jured innocence against this oppressor, throughout whose pages we observe a good deal of nibbling at the text of Shakespeare. The teeth-marks of the little vermin are just perceptible on the bark of that gigantic trunk; and the traces which they leave behind are precisely such as a mouse might make upon a cheese the size of Ben Lomond. But we have not, like Shakespeare, the hide of a tree or a rhinoceros; nor are we, like him, a mountain three thousand feet high. The small incisor has consequently grazed our outer cuticle, and we should like to know what can have provoked our puny assailant to question,—not our competency to review the old MS. corrector, for this too he does, and this he is at perfect liberty to do; his doing it is a matter with which we have no concern—but to impeach our disposition to deal fairly and honestly towards himself and all others interested in the new readings. This, we say, he is not at liberty to do without very good cause being shown. Most gladly, to get rid of the little nibbler, would we have given up to him this reading, and any other pittances of the kind, to increase his small stock in trade. But he cannot make out any tide to the reading. He tries, indeed, hard to believe that it is actually his—he coaxes it to come to him, he whistles to it, but no—the reading knows its own master, and will not go near him; whereupon he gets angry, and bites us. He charges us with finding it convenient to ignore his wisdom—that is, with being ignorant of something in his pages, which, however, he confesses is not to be found within any of their four corners. But even, supposing that all which Notes and Queries implies we are guilty of could be made out—only conceive its being convenient for a man not to know—that is, to pretend ignorance—of something which may have been written on Shakespeare, or on any other subject, by these commentators on "Here we go, up, up, up," &c.! There is a complication or absurdity in the idea which it is not easy to unravel, and which defies all power of face. For one of themselves to have said that it might be convenient for a man to know and profit by their small sayings and doings, would have been ludicrous enough; but how any man should find a convenience—that is to say, an advantage—in not knowing, or rather in pretending not to know, how this innocent people are employing themselves—this is a conception which, in point of naïveté, appears to us to be unequalled by anything out of Æsop's Fables. How would it do for them to call themselves "Gnats and Queries?" We recommend that new reading to their consideration.
We are not sure, however, that this small community is so very innocent after all. Connected with this very reading, "Most busy," &c., they have been guilty of as much mala fides as can be concentrated upon a point so exceedingly minute. To propose a new reading without having the remotest conception of its meaning, is to deserve no very great credit as a critic; yet this is what Gnats and Queries has done. He (or one of his many pin-heads symbolised by A. E. B.), saw (Gnats and Queries, vol. ii. p. 338) that the construction of the line was, "Most busy, when least I do it".—or, as he explains it, "Most busy, when least employed." But how does he explain that, again?—he actually makes the word" busy" apply to Ferdinand's thoughts. He says, "Is it not those delicious thoughts (of Miranda) 'most busy' in the pauses of (Ferdinand's) labour, making those pauses still more refreshing and renovating?" So it seems that the thoughts of Miranda refresh, not Ferdinand's labours, but his idleness; and that he is "most busy" in thinking upon her, not when he is hardest at work, but when he is sitting with his hands across. As if that circumstance would have been any motive for him to go to work: it would have been the very contrary. It would have kept him from his labour. If this be not the most senseless reversal of Shakespeare's plain meaning ever proposed by any mole-eyed interpreter, we promise to eat Mr Collier's old MS. corrector without salt. Yet A. E. B. claims to himself credit for having, to some extent, anticipated our new reading; to the extent, that is, of seeing that the word when should be placed (in construing) before the word least. But what does, that signify, when he had not the remotest inkling of the meaning? More
