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When God was pleased, the world unwilling yet,
Elias Jaines to nature paid his debt,
And here reposeth; as he lived he died;
The saying in him strongly verified,-
Such life, such death: then, the known truth to tell,
He lived a godly life and died as well.
WM. SHAKSPEARE,

commit, Francis Gastrell departed from Stratford, ing epitaph, attributed, certainly not on its internal hooted out of the town, and pursued by the execra- evidence, to our Poet. Its subject was, probably, tions of its inhabitants. The fate of New Place the member of a family with the surname of James, has been rather remarkable. After the demolition which once existed in Stratford. of the house by Gastrell, the ground, which it had occupied, was thrown into the contiguous garden, and was sold by the widow of the clerical barbarian. Having remained during a certain period, as a portion of a garden, a house was again erected on it; and, in consequence also of some dispute about the parish assessments, that house, like its predecessor, was pulled down; and its site was finally abandoned to Nature, for the production of her fruits and her flowers: and thither may we imagine the little Elves and Fairies frequently to resort, to trace the footsteps of their beloved poet, now obliterated from the vision of man; to throw a finer perfume on the violet; to unfold the first rose of the year, and to tinge its cheek with a richer blush; and, in their dances beneath the full-orbed moon, to chant their harmonies, too subtle for the gross ear of mortality, to the fondly cherished memory of their darling, THE SWEET SWAN OF AVON.

Of the personal history of William Shakspeare, as far as it can be drawn, even in shadowy existence, from the obscurity which invests it, and of whatever stands in immediate connection with it, we have now exhibited all that we can collect; and we are not conscious of having omitted a single circumstance of any moment, or worthy of the attention of our readers. We might, indeed, with old Fuller, speak of our Poet's wit-combats, as Fuller calls them, at the Mermaid, with Ben Jonson: but then we have not one anecdote on record of either of these intellectual gladiators to produce, for not a sparkle of our Shakspeare's convivial wit has travelled down to our eyes; and it would be neither instructive nor pleasant to see him represented as a light skiff, skirmishing with a huge galleon, and either evading or pressing attack as prudence suggested, or the alertness of his movements emboldened him to attempt. The lover of heraldry may, perhaps, censure us for neglecting to give the blazon of Shakspeare's arms, for which, as it appears, two patents were issued from the herald's office, one in 1569 or 1570, and one in 1599; and by him, who will insist on the transcription of every word which has been imputed on any authority to the pen of Shakspeare, we may be blamed for passing over in silence two very indifferent epitaphs, which have been charged on him. We will now, therefore, give the arms which were accorded to him; and we will, also, copy the two epitaphs in question. We may then, without any further impediment, proceed to the more agreeable portion of our labours,-the

notice of our author's works.

The armorial bearings of the Shakspeare family are, or rather were,-Ör, on a bend sable, a tilting spear of the first, point upwards, headed argent. Crest, A falcon displayed, argent, supporting a spear in pale, or.

Among the monuments in Tonge Church, in the county of Salop, is one raised to the memory of Sir Thomas Stanley, Knt., who is thought by Malone to have died about the year 1600. With the prose inscription on this tomb, transcribed by Sir W. Dugdale, are the verses which I am about to copy, said by Dugdale to have been made by William Shakspeare, the late famous tragedian.

ON THE EAST END OF THE TOMB.
Ask who lies here, but do not weep:
He is not dead, he doth but sleep.
This stony register is for his bones:
His fame is more perpetual than these stones:
And his own goodness with himself being gone,
Shall live when earthly monument is none.

ON THE WEST END.

Not monumental stone preserves our fame:
Nor sky-aspiring pyramids our name.
The memory of him for whom this stands,
Shall outlive marble and defacer's hands.
When all to time's consumption shall be given,
Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in heaven

As the great works of Shakspeare have engaged the attention of an active and a learned century since they were edited by Rowe, little that is new on the subject of them can be expected from a pen of the present day. It is necessary, however, that we should notice them, lest our readers should be compelled to seek in another page than ours for the common information which they might conceive themselves to be entitled to expect from us.

