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This does not suit Warburton, who remarks:

"We should read beard [instead of bread]; that is, as the kiss of an holy saint, or hermit, called the kiss of charity. This makes one comparison just and decent; the other impious and absurd.” One more example from the same play. The Duke asks Orlando if he believes that Rosalind can do what she promised, and the latter replies:

"I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not,

As those that fear they hope, and know they fear."

Of the last line of which, Warburton says:

"This strange nonsense should be read thus:

"As those that fear their hap, and know their fear." "

This was reckless editing; and it soon brought forward defenders of the integrity of Shakespeare's text. But, like all his predecessors, and nearly all of his successors, Bishop Warburton left, in his heaps of editorial chaff, some grains of sense, which have been carefully winnowed out and garnered up in that storehouse of Shakespearian lore, the Variorum edition, which will hereafter claim our attention.

In 1745 had appeared a duodecimo volume, entitled Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on Sir T. H.'s [Sir Thomas Hanmer's] edition of Shakespear; to which is affixed, proposals for a new edition of Shakespear, with a specimen. It was written, as its author might have said, with combined perspicuity of thought, and ponderosity of language. It was by Samuel Johnson, then rapidly rising to the highest position in the world of letters; and, in 1765, an edition of Shakespeare, "with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators: to which are added notes, by Samuel Johnson," was published, in eight volumes, 8vo. It is giving the Doctor but little praise to say that he was a better editor than his Reverend predecessor. The majority of his emendations of the text were, nevertheless, singularly unhappy; and his notes, though often learned and sometimes sensible, were generally wanting in just that sort of learning and sense most needful for his task. Strange as it may seem, no one who himself appreciates Shakespeare, can read Johnson's comments and verbal criticisms upon his plays without the conviction that to the 'great moralist,' the grandest inspirations and most exquisitely wrought fancies of the great dramatist were as a sealed book. Many an humble individual whom the learned bear growled at-we do not hesitate to include even 'Bozzy' himself— appreciated Shakespeare better than the literary dictator did. The Doctor did not hesitate to say, that one passage in that clever fop Congreve's Mourning Bride was finer than anything in all Shakespeare's works. And who can forget, or forgive, the manner in which. he abuses Sweet Will, when he does not understand him; or, worse yet, the insufferable arrogance with which he patronises him, and pats him on the head, when he does? Who ever read, without an ebullition of wrath, this curt, savage, and pedagoguish dismissal of Cymbeline:

"This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes; but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity. To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation."

Poor great moralist! obtuse wise man! ignorant Doctor of Laws! For thee Imogen, that purest, that most enchanting, most noble creation-that loveliest, most lovable, most loving, and so most womanly of women-that peerless lady among Shakespeare's peerless ladies, was spoken into being in vain! In vain, for thee the glowing thoughts, the gorgeous imagery, the dainty utterance! In vain for thee the wondrous self-development of character

by dialogue and dramatic action! In vain for thee

"the lark at heaven's gate sings,

And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic'd flowers that lies"

for thy rectilinear vision is fixed upon "the confusion of names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life," and, besides, "springs that lies," is ungrammatical! All the fine writing in the Doctor's high-sounding preface will not atone for his treatment of Shakespeare in the body of the work. It is worth while to read here his note on the passage,

"One inch of delay is a South Sea of discovery.
Prithee tell me, &c.,"

Warburton's treatment of which has just been noticed. He says:—

sense.

"This sentence is rightly noted by the commentator as nonsense, but not so happily restored to I read thus: One inch of delay is a South Sea. Discover, I prithee, tell me, &c.'"

In the same play Johnson gravely proposes to read Silvius' entreaty to Phebe,

"Will you sterner be

Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops ?"

"Will you sterner be

Than he that dyes his lips by bloody drops?"

It seems difficult to believe that the author of the Rambler and the Idler should have given us such emendations by the score; but these are favourable specimens of a large proportion of his notes; and in those very publications, criticisms occur not less deplorable to the appreciative reader of the bard of all time.

