apparatus as in Arnold's edition of Thucydides: the variæ lectiones in the middle of the page, and the comment in a different type below it. But I repeat, it would be better still to give us the digest without the comment. All would go into one large volume. And it cannot be doubted that such a volume, if thoroughly well done, would furnish at once a sort of textus receptus, and a critical basis, from which future editors might commence their labours. It would also be an indispensable book of reference to all who treat of, or are interested in, the poet's text. Such, I say, would be its certain prospects if the editor were at once an accurate, painstaking scholar, and a man of true poetical feeling. The labour would be great, but so would be the reward. It is only what the ablest scholars have proudly undertaken for the classics, even in the face of toils far more severe. Would that Mr. Dyce could be roused to attempt it!
B.
[Some such edition as that alluded to by our correspondent has been long desired and contemplated. A proposal in connexion with it has been afloat for some time past, and we had hoped would have been publicly made in our pages before now. There are difficulties in the way which do not exist in the parallel instances from classical literature, and which do not seem to have occurred to our correspondent; but the project is in good hands, and we hope will soon be brought to bear.—Ed.]
Emendations of Shakspeare.—I am sadly afraid, what with one annotator and another, that we, in a very little time, shall have Shakspeare so modernised and weeded of his peculiarities, that he will become a very second-rate sort of a person indeed; for I now see with no little alarm, that one of his most delightful quaintnesses is to give way to the march of refinement, and be altogether ruined. Hazlitt, one the most original and talented of critics, has somewhere said, that there was not in any passage of Shakspeare any single word that could be changed to one more appropriate, and as an instance he gives a passage from Macbeth, which certainly is one of the most perfect and beautiful to be found in the whole of his works:
"This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath