sting manuscript notice.

The sixth, done also by J. Eyre:

"Ye portraiture of one Master Ben Jonson, as on ye walls of Master Will
Shakspeare's rooms in Clinke Streete, Southwarke."--J. E. 1643.

The first three, in justice to Hollar, independent of the admirers of the
immortal bard and lovers of antiquities, should be engraved as "Facsimiles
of the Drawings." This shall be done on my receiving the names of sixty
subscribers, the amount of subscription one guinea, for which each
subscriber will receive three engravings, to be paid for when delivered.

P. T.

P. S.--These curious drawings may be seen at No. 1. Osnaburgh Place, New
Road.

_Thomas Shakspeare._--From a close examination of the documents referred to
(as bearing the signature of Thomas Shakspeare) in my last {546}
communication to "N. & Q.," Vol. vii., p. 405.), and from the _nature_ of
the _transaction_ to which they relate, _my impression_ is, that he was by
profession a money scrivener in the town of Lutterworth; a circumstance
which may possibly tend to the discovery of his family connexion (if any
existed) with William Shakspeare.

CHARLECOTE.

_Passage in Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5._--

" . . . Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the _blanket_ of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold!"

In MR. PAYNE COLLIER'S _Notes and Emendations_, p. 407., we are informed
that the old corrector substitutes _blankness_ for _blanket_. The change is
to me so exceedingly bad, even if made on some sort of authority (as an
extinct 4to.), that I should have let it be its own executioner, had not
MR. COLLIER apparently given in his adhesion to it. I now beg to offer a
few obvious reasons why _blanket_ is unquestionably Shakspeare's word.

In the _Rape of Lucrece_, Stanza CXV., we have a passage very nearly
parallel with that in _Macbeth_:

"O night, thou furnace of foul reeking smoke,
Let not the jealous day behold thy face,
Which underneath thy _black all-hiding cloak_,
Immodestly lies martyr'd with disgrace."

In _Lucrece_, the _cloak_ of night is invoked to screen a deed of adultery;
in _Macbeth_ the _blanket_ of night is invoked to hide a murder: but the
foul, reeking, smoky cloak of night, in the passage just quoted, is clearly
parallel with the smoky blanket of night in _Macbeth_. The complete imagery
of both passages has been happil