Edward Capell was one of the most learned and laborious of the editors of Shakespeare. He published in 1759 a quarto volume entitled, Notes and Various Readings of Shakespeare ; in 1768 he issued an edition of Shakespeare in ten volumes octavo; and in 1779 his Notes and Various Readings, with many additions, and the School of Shakespeare, were republished in three formidable quarto volumes. The critical student of Shakespeare must have these books, and, alas! must read them. Capell's words are not without knowledge; but they often do as much to darken counsel as has been accomplished by the most ignorant of his co-labourers. Infinite pains and trouble, and the closest thinking, are sometimes required, to divine what he would be at. The obscurest passage in the author whom he strives to elucidate is luminous as the sun, compared with the convoluted murkiness of his page; and when by chance he quotes a passage for comment, as its clear significance flashes upon the mind, we involuntarily think of the people who sat in darkness and saw a great light. And yet Capell did something for the text. He too, like most of his predecessors and successors, made some conjectural emendations which at once commended themselves to the general sense of the readers of Shakespeare, and which have been preserved, while the mass of his labours are thrust aside, for rare consultation, upon the shelves of the critical or the curious. His collocation of the various readings of the old editions is invaluable for reference.

At about this period Shakespearian criticism became rampant. The publication of Warburton's edition in 1747 had provoked controversy and given new stimulus to investigation. From that day commentary trod upon the heels of commentary, and panting pamphleteers toiled on after each other in the never-ending struggle to reach the true text of Shakespeare; a goal which seemed to recede faster than their advance. The commentators were nearly all learned men; and many were men of remarkable ability. But their labours were almost altogether in vain. When they strove most, displayed the most learning, exercised the most ingenuity, they were most at fault: when they were successful,

it was generally by chance, and upon some point which they regarded as of little consequence. To estimate their services to the text, compared with the harm they did it, as “two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff," is to pass a lenient judgment upon their labours. There were reasons for all this. Critical Dogberrys that they were, they went not the way to examine. Their learning, the school in which they had been educated, the taste of the day-formed as it was by the remnants of the French taste of Dryden's dynasty, and the chilling influence of the cold and polished correctness of the school of Addison and Pope, overlaid by the lexico-graphical style of Johnson-joined to their own conceit and the want of a just appreciation of the genius of Shakespeare, led them entirely astray. They did not recognise him as their master, at whose feet they were to sit and learn. They did not go to their task in an humble, docile spirit. Milton had written,

"Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,

Warbles his native wood-notes wild;"

a petty puling dribble of belittling, patronising praise, for which he should never have been forgiven, had he not atoned for it by that grand line in the Epitaph-one of the grandest and most imaginative he ever wrote-in which he calls Shakespeare,

"Dear son of memory, great heir of fame.”

But the first encomium, which might not inaptly be passed upon a missy contributor to a Ladies' Magazine, chimed with the taste of the middle of the last century; and Shakespeare was regarded as an untutored genius, sadly in need of pruning and training; a charming, but unsophisticated songster, whose "native wood-notes wild," if their exuberance could be tamed down to the barrel-organ standard of the poet-fanciers of the day, would be meet entertainment for persons of quality-if they were not too exacting as to the unities. In editing his works for the closet, the constant effort was, not to imbibe his spirit and touch his work with reverential hand, but to make him conform as much as possible to the standard which the critics had set up. No one of them seemed to suspect that Shakespeare could have been a law unto himself. In adapting his plays to the stage, a yet more outrageous desecration of his genius was the fashion for nearly a hundred years. The soul of Procrustes seemed to have migrated into every playwright and stage-manager in England, from the day of the Restoration; and Shakespeare's plays, when they were presented at all, were so curtailed, distorted, mosaicked, patched, vamped, and garbled, that the original work was lost almost beyond recognition. The second Scene of the first Act of Dryden's version of the Tempest, actually begins:

"Prospero. Miranda, where is your sister?

