‘Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish.’”

Other editors had retained “trenchering,” but none, that we know, ever gave so good a reason for it.  Equally good is his justification of himself for omitting Theobald’s interpolation of “Did she nod?” in “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” Act i.  Sc. 1.  Other examples may be found in the readings, “There is a lady of Verona here,” (same play, Act iii.  Sc. 1); “Yet reason dares her on,” (Measure for Measure, Act iv.  Sc. 4); “Hark, how the villain would glose now,” (same play, Act v.  Sc. 1); “The forced fallacy,” (Comedy of Errors, Act ii.  Sc. 1); in the note on “Cupid is a good hare-finder,” (Much Ado, Act i.  Sc. 3); the admirable note on “Examine those men,” (same play, Act iii.  Sc. 1); the readings, “Out on thee!  Seeming!” (same play, Act iv.  Sc. 1); “For I have only silent been,” (ibid.); “Goodly Count-Confect,” and note, (same play, Act iv.  Sc. 2); the note on “I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy,” (Love’s Labor’s Lost, Act v.  Sc. 1); on “Mounsieur Cobweb,” and “Help Cavalery Cobweb to scratch,” (Mid.  Night’s D., Act iv.  Sc. 1); on “Or in the night,” etc. (same play, Act v.  Sc. 1); on “Is sum of nothing,” (Merchant of Venice, Act iii.  Sc. 2); on “Stays me here at home unkept,” (As you like it, Act i.  Sc. 1); on “Unquestionable spirit,” (same play, Act iii.  Sc. 2); on “Move the still-piecing air,” (All’s Well, etc., Act ii.  Sc. 2); and on “What is not holy,” (same play, Act iv.  Sc. 2).  We have referred to a few only out of the many instances that have attracted our notice, and these chiefly for their bearing on what we have said of the editor’s refinement of appreciation and originality of view.  The merely illustrative and explanatory notes are also full and judicious, containing all that it is important the reader should know, and a great deal which it will entertain him to learn.  In the Introductions to the several plays, too, we find many obiter dicta of Mr. White which are excellent in their clearness of critical perception and conciseness of phrase.  From that to the “Comedy of Errors” we quote the following sentence:—­

“Concerning the place and the period of the action of this play, it seems that Shakspeare did not trouble himself to form a very accurate idea.  The Ephesus of “The Comedy of Errors” is much like the Bohemia of “The Winter’s Tale,”—­a remote, unknown place, yet with a familiar and imposing name, and therefore well suited to the purposes of one who, as poet and dramatist, cared much for men and little for things, and to whose perception the accidental was entirely eclipsed by the essential.  Anachronisms are scattered through it with a profusion which could only be the result of entire indifference,—­in fact, of an absolute want of thought on the subject.”—­Vol.  III. 189.