“Horatio.—­While they, distill’d
  Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
  Stand dumb, and speak not to him!”

We had been accustomed to find no great difficulty here:  the words seemed, to us, at least, to express the usual effect of inordinate terror—­but we gladly acknowledge our mistake.  “The passage is not to be understood.”  How should it, when both the pointing and the language are corrupt?  Read, as Shakespeare gave it—­

 —­“While they bestill’d
  Almost to gelee with the act.  Of fear
  Stand dumb,” &c.—­that is, petrified (or rather icefied) p. 13.

  “Lear.  And my poor fool is hang’d!”

With these homely words, which burst from the poor old king on reverting to the fate of his loved Cordelia, whom he then holds in his arms, we have been always deeply affected, and therefore set them down as one of the thousand proofs of the poet’s intimate knowledge of the human heart.  But Mr. Becket has made us ashamed of our simplicity and our tears.  Shakespeare had no such “lenten” language in his thoughts; he wrote, as Mr. Becket tells us,

  “And my pure soot is hang’d!”

Poor, he adds, might be easily mistaken for pure; while the s in soot (sweet) was scarcely discernible from the f, or the t from the l.—­p. 176.

We are happy to find that so much can be offered in favour of the old printers.  And yet—­were it not that the genuine text is always to be preferred—­we could almost wish that the critic had left their blunder as it stood.

  “Wolsey.—­that his bones
  May have a tomb of orphans’ tears wept on them.”

  A tomb of tears is ridiculous.  I read—­a coomb of tears—­a coomb
  is a liquid measure containing forty gallons.  Thus the expression,
  which was before absurd, becomes forcible and just.—­vol. ii, p. 134.

It does indeed!

“Sir Andrew.  I sent thee six-pence for thy leman (mistress):  had’st it?” Read as Shakespeare wrote:  “I sent thee sixpence for thy lemma”—­lemma is properly an argument, or proposition assumed, and is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a story.—­p. 335.

  “Viola.  She pined in thought,
  And with a green and yellow melancholy.”—­Correct it thus: 

  “She pined in thought
  And with agrein and hollow melancholy.”—­p. 339.

  “Iago.  I have rubb’d this young quat almost to the sense,
  And he grows angry”—­

that is, or rather was, according to our homely apprehension, I have rubb’d this pimple (Roderigo) almost to bleeding:—­but, no; Mr. Becket has furnished us not only with the genuine words, but the meaning of Shakespeare—­