t only fancy similar corrections to be introduced
in others of Shakspeare's plays, and Falstaff be made to exclaim at the
robbery at Gad's Hill, "Down with them, they dislike us old men," instead
of "they hate us youth;" for Falstaff was no boy at the time, and this
might be advanced as an authority for the emendation. But seriously, if
this alteration is sent forth as a specimen of the improvements about to be
effected in Shakspeare, from an edition of his plays lately discovered, I
shall, for one, deeply regret that it was ever rescued front its oblivion;
for with my prejudices and prepossessions against interpolations, and in
favour of old readings, I shall find it no easy matter to reconcile my mind
to the new. Strip history of its romance, and you deprive it of its
principal charm; the scenery of a play-house imposes upon us an illusion,
and though we know it to be so, it is not essential that the impression
should be removed. I remember once travelling at night in Norfolk, and a
part of my way was through a wood, at the end of which I came upon a lake
lit up by a magnificent moon. I subsequently went the same road by day: the
wood, I then found, was a mere belt of trees, and the lake had dwindled to
a duck-pond. I have ever since wished that the first impression had
remained unchanged; but this is a digression. There is no author so
universal as Shakspeare, and would that be the case if he was not
thoroughly understood? He is appreciated alike in the closet and on the
stage, quoted by saints and sages, in the pulpit and the senate, and your
nostrum-monger advertises his wares with a quotation from his pages; does
he then require interpreting who is his own interpreter? Johnson says of
him that--

"Panting Time toil'd after him in vain."

{76} And that he--

"Exhausted worlds and then imagined new."

There is no passion that he has not pourtrayed, and laid bare in its beauty
or deformity; no feeling or affection to which his genius has not given the
stamp of immortality: and does he want an interpreter? It is treading on
dangerous ground to attempt to improve him. Even MR. KNIGHT, enthusiast as
he is in his veneration for Shakspeare, and who, by his noble editions of
the poet's works, has won the admiration and secured the gratitude of every
lover of the poet, has gone too far in his emendations when he changes a
line in _Romeo and Juliet_ from

"Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell."

to

"Hence wi