lly the poet of common
life, so he was emphatically the poet of common sense; and to the
verdict of common sense I am willing to submit all the more material
alterations recommended on the authority before me."

I take "The Tempest," the first play in Mr. Collier's volume of "Notes
and Emendations," and, while bestowing my principal attention on the
inherent worth of the several new readings, shall point out where
they tally exactly with the text of the Oxford edition, because that
circumstance has excited little attention in the midst of the other
various elements of interest in the controversy, and also because I have
it in my power to give from a copy of that edition in my possession some
passages corrected by John and Charles Kemble, who brought to the study
of the text considerable knowledge of it and no inconsiderable ability
for poetical and dramatic criticism.

In the first scene of the first act of "The Tempest" Mr. Collier gives
the line,--

"Good Boatswain, have care,"--

adding, "It may be just worth remark, that the colloquial expression is
_have a care_, and _a_ is inserted in the margin of the corrected folio,
1632, to indicate, probably, that the poet so wrote it, or, at all
events, that the actor so delivered it."

In the copy of Hanmer in my possession the _a_ is also inserted in the
margin, upon the authority of one of the eminent actors above mentioned.

SCENE II.

"The sky. it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out."

The manuscript corrector of the folio, 1632, has substituted _heat_
for "cheek," which appears to me an alteration of no value whatever.
Shakspeare was more likely to have written _cheek_ than _heat_; for
elsewhere he uses the expression, "Heaven's face," "the welkin's face,"
and, though irregular, the expression is poetical.

At Miranda's exclamation,--

"A brave vessel,
Who had no doubt some noble creature in her,
Dash'd all to pieces,"--

Mr. Collier does Theobald the justice to observe, that he, as well as
the corrector of the folio, 1632, adds the necessary letter _s_ to the
word "creature," making the plural substantive agree with her other
exclamation of, "Poor souls, they perished!"

Where Mr. Collier, upon the authority of his folio, substitutes
_pre_vision for "provision" in the lines of Prospero,--

"The direful spectacle of the wreck . . .
I have with such provision in