To whomsoever these initials belong, he is a man of so much acuteness and learning, that, although I may deem his conjectures rather subtle and ingenious than solid and expedient, I consider him entitled to all the information in my power. I do not, of course, feel bound to notice all anonymous speculators (literary or pecuniary); but if A. E. B. will be good enough to take the trouble to repeat his interrogatory, I promise him to answer it at once. My recent volume was put together with some rapidity, and under many disadvantages: not a few of the later sheets were corrected, and several of them written, two hundred miles from home. Such was the case with the note on the suggestion I hastily attributed to MR. CORNISH, on the faith of his letter in "N. & Q." I did not advert to the circumstance that Warburton had proposed the same emendation; and it may turn out that a few other notes by me are in the same predicament. The authority I usually consulted as to the conjectures of previous editors was the _Variorum Shakspeare_, in twenty-one volumes 8vo. I need hardly add that I was acquainted with the fact that MR. SINGER had published an edition of Shakspeare; but, like some others, it was not before me when I wrote my recent volume, nor when I printed the eight volumes to which that is a supplement. Even the British Museum does not contain all the impressions of the works of our great dramatist; but I resorted, more or less, to twenty or thirty of them in the progress of my undertaking. MR. SINGER'S edition, no doubt, deserves more than the praise he has given to it: on the other hand, I am thoroughly sensible of the imperfectness of my own labours, however anxious I was to avoid mistakes; and when I prepare a new impression, I will not fail duly to acknowledge the obligations of Shakspeare to MR. SINGER. One of my notes on a celebrated passage in _Timon of Athens_ will have shown that there was no reluctance on my part to give MR. SINGER full credit for a very happy emendation. I hope and believe that he does not participate in the anger some have expressed, because I have been merely the medium of making known other emendations at least equally felicitous. J. PAYNE COLLIER. Torquay. * * * * * THE PASSAMEZZO GALLIARD. (Vol. vi., p. 311.) The passage quoted by _Mr. Forbes_ from Richard Ligon's _History of Barbadoes_, in illustration of a scene in the 2nd Part of _King Henry IV._, was pointed out by Sir John Hawkins in his _History of Music_ (Vol. iii. p. 383., note). For "passame sares galiard," as it stands in Ligon, we should read "passamezzo galliard." Sir John Hawkins derives _passamezzo_ from _passer_, to walk, and _mezzo_, the middle or half. The term is variously corrupted by the English poets and dramatists,--_passy-measure_, _passa-measure_, _passing-measure_, &c. Douce, in his valuable _Illustrations of Shakspeare_ (edit. 1839, p. 72.), has the following passage on the subject: