The curious point, of whose they are, may test the science of decipherers of palimpsest manuscripts; the more weighty one, of what they are worth, remains, as it was from the first, a matter on which every student of Shakspeare may arrive at some conclusion for himself.  And, indeed, to this ground of judgment Mr. Collier himself appeals, in his preface to the “Notes and Emendations,” in no less emphatic terms than the following:—­“As Shakspeare was especially the poet of common life, so he was emphatically the poet of common sense; and to the verdict of common sense I am willing to submit all the more material alterations recommended on the authority before me.”

I take “The Tempest,” the first play in Mr. Collier’s volume of “Notes and Emendations,” and, while bestowing my principal attention on the inherent worth of the several new readings, shall point out where they tally exactly with the text of the Oxford edition, because that circumstance has excited little attention in the midst of the other various elements of interest in the controversy, and also because I have it in my power to give from a copy of that edition in my possession some passages corrected by John and Charles Kemble, who brought to the study of the text considerable knowledge of it and no inconsiderable ability for poetical and dramatic criticism.

In the first scene of the first act of “The Tempest” Mr. Collier gives the line,—­

  “Good Boatswain, have care,”—­

adding, “It may be just worth remark, that the colloquial expression is have a care, and a is inserted in the margin of the corrected folio, 1632, to indicate, probably, that the poet so wrote it, or, at all events, that the actor so delivered it.”

In the copy of Hanmer in my possession the a is also inserted in the margin, upon the authority of one of the eminent actors above mentioned.

SCENE II.

  “The sky. it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
  But that the sea, mounting to the welkin’s cheek,
  Dashes the fire out.”

The manuscript corrector of the folio, 1632, has substituted heat for “cheek,” which appears to me an alteration of no value whatever.  Shakspeare was more likely to have written cheek than heat; for elsewhere he uses the expression, “Heaven’s face,” “the welkin’s face,” and, though irregular, the expression is poetical.

At Miranda’s exclamation,—­

  “A brave vessel,
  Who had no doubt some noble creature in her,
  Dash’d all to pieces,”—­

Mr. Collier does Theobald the justice to observe, that he, as well as the corrector of the folio, 1632, adds the necessary letter s to the word “creature,” making the plural substantive agree with her other exclamation of, “Poor souls, they perished!”

Where Mr. Collier, upon the authority of his folio, substitutes prevision for “provision” in the lines of Prospero,—­