The temptation which too easily besets an editor of Shakspeare is to differ, if possible, from everybody who has gone before him, though but as between the N.E. and N.N.E. points in the circumference of a hair. We do not find Mr. White guilty in this respect for what he has done, but sometimes for what he has left undone in allowing the Folio text to remain. The instance that has surprised us most is his not admitting (_As You Like it_, Act iv. Sc. 1) the reading,--"The foolish _coroners_ of that age found it was Hero of Sestos," instead of the unmeaning one, "_chroniclers_." He has been forced, for the sake of sense, to make some changes in the Folio text which seem to us quite as violent, and we cannot help thinking that the gain in aptness of phrase and coherence of meaning would have justified him in doing as much here. He admits, in his note on the passage, that the change is "very plausible"; but adds, "If we can at will reduce a perfectly appropriate and uncorrupted word of ten letters to one of eight, and strike out such marked letters as _h_, _l_, and _e_, we may re-write Shakspeare at our pleasure." Mr. White has already admitted that "_chroniclers_" is not _perfectly_ appropriate in admitting that the change is "very plausible"; and he has no right to assume that the word is uncorrupted,--for that is the very point in question. As to the disparity in the number of letters, no one familiar with misprints will be surprised at it; and Mr. Spedding, in the edition of Bacon already referred to, furnishes us with an example of blunder[E] precisely the reverse, in which one word of eight letters is given for two of ten, (_sciences_ for _six princess_,)--the printer in both cases having set up his first impression of what the word was for the word itself. Had this occurred in Shakspeare, instead of Bacon, we should have had a series of _variorum_ notes like this:-- [Footnote E: Bacon's Works, by Ellis, Spedding, & Heath. Vol. III. p. 303, _note_.] "That _sixpence_ was the word used by our author scarcely admits of doubt. From a number of parallel passages we select the following:-- 'Live on _sixpence_ a day, and earn it.'--_Abernethy_. 'I give thee sixpence? I will see thee and-so-forthed first!'--_Canning_. 'Be shot for _sixpence_ on a battlefield.'--_Tennyson_. 'Half a crown, two shillings and _sixpence_.'--_Niemand's Dictionary_. Moreover, we find our author using precisely the same word in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream':-- 'Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life.'" JONES.