Fourteen of his plays were published separately, in quarto copies, during our Poet's life; and, seven years after his death, a complete edition of them was given to the public in folio by his theatric fellows, Heminge and Condell. Of those productions of his, which were circulated by the press while he was yet living, and were all surreptitious, our great author seems to have been as utterly regardless as he necessarily was of those which appeared when he was mouldering in his grave. We have already

* In his essay on the chronological order of Shakthe title-page of the earliest edition of Hamlet, which he speare's plays, Malone concludes very properly from believed then to be extant, that this edition (published in 1604) had been preceded by another of a less correct and In a MS. volume of poems, by William Herrick less perfect character. A copy of the elder edition, in and others, preserved in the Bodleian, is the follow-question, has lately been discovered; and is, indeed, far more remote from perfection than its sucessor, which was collated by Malone. It obviously appears to have been printed from the rude draught of the drama, as it was sketched by the Poet from the first suggestions of his mind. But how this rude and imperfect draught could fall into the hands of its publisher, is a question not easily to be answered. Such, however, is the authority to be attached to all the early quartos. They were obtained by every indirect mean; and the first incorrect MS., blotted again and again by the pens of ig norant transcribers, and multiplied by the press, was suffered, by the apathy of its illustrious author, to be circulated, without check, among the multitude. Hence the grossest anomalies of grammar have been considerlect of Shakspeare; and the most egregious infractions of rhythm, as the tones of his honey-tongued muse. The variations of the copy of Hamlet immediately before us, which was published in 1603, from the perfect drama, as it subsequently issued from the press, are far too nu merous to be noticed in this place, if indeed this place could properly be assigned to such a purpose. I may, however, just mention that Corambis and Montano are

equally hallowed with that of which we have been speaking, for Nature has not yet produced a second Shakspeare; but of genius, which had conversed with the immortal Muses, which had once been the delight of the good and the terror of the bad. I allude to the violation of Pope's charming retreat, on the banks of the Thames, by a capricious and tasteless woman, who has endeavoured to blot out every memorial of the great and moral poet from that spot, which his occupation had made classic, and dear to the heart of his country. In the mutability of all human things, and the inevitable shiftings of property, "From you to me, from me to Peter Walter," these lamentable desecrations, which mortify our pride and wound our sensibilities, will ofed, by his far-famed restorers, as belonging to the dia necessity sometimes occur. The site of the Tusculan of Cicero may become the haunt of banditti, or be disgraced with the walls of a monastery. The residences of a Shakspeare and a Pope may be devastated and defiled by a Parson Gastrell and a Baroness Howe. We can only sigh over the ruin when its deformity strikes upon our eyes; and execrate the hands by which it has been savagely accomplished.

observed on the extraordinary,-nay wonderful in- | view cured and perfect of their limbs; and all the difference of this illustrious man toward the offspring rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived

of his fancy; and we make it again the subject of our remark solely for the purpose of illustrating the cause of those numerous and pernicious errors which deform all the early editions of his plays. He must have known that many of these, his intellectual children, were walking through the community in a state of gross disease, with their limbs spotted, as it were, with the leprosy or the plague. But he looked on them without one parental feeling, and stretched not out his hand for their relief. They had broken from the confinement of the players, to whose keeping he had consigned them; and it was their business and not his to reclaim them. As for the rest of his intellectual progeny, they were where he had placed them; and he was utterly uncon-have incurred the heavy displeasure of some of our cerned about their future fate. How fraught and glowing with the principle of life must have been their nature to enable them to subsist, and to force themselves into immortality under so many circumstances of evil!

