Once only he makes a slip. There is a passage in
_King Lear_ (IV. vi. 249) where the followers of the King, who in the
text of the quarto versions are correctly called 'the British party',
appear in the folio version as 'the English party'. Perhaps the quartos
contain Shakespeare's own correction of his own inadvertence; but those
of us, and we are many, who have been blamed by northern patriots for
the misuse of the word English may claim Shakespeare as a brother in
misfortune.
Our critics, at home and abroad, accuse us of arrogance. I doubt if we
can prove them wrong; but they do not always understand the nature of
English arrogance. It does not commonly take the form of self-assertion.
Shakespeare's casual allusions to our national characteristics are
almost all of a kind; they are humorous and depreciatory. Here are some
of them. Every holiday fool in England, we learn from Trinculo in _The
Tempest_, would give a piece of silver to see a strange fish, though no
one will give a doit to relieve a lame beggar. The English are
quarrelsome, Master Slender testifies, at the game of bear-baiting.
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