ments of the scene; and therefore Shakespeare would have been particular, only to be particularly wrong. This is evident from the fact, which a short examination will bring to light, that Juliet was not married until after noonday; and that some hours elapsed between her marriage and the time of this soliloquy. In the garden scene on the previous night Juliet says to Romeo,—

"At what o'clock to-morrow

Shall I send to thee?"

And he replies,—

"By the hour of nine.'

Juliet, in the fifth Scene of the second Act, in her impatience to hear from her lover, says,

"The clock struck nine, when I did send the nurse; In half an hour she promised to return. Perchance she cannot meet him," &c.

So that it was well on towards ten o'clock before Juliet received Romeo's message. But what was that message? We find it in the fourth Scene of this same Act.

"Bid her devise some means to come to shrift
This afternoon :

And there she shall, at Friar Laurence's cell,
Be shriv'd and married."

It was then some time past noonday before Juliet went to the Friar's cell. There she was married; and we may be sure that she did not hasten away again. But after she and Romeo had parted, and in the long first Scene of the next Act, the brawl takes place in which Mercutio is killed by Tybalt and Tybalt by Romeo. This all intervenes between the parting of Romeo and Juliet, after their marriage in the afternoon, and Juliet's soliloquy: quite enough to show that "noonday" is not the word which she uses. she herself gives the coup de grace to this supposition; for in the very scene of her soliloquy, having been betrayed into upbraiding Romeo, by hearing from the Nurse that he has killed Tybalt, she remorsefully exclaims,

But

"Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy

name

When I, thy three hours' wife, have mangled it?" Under the circumstances, Juliet would certainly name a shorter time than had actually elapsed since she became Romeo's wife; and therefore, she having been married in the afternoon, it is plain that her soliloquy is spoken toward evening.

But what need of this comparison of hours and minutes! Is not the soliloquy itself steeped in the passionful languor of VOL. III.-19

a summer's afternoon just melting into twilight? Is it not plain that Juliet has been watching the sun sink slowly down to the horizon, and gazing pensively into the golden air, until her own imaginings have taken on its glowing hue, and that then she breaks out into her longing prayer for night and Romeo? Facts and figures tell us that her soliloquy is spoken just before sunset; but what reader of the whole soliloquy will not set aside the evidence of facts and figures as superfluous -almost impertinent?

Our Southern correspondent suggests "run-i'-way's" for "runaways," and would read,

'Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That run-i-ways eyes may wink,' &c.

He makes this suggestion in a very pleasant letter, indicative of fine taste and feeling on the part of the writer, the length of which, however, precludes our use of it. He supposes that Juliet is expressing a wish that run-in-the-ways', i. e., interlopers', eyes may wink; and that "runawayes" is the contracted word, with the mere typographical error of a single letter. The contraction he arrives at thus:-runin-the-ways, run-in-th'-ways, run-i-th'ways, run-i'-ways. This is ingenious;

but such a contraction and such an idea are hardly in the manner of Shakespeare; and we therefore postpone an elaborate consideration of it until all more probable suggestions have been set aside.

Boston furnishes the next candidate for honorable mention, who thus cleverly, directly, and modestly withal, asserts his claim.

"The closing sentence of the article on Shakspeare, in your November number, is responsible for this: so if this be a bore, act accordingly.

"Instead of run-away's eyes,' I would read wan day's eyes. The word day, makes the sense perfect and plain. The use of 'day's eye' for light is not an uncommon figure; it may be found in most poets of that time, and of a later time also. Milton takes it even farther. He calls day-break the 'opening eyelid of the morn.' Wan is the very adjective that Juliet would apply to day, considering it as opposed to 'loveperforming night.' Carelessly written, 'runaway's eyes,' has much the same appearance as 'wan-day's eyes.'

'Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night! That wan day's eyes may wink.'

As a consequence of this, Romeo is to come unwatched,' &c. Does not this make the image plain? The thought is in. Milton:

This suggestion is good. Evidently, "wan days," if indistinctly written, might be mistaken for "runawayes." The idea of "the eye of day" is also quite suitable to the passage; and indeed it has been before suggested by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. Our Boston correspondent also sustains his conjecture ably by the au-. thority of Milton and of Shakespeare himself. But this and all the other hypothetical readings known to us before the receipt of the letter of our Southern correspondent, fail to meet the demands of one essential part of the context; and we are thus brought to the extract from the unpublished Shakesperian volume, to which we have alluded. It was written, with the exception of a few lines touching a recent suggestion of Mr. Dyce's and a statement of the reading of Mr. Collier's folio, three years and more ago, merely as a part of the author's Shakesperian studies, and with no thought that it would ever see the light in this shape. Here is the extract:

"Juliet.-Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,

That runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen.'

