which I submit is decidedly wrong. I will not be hypercritical, or I might suggest that in that case the words would have been "thither wend;" but I maintain that the change is contrary to the sense. The spirit of Hermione never could have been intended to say that the child should be left crying. She would rather wish that it might not cry! The meaning, as it seems to me, is, that Antigonus should weep over the babe, and leave it while so weeping.
In p. 487. the words "missingly noted" are altered to "musingly noted," which is a very questionable improvement. Camillo, missing Florigel from court, would naturally note his absence; and he may have mused over the causes of it, but there could be no necessity for musing to note the fact of his absence: and I cannot help thinking that the word missingly is more in Shakspeare's style.
I cannot subscribe at all to the alteration in p. 492. of the word "unrolled" to "enrolled." To be enrolled and placed in the book of virtue is very like tautology; but I conceive Shakspeare meant Autolycus to wish that his name might be unrolled from the company of thieves and gypsies with whom he was associated, and transferred to the book of virtue.
I am entirely at issue with the old corrector upon his emendation in p. 498.:
" . . . Nothing she does or seems,
But smacks of something greater than herself;"
he says, ought to be: "Nothing she does or says." And how does Mr. Collier explain this misprint? Why, by stating that formerly "says" was often written "saies." Now, I cannot for the life of me discover why the word "saies" should have been mistaken for "seems," any more than the word "says." But surely the phrase, "nothing she does or seems," is far more poetical and elegant than the other. It says in effect: there is nothing either in her acts or her carriage, "but smacks of something greater than herself." We have positive evidence, however, that the passage could not have been "nothing she does or says," viz. that this speech of Polixenes immediately follows a long dialogue between Florizel and Perdita, which could not have been overheard, because Camillo directly afterwards says to the king:
" . . . He tells her something,
That makes her blood look out."
Thereby clearly proving, that the king could not have been remarking on what she said.