Ford, Broken Heart, v. 2, p. 71, col. 1, Moxon,— Confirm thee, noble sorrow, In worthy resolution." (Compare the ancients; for instance, Cicero's Orations, and the Greek tragedies.) Cymbeline, v. 3, "This is a lord :-O noble misery! To be i' th' field, and ask what news of me!" King John. i. 1,— ""Tis too respective, and too sociable (understanding conversion in the sense of change); though this latter seems harsh. So understand ii. 1; see context, ' "For this down-trodden equity, we tread In warlike march these greens before your town." And Fletcher (?) Faithful Friends, v. 2, Moxon, vol. ii. p. 551, col. 2, "Off with these robes of peace and clemency, And let us hoop our aged limbs with steel, All's Well, &c. i. 2, "Thus his good melancholy oft began." So understand Ford, Love's Sacrifice, i. 2, Moxon, p. 78, T'exchange one private word, one minute's breath Note Massinger, Roman Actor, iv. 2, p. 159, col. 2, ad. fin., the emperor says to Domitia,— Not a knee, Nor tear, nor sign of sorrow for thy fault? Break, stubborn silence: what canst thou allege In Cartwright, Ordinary, v. 4, Dodsley, vol. x. p. 263,"O do not blot that innocence with suspicion, Who never came so near a blemish yet As to be accus'd;" (where, by the way, as ought perhaps to be exchanged 25); who is not to be construed as though it were used-ut sæpe-for which. I notice a rather late instance in Waller, lines written at Penshurst, 1. 17, Cook's ed. p. 32, "Never can she, that so exceeds the spring In joy and beauty, be suppos'd to bring [bring forth] We owe this fierce unkindness, but the rock." LVIII. Villaine and villanie confounded. Cymbeline, iii. 5,— "Where is thy lady? or, by Jupiter, I will not ask again. Close villain, I'll have this secret from thy heart," &c. For villaine read villanie, metri gratia. This correction also spares us the repetition of villain three times within a few lines. The mode of address (abstractum pro concreto) is frequent in Shakespeare and his contemporary poets, as observed in the last article. Gifford, if I understand him aright, has made the same remark, Massinger, vol. iii. p. 580, 2nd ed.; see also Jonson, vol. iv. p. 263. (Cor 25 But the old edition 1651 has "b' accus'd." In the example from Waller, the edition 1641 points (better, I think),— unkindnesse; but the rock, That cloven rock produc'd thee, by whose side," &c.—Ed. rect, by the way, a passage in the Play of Lust's Dominion, iii. 3, ad fin., Old English Plays 1814, vol. i. p.138, where, in the midst of a rhyming passage, we read, You are all murderers. Come, poor innocent, - Read innocence.) Villaine and villanie have been confounded in several other passages. All's Well, &c. iv. 3, "He hath out-villain'd villany so out-villanied far, that the rarity redeems him ;❞—and so the folio. Why not villanie"? In Timon of Athens, iv. 3, "Do villany, do, since you profess to do 't, Like workmen ;" the folio (p. 94, col. i.) has Villaine; and so in Hamlet, v. 2, Being thus benetted round with villanies," the folio, and (teste Var.) the quarto also, have villaines, which Knight (nimius folii sectator) has thought worth restoring.26 Othello, v. 2, "Oth. Villain! Cas. .. Most heathenish, and most gross!" Villany of course; and so also Ritson. Taming of the Shrew, v. 1,-" Thus strangers may be hal'd and abus'd: -O monstrous villain!"-Villany is certainly more in place here. Beaumont and Fletcher, Four Plays in One, Triumph of Death, 4, Moxon, vol. ii. p. 519, col. 1,— “Oh, villain! oh, most unmanly falsehood! Oh, monstrous, monstrous, beastly villain!" 26 Mr. Knight is not the only recent editor who has restored this corruption.-Ed. Villany, clamante metro. Maid in the Mill, v. 2, col. 2, Ant. "That was my husband, royal sir, that man, That excellent man! That villain! that thief!" Possibly, villany, as in Cymbeline above. Caiu On the other hand, Much Ado, &c. iii. 3,-" Is it po sible that any villany should be so dear? Bor. The shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany shou be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor one poor ones may make what price they will;"-read, “if were possible any villain should be so rich;" as Warburtc also saw to be necessary. Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. near the beginning,-"Alas, sir, I cannot fence. Villany, take your rapier." This may be an erratum; b it is far more likely that it is a piece of the Doctor English. Sidney, Arcadia, B. ii. p. 173, 1. 21,-"to m I say (ô the vngrateful villanie) he could find no oth fault to object, but that (perdie) he met with manie fairer. Perhaps an erratum for villaine. (Add here, as containir a word of similar termination, Chapman, All Fools, R trosp. v. p. 321, "Either acrostic, or exordion, Epithalamiums, satires, epigrams, Sonnets in dozens, or your quatorzanies.” Quatorzaines. For exordion, read exodion; from todos poem addressed to a person on his leaving a place.) On t confusion of -e and -ie (if this can be considered as in point see Art. xliv., and the articles referred to at the end of it LIX. Innocence and innocency, &c. King Richard III. iii. 5,— God, and our innocence, defend and guard us!" So, if I mistake not, Johnson, Steevens, and Reid. Others, with the folio (p. 190, col. 1), [and, I believe, the quartos. Ed.] have innocency (fol. -cie). The same error, if I mistake not, has taken place in 1 King Henry IV. iv. "With tears of innocency, and terms of zeal ;" 7.3, where the folio (p. 68, col. 1) writes it innocencie. [And so, I believe, the quartos. Ed.] Also in Ford, Fancies, &c. iii. 3, "Where such an aweful innocency, as mine is, Outfaces every wickedness your dotage And in Marston, Prologue to Parasitaster,— Of emptiest merit, that would tax and slander, (For Of emptiest merit, qu. Emptiest of merit; yet I doubt.) It seems possible, indeed,. that innocency may have been pronounced as a trisyllable, in the same manner as innocent is frequently a dissyllable; though in King Richard II. i. 3, it appears as a quadrisyllable,— "Mine innocency and St. George to thrive!" (where, on the other hand, the folio has-p. 26, col. 1,innocence.27) So too in Massinger, Duke of Milan, i.'3, 27 All the old copies have innocence here, according to Mr. Collier; all have innocencie or innocency in 2 K. Henry IV. v. 2,— "If truth and upright innocency fail me." Now, which is the more probable, that the poet wrote innocence |