the
war, and the difficulty of getting better. Therefore the Duke of
Beaufort and the Earl of Scarsdale, two young noblemen of great interest
among their acquaintance, who had it in their power to live at their
ease in magnificence or luxury, merrily attributed all the doctor's
complaints to his avarice. All those were also for peace rather than
war. And all the bottle-companions, many physicians, and great numbers
of the lawyers and inferior clergy, and, in fine, the loose women too,
were united together in the faction against the Duke of
Marlborough."--ii. 200.]

Questions as to typographical blunders in editions of the classics are
mixed up with larger critical inquiries into the purity of the
ascertained text, and thus run in veins through the mighty strata of
philological and critical controversy which, from the days of Poggio
downwards, have continued to form that voluminous mass of learning which
the outer world contemplates with silent awe.

To some extent the same spirit of critical inquiry has penetrated into
our own language. What we have of it clusters almost exclusively around
the mighty name of Shakespeare. Shakespearian criticism is a branch of
knowledge by itself. To record its triumphs--from that greatest one by
which the senseless "Table of Greenfield," which interrupted the
touching close of Falstaff's days, was replaced by "'a babbled of green
fields"--would make a large book of itself. He who would undertake it,
in a perfectly candid and impartial spirit, would give us, varied no
doubt with much erudition and acuteness, a curious record of blundering
ignorance and presumptuous conceit, the one so intermingling with the
other that it would be often difficult to distinguish them.[30]

[Footnote 30: Without venturing too near to this very turbulent arena,
where hard words have lately been cast about with much reckless
ferocity, I shall just offer one amended reading, because there is
something in it quite peculiar, and characteristic of its literary
birthplace beyond the Atlantic. The passage operated upon is the wild
soliloquy, where Hamlet resolves to try the test of the play, and says--

"The devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me."

The amended reading stands--

"As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me too--damme."]

The