’Live on sixpence a day, and earn it.’—­Abernethy.

’I give thee sixpence?  I will see thee and-so-forthed first!’—­Canning.

’Be shot for sixpence on a battlefield.’—­Tennyson.

’Half a crown, two shillings and sixpence.’—­Niemand’s Dictionary.

Moreover, we find our author using precisely the same word in the ’Midsummer Night’s Dream’:—­

‘Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life.’” JONES.

“Had the passage read ‘two princes,’ we might have thought it genuine; since ‘the two kings of Brentford’ must have been familiar to our great poet, and he was also likely to have that number deeply impressed on his mind by the awful tragedy in the tower, (see Richard the Third,) where, it is remarkable, precisely that number of royal offspring suffered at the hands of the crook-backed tyrant.  The citation from Niemand’s Dictionary, by the Rev. Mr. Jones, tells as much in favor of two princes as of sixpence; for how could the miseries of a divided empire be more emphatically portrayed than in the striking, and, as it seems to me, touching phrase, HALF a crown? Could we in any way read ‘three princes,’ we should find strong support in the tradition of ‘the three kings of Cologne,’ and in the Arabian story of the ’Three Calenders.’  The line quoted by Thomson, (Shakspeare, by Thomson, Vol.  X. p. 701.) ‘Under which King Bezonian, speak or die!’ (though we agree with him in preferring his pointing to the ordinary and meaningless ‘Under which King, Bezonian,’ etc.) unhappily can throw no light on the present passage till we know how many King Bezonians are intended, and who they were.  Perhaps we should read Belzonian, and suppose a reference to the Egyptian monarchs whose tombs were first explored by the intrepid Belzoni.  The epithet would certainly be appropriate and in Shakspeare’s best manner; but among so many monarchs, a choice of two, or even three, would be embarrassing and invidious.”  BROWN.

“As for the ‘Three Calenders,’ there can be no reasonable question that Shakspeare was well acquainted with the story; for that he had travelled extensively in the East I have proved in my ’Essay to show that Sir Thomas Roe and William Shakspeare were identical’; and that he was familiar with the Oriental languages must be apparent to any one who has read my note on ‘Concolinel’ (Love’s Labor’s Lost, Act iii.  Sc. 1).  But that ‘six princes’ is the true reading is clear from the parallel passage in “Richard the Third,” which I am surprised that the usually accurate Mr. Brown should have overlooked,—­’Methinks there be Six Richmonds in the field.’” ROBINSON.