P.S.—With reference to the above Note, which, although not before printed, has been for some time in the Editor's hands, I have observed in a Dublin paper of Saturday, April 9th, a very singular coincidence; viz. the recurrence of the self-same misprint corrected by Malone, but retained by Messrs. Collier and Knight in their respective editions of Shakspeare. Had the parallel expressions still-closing, still-piecing, which I have compared in the above paper, been noticed by these editors, they would no more have hesitated in accepting Malone's correction than they would object to the same correction in the misprint I am about to point out; viz.
"Two planks were pointed out by the witnesses, viz. one with a knot in it, and another which was piered with strips of wood," &c.—Saunders's Newsletter, April 9th, 3rd page, 1st col.
The Passage in "King Henry VIII.," Act III. Sc. 2. (Vol. vii., pp. 5. 111. 183.).—Is an old Shakspearian to talk rashly in "N. & Q." without being called to account? "If 'we can,'" says Mr. Singer, "'by no means part with have,' we must interpolate been after it, to make it any way intelligible, to the marring of the verse." Now, besides the passage in the same scene—
——"my loyalty,
Which ever has, and ever shall be growing,"
pointed out by your Leeds correspondent, there is another equally in point in All's Well that Ends Well, Act II. Sc. 5., which, being in prose, settles the question as to whether the omission of the past participle after the auxiliary was customary in Shakspeare's time. It is Lafeu's farewell to Parolles:
"Farewell, Monsieur: I have spoken better of you, than you have or will deserve at my hand; but we must do good against evil."
Either this is "unintelligible," and "we must interpolate" deserved, or (the only possible alternative) all three passages are free from Mr. Singer's objection.
C. Mansfield Ingleby.
Birmingham.