``Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
   To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
   This sensible warm motion to become
   A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
   To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
   In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
   To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
   And blown with restless violence round about
   The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
   Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
   Imagine howling!—­’tis too horrible! 
   The weariest and most loathed worldly life
   That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
   Can lay on nature, is a paradise
   To what we fear of death.’’
               Measure for Measure, act iii., sc. 1.

We have here, in the expression ``delighted spirit,’’ a difficulty which none of the commentators have as yet been able to explain.  Warburton said that the adjective meant ``accustomed to ease and delights,’’ but this was not a very successful guess, although Steevens adopted it.  Sir Thomas Hanmer altered delighted to dilated, and Dr. Johnson p 115mentions two suggested emendations, one being benighted and the other delinquent.  None of these suggestions can be corroborated by a reference to the plans of the printers’ cases, but it will be seen that the one now proposed is much strengthened by the position of the boxes in those plans.  The suggested word is deleted, which accurately describes the spirits as destroyed, or blotted out of existence.  The word is common in the printing office, and it was often used in literature.

If we think only of the recognised spelling of the word delighted we shall find that there are three letters to alter, but if we take the older spelling, delited, the change is very easily made, for it will be noticed that the letters in the i box might easily tumble over into the e box.

There is a very curious description of hell in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, where the author speaks of ``deformed spirits’’ who leap from excess of heat to cutting cold, and it is not improbable that Shakespeare may have had this passage in his p 116mind when he put these words into the mouth of Claudio.[10]

[10] An article on this point will be found in The Antiquary, vol. viii. (1883), p. 200.

It is taken for granted that the compositor is not likely to put his hand into the wrong box, so that if a wrong letter is used, it must have fallen out of its place.

An important class of misprints owes its origin to this misplacement; but, as noticed by Mr. Blades, there are other classes, such as misspellings caused by the compositor’s ignorance or misunderstanding.  We must remember that the printer has to work fast, and if he does not recognise a word he is very likely to turn it into something he does understand.  Thus the title of a paper in the Philosophical