CONVINCE. Act I., Sc. 2.

"That time of both this truth shall ne'er convince." Convince in its Latin sense of overcome.

CUNNING. Act III., Sc. 2.

"Virtue and cunning were endowments greater."

Cunning, from the Anglo-Saxon cunnian, is knowledge, experience.

DERNE. Chorus to Act III.

By many a derne and painful perch."

Derne is sad or solitary, from the Anglo-Saxon dearn, dark or
In Spenser's Thestylis,' we have-

secret.

"Their puissance whilom full dernly tried."

ECHE. Chorus to Act III.

"With your fine fancies quaintly eche."

Eche, from the Anglo-Saxon eacan, is to add to, to eke out. The c in the Anglo-Saxon became sometimes soft and sometimes hard, almost indifferently.

MERE. Act IV., Sc. 3.

"And that opinion a mere profit."

Mere, as in many other passages, is absolute, certain.

OWE. Act V., Sc. 1.

"You make more rich to owe."

Owe and own were interchangeable.

PHEERE.

Chorus to Act I.

"The king unto him took a pheere."

Pheere is a mate. See fere in 'Henry IV., Part I.'

PILCHE. Act II., Sc. 1.

"What, ho, Pilche!"

Pilche is most probably meant for a name, as Patch-breech afterwards.

RESERVE. Act IV., Sc. 1.

"Reserve that excellent complexion." Reserve is used in the sense of preserve, take care of. SMOOTH. Act I., Sc. 2.

"Seem'd not to strike, but smooth."

To smooth is to flatter; a not quite obsolete sense. STINT. Act I., Sc. 2.

"And with the stint of war will look so huge." Stint is synonymous with stop in the old writers, but Malone changed stint to ostent, which is the usual reading. It has been said before, He'll stop the course by which it might be known," which shows that stint is the right word.

WHEREAS Act I., Sc. 2.

"Whereas, thou know'st."

Whereas, here, as in many other places, is used for where. In
Act II., Sc. 3, where is used for whereas :-

"Where now his son is like a glow-worm in the night.”

WIT. Act IV., Sc. 4.

"Now please you wit."

Please you wit is be pleased to know. To wit is still a legal phrase.

PLOT AND CHARACTERS.

DR. DRAKE has bestowed very considerable attention upon the endeavour to prove that 'Pericles' ought to be received as the indisputable work of Shakspere. Yet his arguments, after all, amount only to the establishment of

bearing indisputable testimony to the genius and execution of the great master."* This theory of companionship in the production of the play is merely a repetition of the theory of Stevens: "The purpurei panni are Shakspeare's, and the rest the productions of some inglorious and forgotten playwright." We have no faith whatever in this very easy mode of disposing of the authorship of a doubtful play-of leaving entirely out of view the most important part of every drama, its action, its characterisation, looking at the whole merely as a collection of passages, of which the worst are to be assigned to some âme damnée, and the best triumphantly claimed for Shakspere There are some, however, who judge of such matters upon broader principles. Mr. Hallam says, "Pericles' is generally reckoned to be in part, and only in part, the work of Shakspeare. From the poverty and bad management of the fable, the want of any effective or distinguishable character (for Marina is no more than the common form of female virtue, such as all the dramatists of that age could draw), and a general feebleness of the tragedy as a whole, I should not believe the structure to have been Shakspeare's. But many passages are far more in his manner than in that of any contemporary writer with whom I am acquainted."+ Here "the poverty and bad management of the fable”—“the want of any effective or distinguishable character," are assigned for the belief that the structure could not have been Shakspere's. But let us accept Dryden's opinion, that

"Shakspeare's own muse his Pericles first bore,"

with reference to the original structure of the play, and the

Shakspere's "second or third manner than of his first." But this belief is not inconsistent with the opinion that the original structure was Shakspere's. No other poet that existed at the beginning of the seventeenth century—perhaps no poet that came after that period, whether Massinger, or Fletcher, or Webster-could have written the greater part of the fifth act. Coarse as the comic scenes are, there are touches in them unlike any other writer but Shakspere.