Miranda. I left her looking from the pointed rock," &c.;

and in Nahum Tate's adaptation of King Lear, the tragedy ends in farce, and Lear dances at the wedding of Cordelia with Edmund. The stage library groans under heaps of these abominations; and to this day we have not escaped their baleful influence. Although we owe much to Mr. Macready and Mr. Charles Kean in this regard, hardly a play of Shakespeare's is now put upon the stage with dramatic sequence and the development of character preserved exactly as he left them to us. No one can complain of the omission of a few gross expressions, admissible when Shakespeare wrote, but offensive now: the grievance is, that it seems to be forgotten that Shakespeare was an actor and a manager; that he wrote his plays to please the people and make money; and that, his audiences being constituted of all sorts and conditions of men, he succeeded. He knew what was a good acting play as well as what was good poetry; and he knew better than any of his dramatic tinkers, not only what incident, what action, and what dialogue and soliloquy, but what succession of events was necessary to the proper delineation of his characters. When shall we have Shakespeare

edited and put upon the stage with a full recognition of his surpassing genius as a dramatist?

This digression is but seeming; for it is essential to the purpose of these pages, to show how Shakespeare suffered, for nearly a century and a-half, more wrong from the incapacity, vitiated taste, and conceit of ingenious' commentators and adapters, than he had previously endured from the unexampled carelessness of the printers-grievously as they had abused him. But perhaps we should rather pity than contemn those misguided people; for they erred in ignorance. Had there not gone with their ignorance so overweening a conceit, we might get through their fine-spun absurdities and pompous platitudes with an unruffled temper. But as it is, they try us sorely.

The appearance of George Steevens and Edmund Malone in the field of Shakespearian literature, produced greater and more permanent changes in the text than had been achieved by any of their predecessors, save Theobald. They were not co-workers, but opponents. Steevens reprinted the quartos, and published notes and comments upon the text, which, in 1773, were embodied in an edition in ten octavo volumes. Steevens is one of the most acute and accomplished of Shakespeare's commentators; but rarely have abilities and acquirements been put to more unfruitful use. To show his ability to suggest ingenious' readings, he wantonly rejected the obvious significance of the text, and perverted the author's meaning, or destroyed the integrity of his work. He was witty, and not only launched his shafts at his fellow-commentators, but turned them against his author, and, most intolerable of all, attempted to substitute his own smartness for Shakespeare's humour. He had an accurate -mechanically accurate-ear, and ruthlessly mutilated, or patched up Shakespeare's lines to a uniform standard of ten syllables.

But, in Malone, he found an adversary entirely too powerful for him. Malone published, in 1780, two volumes, containing notes and comments upon the text as it was left by Johnson and Steevens, and other miscellaneous Shakespearian matter; and in 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare, "collated verbatim with the most authentic copies, and revised; with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators; to which are added, an essay on the chronological order of his plays; an essay relative to Shakespeare and Jonson; a dissertation on the three parts of King Henry VI.; an historical account of the English stage; and notes." This title gives a just idea of the wide field of Shakespearian inquiry, covered by the labours of Malone. Though not highly accomplished, he was a scholar, a man of good judgment, and, for his day, of good poetical taste. He was patient, indefatigably laborious, and modest-that is, as modest as it was possible for a Shakespearian critic and editor of the last century to be. Above all, he was honestly devoted to his task; he sought the glory of his author, not his own-except in so far as the latter was involved in the former. We of to-day can see that he committed many and great blunders; but he saved the text of Shakespeare from wide and ruthless outrage, and by painful and well-directed investigation into the literature and manners contemporary with his author, cast new light upon his pages. To Edmund Malone the readers of Shakespeare during the last decade of the last century, and the first quarter of this, were indebted for the preservation of his works in a condition nearly approaching their original integrity. Malone's edition of Shakespeare, with Prolegomena, supplementary matter, and the principal notes of all the editors and commentators, published by Boswell-the son of Johnson's biographer-in twenty-one octavo volumes, in 1821, and known as the Variorum edition, is a monument to the industry and judgment of Malone; whose labours appear to the greatest advantage when placed beside those of his predecessors and opponents. It is, besides, a rich storehouse of Shakespearian literature; though, like most storehouses, with its treasures it preserves heaps of dross and

rubbish.