Of the incomprehensible "runaways" in the second line, an obvious misprint, many explanations and many emendations have been offered. Warburton thought that the runaway was the sun: Steevens thought that Juliet meant to call the night a runaway: Douce insists that she applies that term to herself, as a runaway from her duty to her parents. But no explanation will obviate the difficulty. There is, unquestionably, a misprint, and a gross one. The conjectural emendations have been as diverse as numerous. Monck Mason proposed Renomy's, that is Rennome's; Zachary Jackson, unawares, which was adopted by Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight, in spite of the feeble sense it gives; and Mr. Collier's folio has "enemies' eyes." All the conjectures have been un

satisfactory, rather on account of the sense which they give, than the improbability of the mistake which they involved. The most plausible suggestion yet made, seems to me to be, "rude day's," by Mr. Dyce, in his Remarks on Mr. Collier's and Mr. C. Knight's Editions of Shakespeare. In his last publication, A Few Notes on Shakespeare, he offers "roring eyes." But it is surely much better to read

Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That rude day's eyes may wink,

than.

That roving eyes may wink.

Neither of these, however, is more satisfactory to me than they appear to be to Mr. Dyce himself. The error will probably remain for ever uncorrected, unless a word which I venture to suggest seems to others as unexceptionable as it does to me. Juliet desires that somebody's eyes may wink, so that Romeo may leap to her arms "untalked of," as well as "unseen."

She wishes to avoid the scandal, the bruit. which would ensue upon the discovery of her new made husband's secret visit.

I think, therefore, and also because the misprint is by no means improbable (as I know from experience) that Shakespeare wrote "rumoures eyes," and that we should read,

'Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That rumour's eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.'

This occurred to me in consequence of an endeavor to conjecture what would satisfy the exigencies of the last as well as of the second line of these three; and perhaps I yield quite as much to the immediate impression which the word made upon me, and which all other conjectures, whether of others or myself, had failed in the least to do, as to the reasons which have confirmed my first opinion.

The absence of a long letter in ": rumoures," to correspond with the y in "runawayes," does not trouble me. I have repeatedly found in my proofs words containing long letters when the word I wrote contained none, and vice versa; and yet my manuscript is welcomed by the compositor on account of its legibility. It should be noticed, too, that neither Jackson's unawares (accepted by Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight), nor Mr. Collier's Folio Corrector's enemies contains a long letter. Those who understand the economy of the composing case will see that a long letter is not necessary in the word to be substituted here, because most of the

errors in type setting are on account of previous mistakes in the distribution of the type: the letters having been placed in the wrong boxes. Rumor was spelt rumoure, and the possessive case rumoures, of course, in Shakespeare's day.

As to Rumor's eyes, they are as necessary to her office as are her ears or her tongues. Virgil's Fame is but Rumor, and of her he says,

Cui quot sunt corpore plumae Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu,

Tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, totidem subrigit

aures.'

And in Shakespeare's day Rumor was represented with tongues; as we know by the following description of that character as she was represented in a Masque; and which was evidently founded on Virgil's impersonation.

'Directly under her in a cart by herselfe, Fame stood upright: a woman in a watchet roabe, thickly set with open eyes and tongues, & payre of large golden winges at her backe, a trumpet in her hand, a mantle of sundry cullours traversing her body: all these ensigns displaying but the propertie of her swiftnesse and aptnesse to disperse Rumoure.'

The whole magnificent Entertainment given to King James and the queen his Wife, &c., 15th March, 1603. By Thomas Decker, 4to. 1604.

Shakespeare, however, needed no precedent or hint to give eyes to Rumor. These quotations merely show that the idea was sufficiently familiar to his auditors, unlearned and learned, for him to use it in this manner.

But these considerations are not urged to gain acceptance for the reading which I propose; their office is but to meet possible objections to it. If it do not commend itself at once to the intelligent readers of Shakespeare, with a favor which increases upon reflection, no argument can, or should, fasten it upon the text.

Such being our own view of the passage, which we were about to give to the world through another channel, we were both surprised and gratified to receive the following confirmation of our conjecture from the hands of an intelligent and accomplished lover and student of Shakespeare in Providence, R. I.

"What objection is there to the substitution of rumor's for runawayes, in the Second Scene of the Third Act of Romeo and Juliet?

Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night! That rumor's eyes may wink; and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen! "Virgil's description of rumor, as personified by Fama, in the fourth book of the

Eneid, would justify the poet in the adoption of the expression, rumor's eyes, Monstrum horrendum, ingens: cui quot sunt corpore plumae,

Tot vigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu!

Tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures.

"It is also certain that a word of two syllables is required, whereas runawayes a word of three syllables, and is only rendered tolerable in its position here by clipping or passing lightly over the first a. Rumor's is much more agreeable to the ear.

"The difference in the orthography of the two words is not so great, but that the change of one for the other, is easily accounted for as a typographical error.

"The emendation seems to me so plausible, that I presume it must have been made long ago. I have not been able to find it anywhere, however, and I address you for the purpose of learning the objection to it. Respectfully yours,

H. H.

Mr. Collier claims, with reason, that the occurrence of the same conjectural emendation to two readers of Shakespeare, without consultation, is cumulative evidence in its favor; and we therefore give the above, exactly as we received it, with It the coincident quotation from Virgil. is not at all surprising that, the word rumor's having occurred to two students of Shakespeare who had read Virgil, his well known passage descriptive of Fame should have been brought to the minds of both. The description of Fame in Decker's Entertainment which is pointed out by the present writer, is, we think, of great value as showing the familiarity of the public of Shakespeare's day with the character.

