As this error _never_ occurs in Jonson and Massinger, and only, I believe, in the instance given above in Beaumont and Fletcher, and has no æsthetic advantage or beauty to recommend it, it seems quite absurd to suppose that Shakespeare, whose vocabulary was the largest of all, and whose ear was so fine and correct, should have found pleasure in it. Surely a just critic will sooner lay the blame on the printer and the careless editors, very different in this respect from those of Beaumont and Fletcher, who seem never to have hesitated to correct an error when they discovered it. The resemblance in form above alluded to is of great importance, under the name of _ductus literarum_, in the eyes of Mr. Dyce, and it should always be attended to; for it is usually caused by the attempt of the printer to make out illegible writing. The following are striking instances:-- In Peele's Edward I. these lines occur. To calm, to qualify, and to compound, _Thank England's_ strife of Scotland's climbing peers. That the last line is nonsense was clear to every one; but no critic ever could emend it. The true reading, however, is doubtless _The enkindled_, which flashed suddenly on my mind one time when I was considering the passage. It was probably the resemblance of sound chiefly that misled the printer. At the end of Marston's Insatiate Countess we meet the following unmeaning line, Like _Missermis_ cheating of the _brack_, which Steevens corrected most happily thus-- Like _Mycerinus_ cheating of the _oracle_, having discerned the allusion to Herod. ii. 133. It is very curious that the word substituted is often the very opposite of the right word. I myself once wrote--and so it is printed--_diameter_ for _circumference_. In Mrs. C. Clarke's most valuable Concordance we have "humorous _plebeian_" for "humorous _patrician_." I have met with _next_ for _last_ and _none_ for _some_; so in The Mer. of Ven., ii. 2, where the folio has "Is sum of _no_thing," the 4tos read "Is sum of _some_thing." In Lear v. 3, the folio reads The gods are just, and of our pleasant _vices_ Make instruments to plague us; while the 4tos have "pleasant _virtues_." In All's Well, iii. 2, and Taming of the Shrew, iii. 1, we have _old_ for _new_. In a proof-sheet which I lately saw there was a quotation of The paths of glory lead but to the grave; and the printer had substituted _life_ for "grave," though, as the entire stanza was given, he had the rime to guide him. Many instances of this practice will be found in Love's Labour's Lost. In La Giovanezza, a poem of the Italian poet Pindemonte, I have just met with _brutte_ where the rime and the sense require _belle_.