"Such a person,
Whose creadit with the judge, or owne great place,
Could fetch your brother from the manacles
Of the all-building law."
The word building has always been a stumbling-block to editors. Johnson first proposed to read binding, and his successors have adopted it, and such is now the generally received reading. Mr. Collier's old corrector is also in favour of the same change. I have always felt convinced, however, that building was the word which Shakspeare wrote. That which answers to it in the A.-S. is bytling, bytleing, a building; bytlian, to build; which are inflected from byth, biotul, a hammer or mallet (whence our beetle); so that the strict meaning of the verb is firmare, confirmare, to fasten, close, or bind together. This will give much the same meaning to building as that implied in the proposed substitute binding.
Not having met with the word used in this peculiar sense by any old writer, I could not venture to maintain the reading of the folio on these grounds, which I have just mentioned, alone. At length, however, I have been successful, and I am now able to quote a passage from a work published very shortly before this play, entitled:
"The Jewel House of Art and Nature", &c., "faithfully and familiarly set downe according to the Author's owne experience, by Hugh Platte, of Lincoln's Inne, gentleman. London, 1594."
in which this word building is used in precisely the same sense as that which I defend. In "the Preface of the Author," the following passage occurs:
"I made a condicionall promise of some farther discouerie in arteficiall conceipts, then either my health or leisure would then permit: I am now resolued (notwithstanding the vnkind acceptation of my first fruits, which then I feared and hath since falne out, is a sufficient release in law of the condition) to make the same in some sort absolute (though not altogether according to the fulnesse of my first purpose), and to become a building word unto me."
I apprehend that this parallel instance is all that is wanting to preserve, for the future, the reading of the first folio unimpaired.