who appealed
from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety"
(_Antiquary_, x.). This "philosopher" was a poor old woman.

SHAKESPEARE. _Althaea and the Fire-brand_. Shakespeare says, (_Henry
IV_. act ii. sc. 2) that "Althaea dreamt that she was delivered of a
fire-brand." It was not Althaea, but Hecuba, who dreamed, a little
before Paris was born, that her offspring was a brand that consumed
the kingdom. The tale of Althaea is, that the Fates laid a log of wood
on a fire, and told her that her son would live till that log was
consumed; whereupon she snatched up the log and kept it from the fire,
till one day her son Melea'ger offended her, when she flung the log on
the fire, and her son died, as the Fates predicted.

_Bohemia's Coast_. In the _Winter's Tale_ the vessel bearing the
infant Perdita is "driven by storm on the coast of Bohemia;" but
Bohemia has no seaboard at all.

In _Coriolanus_, Shakespeare makes Volumnia the mother, and Virgilia
the wife, of Coriolanus; but his _wife_ was Volumnia, and his _mother_
Veturia.

_Delphi an Island_. In the same drama (act iii. sc. 1) Delphi is
spoken of as an island; but Delphi is a city of Phocis, containing a
temple to Apollo. It is no island at all.

_Duncan's Murder_. Macbeth did not murder Duncan in the castle of
Inverness, as stated in the play, but at "the smith's house," near
Elgin (1039).

_Elsinore_. Shakespeare speaks of the beetling cliff of Elsinore,
whereas Elsinore has no cliffs at all.

What if it [_the ghost_] tempt you toward the flood.
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er its base into the sea?

_Hamlet_, act i. sc. 4.

_The Ghost_, in _Hamlet_, is evidently a Roman Catholic; he talks of
purgatory, absolution, and other Catholic dogmas; but the Danes at the
time were pagans.

_St. Louis_. Shakespeare, in _Henry V_. act i. sc. 2, calls Louis X.
"St. Louis," but "St. Louis" was Louis IX. It was Louis IX. whose
"grandmother was Isabel," issue of Charles de Lorraine, the last of
the Carlovingians. Louis X. was the son of Philippe IV. (_le Bel_) and
grandson of Philippe III. and "Isabel of Aragon," not Isabel, "heir of
Capet of the line of Charles the duke of Lorain."

_Macbeth_ was no tyrant, as Shakespeare makes him out to be, but a
firm and equitable prince, whose title to the throne was better than
that of Duncan.

Again, _Macbeth_ was not slain by Macduff at Dunsin'ane, but made his
escape from