Having exposed the condition in which our editor has left the text, we proceed to test his competency in another respect, by examining some of the emendations and explanations of doubtful passages which he proposes.  These are very few; but had they been even fewer, they had been too many.

Among the dramatis personae of the “Fawn,” as we said before, occurs “Granuffo, a silent lord.”  He speaks only once during the play, and that in the last scene.  In Act I., Scene 2, Gonzago says, speaking to Granuffo,—­

               “Now, sure, thou are a man
  Of a most learned scilence, and one whose words
  Have bin most pretious to me.”

This seems quite plain, but Mr. Halliwell annotates thus:—­“Scilence.—­Query, science? The common reading, silence, may, however, be what is intended.”  That the spelling should have troubled Mr. Halliwell is remarkable; for elsewhere we find “god-boy” for “good-bye,” “seace” for “cease,” “bodies” for “boddice,” “pollice” for “policy,” “pitittying” for “pitying,” “scence” for “sense,” “Misenzius” for “Mezentius,” “Ferazes” for “Ferrarese,”—­and plenty beside, equally odd.  That he should have doubted the meaning is no less strange; for on page 41 of the same play we read, “My Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know you’l say nothing,”—­on pp. 55-56, “This Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent discourse and never speaks,”—­and on p. 94, we find the following dialogue:—­

“Gon. My Lord Granuffo, this Fawne is an excellent fellow.

“Don. Silence.

“Gon. I warrant you for my lord here.”

In the same play (p. 44) are these lines.—­

            “I apt for love? 
  Let lazy idlenes, fild full of wine
  Heated with meates, high fedde with lustfull ease
  Goe dote on culler [color].  As for me, why, death a sence,
  I court the ladie?”

This is Mr. Halliwell’s note:—­“Death a sence.—­’Earth a sense,’ ed. 1633.  Mr. Dilke suggests:—­’For me, why, earth’s as sensible.’  The original is not necessarily corrupt.  It may mean,—­why, you might as well think Death was a sense, one of the senses.  See a like phrase at p. 77.”  What help we should get by thinking Death one of the senses, it would demand another Oedipus to unriddle.  Mr. Halliwell can astonish us no longer, but we are surprised at Mr. Dilke, the very competent editor of the “Old English Plays,” 1815.  From him we might have hoped for better things.  “Death o’ sense!” is an exclamation.  Throughout these volumes we find a for o’,—­as, “a clock” for “o’clock,” “a the side” for “o’ the side.”