Massinger, _Rom. Actor._, Act II. Sc. 1.

"I cannot eat stones and turfs: say, what will he _clem_ me and my
followers?"--Jonson, _Poetaster_, Act I. Sc. 2.

"Hard is the choice when the valiant must eat their arms or _clem_."
Id., _Every Man Out of his Humour_ Act III. Sc. 6.

In these places of Jonson, _clem_ is usually rendered _starve_; but it
appears to me, from the kindred of the term, that it is used elliptically.
Perhaps, instead of "Till famine _cling_ thee" (_Macbeth_, Act V. Sc. 5.),
Shakspeare wrote "Till {616} famine _clem_ thee." While in the region of
conjecture, I will add that _coasting_, in _Troilus and Cressida_ (Act IV.
Sc. 5.), is, in my opinion, simply accosting, lopped in the usual way by
aphaeresis; and that "the still-peering air" in _All's Well that Ends Well_
(Act III. Sc. 2.), is, by the same figure, "the still-appearing air,"
_i. e._ the air that appears still and silent, but that yet "_sings_ with
piercing."

One conjecture more, and I have done. I do not like altering the text
without absolute necessity; but there was always a puzzle to me in this
passage:

"Where I find him, were it
At home, upon my brother's guard, even there,
Against the hospitable canon, would I
Wash my fierce hand in 's blood."
_Coriol._, Act I. Sc. 10.

Why should Aufidius speak thus of a brother who is not mentioned anywhere
else in the play or in Plutarch? It struck me one day that Shakspeare
_might_ have written, "Upon my household hearth;" and on looking into
North's _Plutarch_, I found that when Coriolanus went to the house of
Aufidius, "he got him up straight to _the chimney-hearth_, and sate him
downe." The poet who adhered so faithfully to his _Plutarch_ may have
wished to preserve this image, and, _chimney_ not being a very poetic word,
may have substituted _household_, or some equivalent term. Again I say this
is all but conjecture.

THOMAS KEIGHTLEY.

P.S.--It is really very annoying to have to reply to unhandsome and unjust
accusations. The REV. MR. ARROWSMITH first transposes two lines of
Shakspeare, and then, by notes of admiration, holds me up as a mere
simpleton; and then A. E. B. charges me with having pirated from him my
explanation of a passage in _Love's Labour's Lost_, Act V. Sc. 2. Let any
one compare his (in "N. & Q.," Vol. vi., p. 297.) with mine (Vol. vii., p.
136.), and he will see the utter falseness of the assert