ic tradition in
others, might have preserved amongst the _habitues_ of a particular
theatre. In Mr P. Collier's case, if I recollect rightly, it was the
_First_ Folio (_i. e._, by much the best); in this American case, I
think it is the _Third_ Folio (about the worst) which had received the
corrections. But, however this may be, there are two literary
_collaborateurs_ concerned in each of these parallel cases--namely,
first, the original collector (possibly author) of the various readings,
who lived and died probably within the seventeenth century; and,
secondly, the modern editor, who stations himself as a repeating
frigate that he may report and pass onwards these marginal variations to
us of the nineteenth century.

[7] Written in 1856. H.

COR. for _Corrector_, is the shorthand designation by which I have
distinguished the _first_; REP. for _Reporter_ designates the other. My
wish and purpose is to extract all such variations of the text as seem
to have any claim to preservation, or even, to a momentary
consideration. But in justice to myself, and in apology for the hurried
way in which the several parts of this little memorandum are brought
into any mimicry of order and succession, I think it right to say that
my documents are all dispersed into alien and distant quarters; so that
I am reduced into dependence upon my own unassisted memory.

[THE TEMPEST. _Act I. Scene 1._

'Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd
Some tricks of desperation.'

COR. here substitutes, 'But felt a fever of the _mind_:' which substitution
strikes me as entirely for the worse; 'a fever of the mad' is such a fever
as customarily attacks the delirious, and all who have lost the control of
their reasoning faculties.

[_Ibid._

'O dear father,
Make not too rash a trial of him; for
He's gentle, and not fearful.'

Upon this the _Reporter's_ remark is, that 'If we take _fearful_ in its
common acceptation of _timorous_, the proposed change renders the passage
clearer;' but that, if we take the word _fearful_ in its rarer
signification of _that which excites terror_, 'no alteration is needed.'
Certainly: none _is_ needed; for the mistake (as _I_ regard it) of REP. lies
simply in supposing the passive sense of _fearful_--namely, that which
_suffers_ fear--to be the ordinary sense; which now, in the nineteenth
century, it is; but was _not_ in the age of Sha