At the Hull meeting of the British Association, Mr. Russell, farmer, Kilwhiss, Fife, read a paper on "The Action of the Winds which veer from the South-west to West, and North-west to North." This he wound up by a reference to Shakspeare, which may be worthy of noting:
"In concluding, I cannot help remarking that this circuit of the wind from SW. by W. to NW. or N., from our insular position, imparts to our climate its fickleness and inconstancy. How often will our brightest sky become suffused by the blackest vapours on the slightest breach of SW. wind, and the clouds will then disappear as speedily as they formed, when the NW. upper current forces their stratum of moist air to rise and mingle with the dryer current above. I do not know who first noticed and recorded this change of the wind from SW. to NW., but the regularity of the phenomenon must teach us that the law which it obeys is part of a grand system, and invites us to trace its action. I do not think it will be out of place to point out the fact that the great English poet seems to have been quite familiar with this feature of our weather, not only in its most striking manifestations in the autumn and winter months, to which he especially refers, but even in its more pleasant aspects of summer. Shakspeare likens the wind in this shifting to an individual who pays his addresses in succession to two fair ones—first he wooes the North, but in courting that frigid beauty a difference takes place, whereupon he turns his back upon her and courts the fair South. You will observe the lines are specially applied to the winter season—
'And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning this face to the dew-dropping south.'
—I am not aware that the philosophic truth contained in these lines has ever before been pointed out. The beautiful lines which the poet, in his prodigality, put into the mouth of one of his gay frolicsome characters, the meaning of them he no doubt thought might have been understood by every one; but his commentators do not seem to have done so. In some editions turning his side has been put for face, which is feeble and unmeaning. And I do not think the recent emendation by Mr. Collier on the text is any improvement, where tide is substituted for face, which impairs both the beauty and harmony of the metaphor."
Anon.
A Word for "the Old Corrector."—Allow me, as an avowed enemy to "the Old Corrector's" novelties, render "the Great Unknown" one act of justice. I am convinced there are but two practically possible hypotheses, on which to account for the MS. emendations: either the emendations were for the most part made from some authoritative document, or they are parts of a modern fabrication. No third supposition can be reasonably maintained. Mr. Knight's view, for example, gives no account of the immense number of coincidences with the conjectural emendations of the commentators. Whichever of the two hypotheses be the true one, I need hardly say that Mr. Collier's name is a sufficient guarantee for all honorable dealing, so far as he is connected with the MS. corrections.
Permit me farther to do an act of justice to Mr. Collier himself. In my note on a passage in The Tempest, I stated that Mr. Collier had overlooked a parallel passage in Richard II. It was I who had overlooked Mr. Collier's supplemental note. However, I must add, that how Mr. Collier could persuade himself to print heat for "cheek," in his "monovolume edition," after he had seen the passage in Richard II., is utterly beyond my power of comprehension.
C. Mansfield Ingleby.
Birmingham.