To add to the editions previously mentioned, that of Alexander Chalmers, published in

1923, the text of which does not materially differ from that of Malone; that of the Rev. William Harness, published in 1825, which contained a few valuable corrections of the text; and that of Samuel Weller Singer, published at Chiswick, in 1826, the text of which was formed with great care, though not unexceptionable judgment, and with too little reverence for the authority of the first folio, and which contained some very plausible conjectural emendations, is to bring the history of the text, as far as editions of note are concerned, down to those which are strictly of the present day.

Among the commentators on Shakespeare, who did not become his editors, the most noteworthy for the purposes of the present sketch are-Benjamin Heath, who published in 1765, A Revisal of Shakespear's Text; wherein the Alterations introduced into it, by the more modern Editors and Critics, are particularly considered; Thomas Tyrwhitt, the learned editor of Chaucer, whose Observations and Conjectures on some Passages of Shakespeare were published in 1766; Joseph Ritson, the eccentric literary antiquary, whose book of verbal criticisms on the text appeared in 1783; John Monck Mason, who published comments on Steevens' edition in 1785; E. H. Seymour, whose two volumes of Remarks, Critical, Conjectural, and Explanatory [including also the notes of Lord Chedworth], upon the Plays of Shakspeare, appeared in 1805; Francis Douce, who issued his Illustrations of Shakspeare and of Ancient Manners, &c., in 1809; Andrew Becket, who published two volumes, entitled Shakspeare's himself again, or the Language of the Poet asserted; and Zachary Jackson, whose Shakspeare's Genius Justified; being Restorations and Illustrations of Seven Hundred Passages in Shakspeare, was given to the world in 1819.*

Eminent among these for various learning, just discrimination, and a becoming deference to the author whose works he came to illustrate, is Mr. Douce. He is among the commentators what Malone is among the editors; save that his volumes exhibit a wider range of knowledge, and a more delicate and sympathetic apprehension of the peculiar beauties of Shakespeare than Malone possessed. The critical student of Shakespeare can place upon his shelves no book of comments more valuable than the two volumes of Francis Douce. He is, in fact, the only one of those who may be called the old commentators, whose works will bear reprinting. The original edition of his Illustrations having become very scarce, a reprint was issued in one volume, in 1839.

Heath, Tyrwhitt, Ritson, and Mason, all produced an appreciable and beneficial effect upon the text an effect which is permanent and undeniable. As was the case with the labours of the large majority of the commentators and editors, the mass of their suggestions have been rejected by the good sense of their successors; but they all treated their subject like scholars and men of sense, and each made a few conjectural emendations, which will always remain in the text. It is not because of an undervaluation of their abilities that we turn from them to Seymour, Becket, and Jackson.

Seymour was a pedagogue, not a critic. His book contains more systematic, narrowminded carping at and quibbling with Shakespeare, and less sympathetic comprehension of his thought than can be found in all his other commentators, Becket and Jackson, perhaps, excepted. The knowledge that a verb should agree with its nominative case, and that ten syllables make a heroic line, forms the staple of the qualifications which he brought to his task. Speaking of the labours of his predecessors -not very scrupulous or conservative, as the reader has already seen-he says, complainingly :

"They have all been satisfied with delivering the text of each drama as they found it, with preference occasionally to the readings of different impressions; and if the choice they made be deemed

* This must not be considered as an intended catalogue of the commentators of past generations. Those only have been singled from the throng whose merits or demerits make them fit illustrations for the present historical sketch. Some of the ablest Shakespearian scholars of the present day will also be hereafter passed over with but an incidental mention, for similar reasons. f

VOL. I.

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