kingdom who is not occasionally able to throw light upon some of the multifarious objects which are discussed in our pages. At the end of our first twelvemonth we thank our subscribers for the patronage we have received. We trust we shall go on week by week improving in our work of usefulness, so that at the end of the next twelvemonth we may meet them with the same pleasure as on the present occasion. We will continue to do whatever is in our power, and we rely upon our friends to help us. * * * * * SHAKSPEARE'S USE OF THE WORDS "CAPTIOUS" AND "INTENIBLE." In the following passage of _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act i. Sc. 3., where Helena is confessing to Bertram's mother, the Countess, her love for him, these two words occur in an unusual sense, if not in a sense peculiar to the great poet:-- "I love your son:-- My friends were poor, but honest, so's my love: Be not offended, for it hurts not him, That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him till I do deserve him: Yet never know how that desert may be. I know I love in vain; strive against hope; Yet, in this _captious and intenible_ sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still." Johnson was perplexed about the word _captious_; "which (says he) I never found in this sense, yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless _carious_ for rotten!" Farmer supposed _captious_ to be a contraction of _capacious_! Steevens believed that _captious_ meant _recipient_, capable of receiving; which interpretation Malone adopts. Mr. Collier, in his recent edition of Shakspeare, after stating Johnson's and Farmer's suggestions, says, "where is the difficulty? It is true that this sense of _captious_ may not have an exact parallel; but the intention of Shakspeare is very evident: _captious_ means, as Malone says, capable of _taking_ or _receiving_; and _intenible_ (printed _intemible_ in the first folio, and rightly in the second) incapable of _retaining_. Two more appropriate epithets could hardly be found, and a simile more happily expressive." We no doubt all know, by intuition as it were, what Shakspeare meant; but "the great master of English," as MR. HICKSON very justly calls him, would never have used _captious_, as applied figuratively to a _sieve_, for _capable of taking or receiving_. _Intenible_, notwithstanding the hypercriticism of Mr. Nares (that "it is incorrectly used by Shakspeare for _unable to hold_;" and that "it should properly mean _not to be held_, as we now use _untenable_") was undoubtedly used in the former sense, and it was most probably so accepted in the poet's time; for in the _Glossagraphia Anglicana Nova_, 1719, we have "Untenable, that _will not or cannot hold_ or be holden long."