that slips beside his chair falls as a taylor squats upon his board. The Oxford editor and Dr. Warburton after him, read _and rails or cries_, plausibly, but I believe not rightly. Besides, the trick of the fairy is represented as producing rather merriment than anger. II.i.56 (26,9) [And waxen] And _encrease_, as the _moon waxes_. II.i.58 (26,1) [But room, Faery] All the old copies read--_But room Fairy_. The word Fairy or Faery, was sometimes of three syllables, as often in Spenser. II.i.84 (28,5) [paved fountain] A fountain laid round the edge with stone. II.i.88 (28,6) [the winds, piping] So Milton, _While rocking winds are piping loud._ II.i.91 (28,7) [pelting river] Thus the quarto's: the folio reads _petty_. Shakespeare has in Lear the same word, _low pelting farms_. The meaning is plainly, _despicable, mean, sorry, wretched_; but as it is a word without any reasonable etymology, I should be glad to dismiss it for _petty_, yet it is undoubtedly right. We have _petty pelting officer_ in Measure for Measure. II.i.92 (28,8) [over-born their continents] Born down the banks that contained then. So in Lear, _Close pent guilts Rive their concealing_ continents. II.i.98 (29,1) [The nine-men's morris] This was some kind of rural game played in a marked ground. But what it was more I have not found. II.i.100 (29,2) [The human mortals want their winter here] After all the endeavours of the editors, this passage still remains to me unintelligible. I cannot see why winter is, in the general confusion of the year now described, more wanted than any other season. Dr. Warburton observes that he alludes to our practice of singing carols in December; but though Shakespeare is no great chronologer in his dramas, I think he has never so mingled true and false religion, as to give us reason for believing that he would make the moon incensed for the omission of our carols. I therefore imagine him to have meant heathen rites of adoration. This is not all the difficulty. Titania's account of this calamity is not sufficiently consequential. _Men find no winter_, therefore they sing no hymns; the moon provoked by this omission, alters the seasons: that is, the alteration of the seasons produces the alteration of the seasons. I am far from supposing that Shakespeare might not sometimes think confusedly, and therefore am not sure that the passage is corrupted. If we should read, _And human mortals want their_ wonted year, yet will not this licence of alteration much mend the narrative; the cause and the effect are still confounded. Let us carry critical temerity a little further. Scaliger transposed the lines of Virgil's Gallus. Why may not the same experiment be ventured upon Shakespeare.