There is division, Although as yet the face of it is cover'd with mutual cunning, 'twixt Albany and Cornwall; _Who have (as who have not, whom their great stars Throne and set high?) servants, who seem no less; Which are to France the spies and speculations Intelligent of our state. What hath been seen, Either in snuffs and packings of the dukes; Or the hard rein, which both of them have borne Against the old kind king; or something deeper, Whereof, perchance, these are but furnishings._ [But, true it is, from France there comes a power Into this scatter'd kingdom; who already, Wise in our negligence, have secret fee In some of our best ports, and are at point To shew their open banner.--Now to you:]] The true state of this speech cannot from all these notes be discovered. As it now stands it is collected from two editions: the lines which I have distinguished by Italics are found in the folio, not in the quarto; the following lines inclosed in crotchets are in the quarto, not in the folio. So that if the speech be read with omissions of the Italics, it will stand according to the first edition; and if the Italics are read, and the lines that follow them omitted, it will then stand according to the second. The speech is now tedious, because it is formed by a coalition of both. The second edition is generally best, and was probably nearest to Shakespeare's last copy, but in this passage the first is preferable; for in the folio, the messenger is sent, he knows not why, he knows not whither. I suppose Shakespeare thought his plot opened rather too early, and made the alteration to veil the event from the audience; but trusting too much to himself, and full of a single purpose, he did not accommodate his new lines to the rest of the scene.--The learned critic's [Warburton] emendations are now to be examined. _Scattered_ he has changed to _scathed_; for _scattered_, he says, gives _the idea of an anarchy, which was not the case_. It may be replied that _scathed_ gives the idea of ruin, waste, and desolation, _which was not the case_. It is unworthy a lover of truth, in questions of great or little moment, to exaggerate or extenuate for mere convenience, or for vanity yet less than convenience. _Scattered_ naturally means _divided, unsettled, disunited_.--Next is offered with great pomp a change of _sea_ to _seize_; but in the first edition the word is _fee_, for _hire_, in the sense of having any one in _fee_, that is, at _devotion for money_. _Fee_ is in the second quarto changed to _see_, from which one made _sea_ and another _seize_. III.ii.4 (398,1) thought-executing] Doing execution with rapidity equal to thought. III.ii.19 (399,4) Here I stand, your slave] [W: brave] The meaning is plain enough, he was not their _slave_ by right or compact, but by necessity and compulsion. Why should a passage be darkened for the sake of changing it? Besides, of _brave_ in that sense I remember no example.