But we owe to our Southern correspondent the knowledge that the conjecture as to the word rumor's, although original both with H. H. and ourselves, has been suggested before, and as long ago as the middle of the last century. The letter of our Southern co-laborer contains a quotation from a letter of Mr. Samuel Weller Singer's, which was published in Notes and Queries. This publication, some numbers of which we have seen, is a receptacle of odds and ends about literature, verbal criticism, antiquities, &c., &c., &c., published in London. Mr. Singer, in his letter this upon passage

says,

"In the course of his note he [Monck Mason] mentions that Heath, the author of the Revisal, reads 'Rumour's eyes may wink;' which agrees in sense with the rest of the passage, but differs widely from runaways in the trace of the letters.

"I was not conscious of having seen this

wish for night's close curtain to be spread, that her own-the runaway's-eyes might wink (for modesty, perchance), and that Romeo might leap to her arms untalked of and unseen (by herself)."

He

We must needs say that our correspondent's ideas with regard to all the other passages upon which he has written are, in our judgment, far more creditable than this is to his appreciation of Shakespeare and his critical acumen. thinks with us,- -as what intelligent Shakesperian scholar does not.—about the worth and the authority of Mr. Collier's folio, and even takes issue with us with regard to some of the few changes in it which we spoke of as "plausible." But we chose our word carefully. 'Plausible' means-specious, superficially pleasing, having a semblance of right; and though we desired, both from fairness and policy, to take, in our second paper on Mr. Collier's folio, the most favorable view possible of its changes, we by no means wished to be considered as advocating these merely plausible changes, few even as they were. Our correspondent and ourselves agree entirely, except upon two or three points. Those we cannot discuss here; he will find them touched upon in the volume to which we have alluded, and will soon welcome the severest scrutiny of such fair, courteous, and intelligent critics as he, and be utterly indifferent to any other.

MR. QUINCY'S FOLIO OF 1685.

To the general remarks made in the January number of Putnam's Monthly upon the pamphlet containing the principal MS. corrections in this folio, we propose to add an examination of some of the least unimportant and impertinent readings which tasked the feeble ingenuity and gratified the monstrous conceit of the corrector. At the first blush, it seemed as if the possessor and editor had been very superfluous in giving the fruits of so much stupidity to the world; but it must be confessed that the "lyttel paunflet" has at least a temporary value beyond that which belongs to it as a mere literary curiosity. Succeeding Mr. Collier's publication, it is useful as showing the utter worthlessness of his folio, as far as its claims to authority are concerned, and as confirming the statement made in the Shakesperian article in our October number, that "during the latter half of the seventeenth century and the first years of the eighteenth, the manuscript correction of folios seems to have been not uncommon." And we properly introduce here a note upon the subject of Mr. Dent's cor

rected folio, spoken of in the same article, which we have received from Mr. Halliwell, the distinguished Shakesperian and archæologist, and which bears another testimony to the number of these folios and their worthlessness.

"Sir, It may interest the readers of your able article on the Shakespeare readings to know that the curious annotated copy formerly belonging to Mr. Dent, noticed at p. 400 [October 1848], is being carefully used by me in the folio edition of the poet's works I am now passing through the press. I have also collated several other annotated copies, but I find them all, without exception, to be of very small critical value.

"J. O. HALLIWELL."

Although the modesty with which the editor of the new corrected folio sets forth the claims of his treasure to attention, and disclaims all pretence to authority for it, are worthy of commendation, we must express our unqualified surprise at his regarding the corrector's labors in the light of “clever conjectures," and his conclusion that "from the petty character and perfect unimportance of many of the changes," "there seems reason to suppose them copied from some source which the writer considered as furnishing a purer text." This supposition indicates a happy forgetfulness, on the part of the editor, or a still happier ignorance, of the labors of a majority of Shakespeare's editors and verbal critics. No degree of pettiness and unimportance has been able to restrain the restless anxiety of those who have devoted themselves to the improvement of the authentic text of Shakespeare; they seem to delight to trouble themselves de minimis; and so far from finding in the puerility of a large number of the changes recorded in this pamphlet, presumptive evidence that they were taken from some source supposed to be authoritative, there is in that very character a self-borne testimony that they are the legitimate offspring of the corrector's emasculated brain.

Let us examine the pretensions of a few of them. The pamphlet gives us only the most important of those readings which occur in eight of the sixteen of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays which have been corrected in Mr. Quincy's folio. There is occasionally one not absolutely ridiculous; and two or three, perhaps, present claims to a place in the text. Indeed it would be strange if a man able to read Shakespeare should not, in attempting to correct the numerous errors of the press which deform the earlier editions of his works, have hit once in a