If the reader wants more examples, let him give himself the trouble to open the first book that comes to hand, and I dare say the perusal of a dozen pages will supply some; yet have we two editors of Shakspeare, Johnson and Collier, so unacquainted with the usage of their own tongue, and the universal logic of thought, as not to know that a word like _contents_, according as it is understood collectively or distributively, may be, and, as we have just seen, in fact is, treated as a singular or plural; that, I say, _contents_ taken severally, every _content_, or in gross, the whole mass, is respectively plural or singular. It was therefore optional with Shakspeare to employ the word either as a singular or plural, but not in the same sentence to do both: here, however, he was tied {121} to the singular, for, wanting a rhyme to _contents_, the nominative to _presents_ must be singular, and that nominative was the pronoun of _contents_. Since, therefore, the plural _die_ and the singular _it_ could not both be referable to the same noun _contents_, by silently substituting _die_ for _dies_, MR. COLLIER has blinded his reader and wronged his author. The purport of the passage amounts to this: the _contents_, or structure (to wit, of the show to be exhibited), breaks down in the performer's zeal to the subject which it presents. Johnson very properly adduces a much happier expression of the same thought from _A Midsummer Night's Dreame_: "_Hip._ I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged; And duty in his service perishing." The reader cannot fail to have observed the faultless punctuation of the Folios in the forecited passage, and I think concur with me, that like many, ay, most others, all it craves at the hands of editors and commentators is, to be left alone. The last two lines ask for no explanation even to the blankest mind. Words like _contents_ are by no means rare in English. We have _tidings_ and _news_, both singular and plural. MR. COLLIER himself rebukes Malone for his ignorance of such usage of the latter word. If it be said that these two examples have no singular form, whereas _contents_ has, there is _means_, at any rate precisely analogous. On the other hand, so capricious is language, in defiance of the logic of thought, we have, if I may so term it, a merely auricular plural, in the word _corpse_ referred to a single carcase.