"An embarrassment meets us in the very outset of Measure for Measure,—where the Duke, addressing Escalus, observes, in the ordinary reading:
"'Of government the properties to unfold
Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse;
Since I am put to know, that your own science
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice
My strength can give you: then, no more remains,
But that to your sufficiency as your worth is able,
And let them work.'
—The meaning is pretty evident; but the expression of that meaning is obscure and corrupt,—as indeed the measure alone would establish. Various conjectural modes of setting the passage right have been proposed; and perhaps what follows from my corrected folio of 1632 has no better foundation,—but, at all events, it restores both the sense and the metre, and may, for aught we know, give the very words of Shakspeare:
"'Of government the properties to unfold
Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse;
Since I am apt to know, that your own science
Exceeds (in that) the lists of all advice
My strength can give you; Then, no more remains
But add to your sufficiency your worth,
And let them work.'
—How 'that' in the old editions came to be printed for add and how 'is able' came to be foisted in, most unnecessarily and awkwardly, at the end of the same line, it is not easy to explain. The third line is also much cleared by the substitution of apt for 'put,'—which was an easy misprint: 'Apt to know' is an expression of every-day occurrence."
Sir James Stephen, whose excellent Lectures on the History of France have been so well received, proposes to deliver, at Cambridge, a series of twenty lectures on the Diplomatic History of France during the reign of Louis XIV., comprising a review of the treaties of Westphalia, of the Pyrenees, of Breda, of the Triple Alliance, of Aix-la-Chapelle, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, and of Utrecht.
Miss Charlotte Vandenhoff, whose professional tour in the United States will be remembered by old play-goers, has written a piece under the title of Woman's Heart, possessing considerable poetical merits, and herself sustained the character of the heroine in its representation.