, and of the difficulties attending which we
cannot arrive at any satisfactory solution."

Mr. Collier's better judgment has here given way to his deference for the
opinion of his worthy friend; the deviation from the old copy being quite
as violent as any that he has ever quarrelled with in others.

Bearing in mind MR. HICKSON'S valuable canon (which should be the guide of
future editors), let us see what is the state of the case. The line is a
nonsensical jumble, and has probably been printed from an interlineation in
the manuscript copy, two words being evidently transposed, and one of them,
at the same time, glaringly mistaken. The poet would never have repeated
the word _count_, which occurs in the first line, in the sense given to it
either by Mr. Collier or by Mr. Knight.

Preserving every word in the old copy, I read the passage thus:--

"O! be persuaded. Do not count it holy
To hurt by being just: it is as lawful as
(For we would give much) to commit violent thefts
And rob in the behalf of charity."

"To _count_ violent thefts" here would be sheer nonsense; and when we
recollect how easy it is to mistake _comit_ for _count_, the former word
being almost always thus written and often thus printed, we must, I think,
be convinced that in copying an interlineated MS., the printer _misplaced_
and _misprinted_ that word, and transposed _as_, if the repetition of it be
not also an error.--"For," commencing the parenthesis, "we would give much"
stands for _cause_. The emphasis should, I think, be {387} laid on _for_;
and _commit_ be accented on the first syllable. Thus the line, though of
twelve syllables, is not unmetrical; indeed much less prosaic than with the
old reading of _count_.

This correction, upon the principle which governs Messrs. Collier and
Knight, and which indeed should govern all of us,

"To lose no drop of that immortal man,"

ought to be satisfactory; for it is effected without taking away a letter.
The transposition of two evidently _misplaced_ words, and the correction of
a letter or two palpably misprinted in one of them, is the whole gentle
violence that has been used in a passage which has been, as we see,
considered desperate. But, as Pope sings:

"Our sacred Shakspeare,--comprehensive mind!
Who for all ages writ, and all mankind,
Has been to careless printers oft a prey,
Nor time, nor moth e'er spoil'd as much as they;
Let the right reading drive the cloud away,