As another illustration of the careless or superficial manner in which the meaning of Shakspeare has been sought, allow me to call attention to the celebrated passage in the _Tempest_ in which the word "rack" occurs. The passage really presents no difficulty; and the meaning of the word, as it appears to me, might as well be settled at once and for ever. I make this assertion, not dogmatically, but with the view of testing the correctness of my opinion, that this is not at all a question of etymology, but entirely one of construction. The passage reads as follows:-- "These, our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabrick of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant, faded, Leave not a rack behind."--_Tempest_, Act IV. Sc. 1. As I have expressed my opinion that this is not at all a question of etymology, I shall not say more in reference to this view of the case than that "rack," spelt as in Shakspeare, is a word in popular and every-day use in the phrase "rack and ruin;" that we have it in the term "rack off," as applied to wine, meaning _to take from the rack_, or, in other words, "to leave a rack" or _refuse_ "behind," racked wine being wine drawn from the lees; and that it is, I believe, still in use in parts of England, meaning _remains_ or _refuse_, as, in the low German, "der Wraek" means the same thing. Misled, however, by an unusual mode of spelling, and unacquainted with the literature of Shakspeare's age, certain of the commentators suggested the readings of _track_ and _trace_; whereupon Horne Tooke remarks:-- "The ignorance and presumption of his commentators have shamefully disfigured Shakspeare's text. The first folio, notwithstanding some few palpable misprints, requires none of their alterations. Had they understood English as well as he did, they would not have quarrelled with his language."--_Diversions of Purley_, p. 595.