Mr. Collier never once refers to Jackson. Mr. Singer, however, talks familiarly about Jackson, in his Shakspeare Vindicated, as if he had him at his fingers' ends; and yet, at page 239., he favours the world with an original emendation (viz. "He did behood his anger," Timon, Act III. Sc. 1.), which, however, will be found at page 389. of Jackson's book. I may be in error, but I cannot but think such ignorance, on the part of professional Shakspearians, very culpable.
C. Mansfield Ingleby.
Birmingham.
On Three Passages in "Measure for Measure."—I have to crave a small space in your columns, which have already done much good service for the text of Shakspeare, to make a very few remarks on three passages in the play of Measure for Measure. It is no sweeping change of reading that I am about to advocate, nor, as I think, anything over ingenious; inasmuch as, in two of the passages in question, I propose to defend the reading of the first folio, which, I contend, has been departed from unnecessarily; while, in the third, I suggest the simple change of an f into an s.
In Act II. Sc. 4., these lines occur in Angelo's soliloquy, in my folio of 1623:
"The state whereon I studied
Is like a good thing, being often read,
Growne feard and tedious."
Mr. Knight, and other editors, read feard, as in the original, but give no explanation; though such a strange epithet would seem to require one. I propose to read seared, i.e. dry, the opposite of fresh. This, as the saying is, "requires," I think, "only to be pointed out to be admitted."
Lower down in the same scene we find the following passage, in one of Angelo's addresses to Isabel: