to have passed by, but a good selection
would be I think received with favour; particularly if access could be
obtained to a good collection. And I should like to {615} see any addition
to the REV. J. CORSER's list in the Number of the 14th of May.

WELD TAYLOR.

* * * * *

SHAKSPEARE CRITICISM.

When I entered on the game of criticism in "N. & Q.," I deemed that it was
to be played with good humour, in the spirit of courtesy and urbanity, and
that, consequently, though there might be much worthless criticism and
conjecture, the result would on the whole be profitable. Finding that such
is not to be the case, I retire from the field, and will trouble "N. & Q."
with no more of my lucubrations.

I have been led to this resolution by the language employed by MR.
ARROWSMITH in No. 189., where, with little modesty, and less courtesy, he
styles the commentators on Shakspeare--naming in particular, KNIGHT,
COLLIER, and DYCE, and including SINGER and all of the present
day--_criticasters_ who "stumble and bungle in sentences of that simplicity
and grammatical clearness as not to tax the powers of a third-form
schoolboy to explain." In order to bring _me_ "within his danger," he
actually transposes two lines of Shakspeare; and so, to the unwary, makes
me appear to be a very shallow person indeed.

"It was gravely," says Mr. A., "almost magisterially, proposed by one
of the disputants [MR. SINGER] to corrupt the concluding lines by
altering _their_ the pronoun into _there_ the adverb, because (shade of
Murray!) the commentator could not discover of what noun _their_ could
possibly be the pronoun, in these lines following:

'When great things labouring perish in their birth,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;'

and it was left to MR. KEIGHTLEY to bless the world with the
information that it was _things_."

In all the modern editions that I have been able to consult, these lines
are thus printed and punctuated:

"Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;
When great things labouring perish in the birth:"

and _their_ is referred to _contents_. I certainly seem to have been the
first to refer it to _things_.

Allow me, as it is my last, to give once more the whole passage as it is in
the folios, unaltered by MR. COLLIER's Magnus Apollo, and with my own
punctuation:

"That sport best pleases, that doth least know how,
Wher