With reference to this subject, which has been so frequently discussed in
your columns, daily experience convincing me still farther in the opinion
that the complete performance of the task is impracticable, would you
kindly allow me to ask what can be done in the now acknowledged case of
frequent occurrence, where different copies of the folios and quartos vary
in passages in the very same impression? What copies are to be taken as the
groundworks of reference; and whose copy of the first folio is to be the
standard one? Mr. Knight may give one reading as that of the edition of
1623, and Mr. Singer may offer another from the same work, while the author
of the "critical digest" may give a third, and all of them correct in the
mere fact that such readings are really those of the first edition. Thus,
in respect to a passage in _Measure for Measure_,--
"For thy own bowels, which do call thee _sire_,"--
it has been stated in your columns that one copy of the second folio has
this correct reading, whereas every copy I have met with reads _fire_; and
so likewise the first and third folios. Then, again, in reference to this
same line, Mr. Collier, in his Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 48., says that the
folio edition of 1685 also reads _fire_ for _sire_; but in my copy of the
fourth folio it is distinctly printed _sire_, and the comma before the word
very {541} properly omitted. It would be curious to ascertain whether any
other copies of this folio read _fire_.