"The present age is teeming with advantages which no preceding Era in the history of mankind has afforded to the human family. New schemes are projecting to enlighten and extend civilisation, Railways have been projected and carried out by an enterprising and spirited nation, while Science in its gigantic power (simple yet sublime) affords to the humane mind so many facilities to explore its rich resources, the Seasons roll on in their usual course producing light and heat, the vivifying rays of the Sun, and the fructifying influences of nature producing food and happiness to the Sons of Toil; while to the people of G. and its neighbourhood a rich and extensive variety of Fashionable Goods is to be found in my Warehouse, which have just been selected with the greatest care. The earliest visit is requested to convey to the mind an adequate idea of the great extent of his purchases, comprising as it does all that is elegant and useful, cheap and substantial, to the light-hearted votaries of Matrimony, the Matrons of Reflection, the Man of Industry, and the disconsolate Victims of Bereavement.
The peroration certainly exhibits what Mrs. Malaprop calls "a nice derangement of epitaphs:" and, us for the rest, surely "the force of" bathos "could no further go."
ON A PASSAGE IN "KING HENRY VIII.," ACT III. SC. 2.
One of the most desperately unintelligible passages in Shakspeare occurs in this play, in the scene between the King and the Cardinal, when the latter professes his devoted attachment to his service. It stands thus in the first folio:
_Car._ "I do professe That for your Highnesse good, I euer labour'd More then mine owne: that am, haue, and will be (Though all the world should cracke their duty to you, And throw it from their Soule, though perils did Abound, as thicke as thought could make 'em, and Appeare in formes more horrid) yet my Duty, As doth a Rocke against the chiding Flood, Should the approach of this wilde Riuer breake, And stand vnshaken yours."
"I can find no meaning in these words (that am, have, and will be), or see how they are connected with the rest of the sentence; and should therefore strike them out."
"I suppose the meaning is, '_that_ or _such a man_, I am, have _been_, and will _ever_ be.' Our author has many hard and forced expressions in his plays; but many of the hardnesses in the piece before us appear to me of a different colour from those of Shakspeare. Perhaps however, a line following has been lost; for in the old copy there is no stop at the end of this line; and, indeed, I have some doubt whether a comma ought not to be placed at it, rather than a fullpoint."