When I proposed (Vol. vi., p. 468.) to read "rail at once," instead of "all at once," in As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 5., I thought the conjecture my own, having then only access to the editions of Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight; I consequently said, "It is somewhat singular that the passage should hitherto have passed unquestioned." My surprise was therefore great, on turning to the passage in the Variorum Shakspeare, to find the following note by Warburton, which had escaped my notice:
"If the speaker intended to accuse the person spoken to only for insulting and exulting, then, instead of 'all at once,' it ought to have been both at once. But, examining the crime of the person accused, we shall discover that the line is to be read thus:
'That you insult, exult, and rail at once,'
for these three things Phœbe was guilty of. But the Oxford editor improves it, and, for rail at once, reads domineer."
I have no recollection of having ever read the note before, and certainly was not conscious of it. The coincidence, therefore, may be considered (as Mr. Collier observed in respect to the reading of palpable for capable) as much in favour of this conjecture.
That the most careful printers can misread, and consequently misprint, copy, is evident from the following error in my last Note:—Vol. vi., p. 584., col. 1, for "in the edition which I gave of the part," read "poet." This mistake, like most of those I have indicated in the first folio Shakspeare, might easily occur if the word was indistinctly written.
S. W. Singer.
Mickleham.
NOTES ON BACON'S ESSAYS.
As I find that the editor of Bacon's Essays for Bohn's Standard Library has not verified the quotations, I venture to send you a few "N. & Q." on them, which I hope to continue from time to time, if they prove acceptable. In compliance with the recommendation of Mr. Sydney Smirke and the Rev. H. T. Ellacombe (Vol. vi., p. 558.), I append my name and address.