A Passage in "The Taming of the Shrew."—Perhaps I mistake it, but Mr. C. Mansfield Ingleby seems to me to write in a tone as if he fancied I should be unwilling to answer his questions, whether public or private. Although I am not personally acquainted with him, we have had some correspondence, and I must always feel that a man so zealous and intelligent is entitled to the best reply I can afford. I can have no hesitation in informing him that, in preparing what he terms my "monovolume Shakspeare," I pursued this plan throughout; I adopted, as my foundation, the edition in eight volumes octavo, which I completed in 1844; that was "formed from an entirely new collation of the old editions," and my object there was to give the most accurate representation of the text of the folios and quartos. Upon that stock I engrafted the manuscript alterations in my folio 1632, in every case in which it seemed to me possible that the old corrector might be right—in short, wherever two opinions could be entertained as to the reading: in this way my text in the "monovolume Shakspeare" was "regulated by the old copies, and by the recently discovered folio of 1632."

Mr. Ingleby will see that in the brief preface to the "monovolume Shakspeare," I expressly say that "while a general similarity (to the folio 1632) has been preserved, care has been taken to rectify the admitted mistakes of the early impression, and to introduce such alterations of a corrupt and imperfect text, as were warranted by better authorities. Thus, while the new readings of the old corrector of the folio 1632, considerably exceeding a thousand, are duly inserted in the places

to which they belong, the old readings, which, during the last century and a half, have recommended themselves for adoption, and have been derived from a comparison of ancient printed editions, have also been incorporated." I do not know how I could have expressed myself with greater clearness; and it was merely for the sake of distinctness that I referred to the result of my own labours in 1842, 1843, and 1844, during which years my eight volumes octavo were proceeding through the press. Those labours, it will be seen, essentially contributed to lighten my task in preparing the "monovolume Shakspeare."

My answer respecting the passage in The Taming of the Shrew, referred to by Mr. Ingleby, will, I trust, be equally satisfactory; it shall be equally plain.

I inserted ambler, because it is the word substituted in manuscript in the margin of my folio 1632. I adopted mercatantè, as proposed by Steevens, not only because it is the true Italian word, but because it exactly fits the place in the verse, mercatant (the word in the folios) being a syllable short of the required number. In the very copy of Florio's Italian Dictionary, which I bought of Rodd at the time when I purchased my folio 1632, I find mercatantè translated by the word "marchant," "marter," and "trader," exactly the sense required. Then, as to "surely" instead of surly, I venture to think that "surely" is the true reading:

"In gait and countenance surely like a father."

"Surely like a father" is certainly like a father; and although a man may be surly in his "countenance," I do not well see how he could be surly in his "gait;" besides, what had occurred to make the pedant surly? This appears to me the best reason for rejecting surly in favour of "surely;" but I have another, which can hardly be refused to an editor who professes to follow the old copies, where they are not contradicted. I allude to the folio 1628, where the line stands precisely thus:

"In gate and countenance surely like a Father."

The folio 1632 misprinted "surely" surly, as, in Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 3., it committed the opposite blunder, by misprinting "surly" surely. Another piece of evidence, to prove that "surely" was the poet's word in The Taming of the Shrew, has comparatively recently fallen in my way; I did not know of its existence in 1844, or it would have been of considerable use to me. It is a unique quarto of the play, which came out some years before the folio 1623, and is not to be confounded with the quarto of The Taming of the Shrew, with the date of 1631 on the title-page. This new authority has the line exactly as it is given in the folio 1623, which, in truth, was printed from it. It is now before me.

J. Payne Collier.