rrow, are,--

"Sit down!
For thou must now know further."

Does Mr. Collier's folio reject this reading of the first line? or does
he suppose that Miranda remained standing, in spite of her father's
command? Moreover, when he interrupts his story with the words, "Now I
arise," he adds, to his daughter, "Sit still," which clearly indicates
both that she was seated and that she was about to rise (naturally
enough) when her father did. We say, "Sit _down_," to a person who is
standing; and, "Sit _still_," to a person seated who is about to rise;
and in all these minute particulars, the simple text of Shakspeare, if
attentively followed, gives every necessary indication of his intention
with regard to the attitudes and movements of the persons on the stage
in this scene; and the highly commended stage-directions of the folio
are here, therefore, perfectly superfluous.

The next alteration in the received text is a decided improvement. In
speaking of the royal fleet dispersed by the tempest, Ariel says,--

"They all have met again,
And are upon the Mediterranean _flote_
Bound sadly home for Naples";--

for which Mr. Collier's folio substitutes,--

"They all have met again,
And all upon the Mediterranean _float_,
Bound sadly back to Naples."

Mr. Collier notices, that the improvement of giving the lines,

"Which any print of goodness will not take,"

to Prospero, instead of Miranda, dates as far back as Dryden and
Davenant's alteration of "The Tempest," from which he says Theobald and
others copied it.

The corrected folio gives its authority to the lines of the song,--

"Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear,"--

which stands so in Hanmer, and, indeed is the usually received
arrangement of the song.

This is the last corrected passage in the first act, in the course of
which Mr. Collier gives us no fewer than sixteen, altered, emended, and
commented upon in his folio. Many of the emendations are to be found
_verbatim_ in the Oxford and subsequent editions, and three only appear
to us to be of any special value, tried by the standard of common sense,
to which we agreed, on Mr. Collier's invitation, to refer them.

The line in Prospero's threat to Caliban,--

"I'll rack thee with old cramps,
Fill all thy bones with _aches_, make thee roar,"--

occasioned one of Mr. John Kemble's characteristic differences with the
public, who objected, perhaps not wi