"Shakspeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses the word causeless in its strict philosophical sense; cause being truly predicable only of phenomena,—that is, things natural, and not of noumena, or things supernatural."
It is, perhaps, rather curious, that although Mr. Collier, in his note on Lafeu's speech, has quoted the above from Mr. Coleridge, the improved pointing should have escaped that gentleman's notice.
Looking into Theobald's Shakspeare, I find that he also had placed the comma as Mr. Coleridge has. Mr. Theobald adds this note:
"This, as it has hitherto been printed, is directly opposite to our poet's and his speaker's meaning. As I have stopped it, the sense quadrates with the context: and surely it is one unalterable property of philosophy to make seeming strange and preternatural phenomena familiar and reducible to cause and reason."
Does not Mr. Theobald, in his closing remark, turn what in Lafeu is really an ironical outburst on would-be philosophers, into something like a serious common-place?
A. ROFFE.
Query, In a work entitled Philosophy of Shakspeare, by W.H. Roukin, Lafeu's speech is quoted, and one word changed; "and we have our philosophical persons," &c., becomes "yet we have," &c. Is there any authority for such a change?
A.R.