with the very finest propriety. In so far, therefore, as this flower of speech is concerned, we must insist on
