The London _Athenæum_ contains a very interesting letter from Mr. PAYNE COLLIER, in which he gives an account of the discovery of a copy of the second folio edition of Shakspeare, with numerous important corrections of the text, apparently by some learned contemporary actor, whose memory of parts, or access to original MSS., enabled him to restore all the readings vitiated by careless transcription or printing. Mr. Collier has such faith in these _errata_ that he does not hesitate to avow that he would have adopted a large portion of them in his own edition of Shakspeare, had they been known to him when that was printed. Of the several instances he offers, this will serve as a specimen: "An embarrassment meets us in the very outset of _Measure for Measure_,--where the Duke, addressing Escalus, observes, in the ordinary reading: "'Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse; Since I am put to know, that your own science Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you: then, no more remains, But that to your sufficiency as your worth is able, And let them work.' --The meaning is pretty evident; but the expression of that meaning is obscure and corrupt,--as indeed the measure alone would establish. Various conjectural modes of setting the passage right have been proposed; and perhaps what follows from my corrected folio of 1632 has no better foundation,--but, at all events, it restores both the sense and the metre, and may, for aught we know, give the very words of Shakspeare: "'Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse; Since I am _apt_ to know, that your own science Exceeds (in that) the lists of all advice My strength can give you; Then, no more remains But _add_ to your sufficiency your worth, And let them work.' --How 'that' in the old editions came to be printed for _add_ and how 'is able' came to be foisted in, most unnecessarily and awkwardly, at the end of the same line, it is not easy to explain. The third line is also much cleared by the substitution of _apt_ for 'put,'--which was an easy misprint: 'Apt to know' is an expression of every-day occurrence." * * * * * SIR JAMES STEPHEN, whose excellent _Lectures on the History of France_ have been so well received, proposes to deliver, at Cambridge, a series of twenty lectures on the _Diplomatic History of France during the reign of Louis XIV._, comprising a review of the treaties of Westphalia, of the Pyrenees, of Breda, of the Triple Alliance, of Aix-la-Chapelle, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, and of Utrecht. * * * * *