them." But notwithstanding these professions, and their honest resentment against impostors and surreptitious copies, the labours of these sole possessors of Shakspeare's MSS. did not obtain the credit which they arrogated; and they are charged with printing from those very quartos, on which they had heaped so much well-merited abuse. They printed, as there cannot be a doubt, from their prompter's book, (for by what temptation could they be enticed beyond it?) but then, from the same book, were transcribed many, perhaps, of the surreptitious quartos; and it is not wonderful that transcripts of the same page should be precisely alike. These editors, however, of the first folio, modern critics, who are zealous on all occasions to depreciate their work. Wherever they differ from the first quartos, which, for the reason that I have assigned, they must in general very closely resemble, Malone is ready to decide against them, and The copies of the plays, published antecedently to defer to the earlier edition. But it is against the to his death, were transcribed either by memory editor of the second folio, published in 1632, that from their recitation on the stage; or from the sepa- he points the full storm of his indignation. He rate parts, written out for the study of the particu- charges this luckless wight, whoever he may be, lar actors, and to be pieced together by the skill of with utter ignorance of the language of Shakspeare's the editor; or, lastly, if stolen or bribed access time, and of the fabric of Shakspeare's verse; and could be obtained to it, from the prompter's book he considers him and Pope as the grand corrupters itself. From any of these sources of acquisition of Shakspeare's text. Without reflecting that to the copy would necessarily be polluted with very be ignorant of the language of Shakspeare's time flagrant errors; and from every edition, through was, in the case of this hapless editor, to be ignowhich it ran, it would naturally contract more pol- rant of his own, for he who published in 1632 could lution and a deeper stain. Such of the first copies hardly speak with a tongue different from his who as were fortunately transcribed from the prompter's died only sixteen years before, Malone indulges in book, would probably be in a state of greater rela- an elaborate display of the unhappy man's ignotive correctness: but they are all, in different de- rance, and of his presumptuous alterations. He grees, deformed with inaccuracies; and not one of (the editor of the second folio) did not know that the them can claim the right to be followed as an au- double negative was the customary and authorized thority. What Steevens and Malone call the re- dialect of the age of Queen Elizabeth; (God help storing of Shakspeare's text, by reducing it to the him, poor man! for if he were forty years old when he reading of these early quartos, is frequently the re-edited Shakspeare, he must have received the first storing of it to error and to nonsense, from which it rudiments of his education in the reign of the maidhad luckily been reclaimed by the felicity of conjec- en queen;) and thus egregiously ignorant (ignotural criticism. One instance immediately occurs rant, by the bye, where Shakspeare himself was to me, to support what I have affirmed; and it may ignorant, for his Twelfth Night,* the clown says, be adduced instead of a score, which might be easí- "If your four negatives make your two affirmatives ly found, of these vaunted restorations. -why then the worse for my friends and the better for my foes," &c.) but thus egregiously ignorant, instead of

In that fine scene between John and Hubert, where the monarch endeavours to work up his agent to the royal purposes of murder, the former says,

-If thou couldst
Hear me without thine ears, and make reply
Without a tongue, using conceit alone, &c. &c.
Then in despite of brooded, watchful day,

I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts, &c. &c.

The passage thus stood in one of these old copies of authority: but Pope, not able to discover any meaning in the epithet, brooded, most happily substituted "broad-eyed" in its stead. As the compound was poetic and Shakspearian (for Shakspeare has dull-eyed and fire-eyed,) and was also most peculiarly suited to the place which it was to fill, the substitution for a while was permitted to remain; till Steevens, discovering the reading of the old copy, restored brooded to the station whence it had been felicitously expelled, and abandoned the line once more to the nonsense of the first editor.

In 1623, the first complete edition of our author's dramatic works was published in folio by his comrades of the theatre, Heminge and Condell; and in this we might expect a text tolerably incorrupt, if not perfectly pure. The editors denounced the copies which had preceded their edition as "stolen and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors, that exposed them; even those are now offered to

your

the names given in this copy to the Polonius and Reynaldo of the more perfect editions; and the young lord, Osrick, is called in it only a braggart gentleman.

"Nor to her bed no homage do I owe." this editor has stupidly printed,

"Nor to her bed a homage do I owe." further," this blockhead of an editor has substituted Again, in "As you Like It," for "I cannot go no Nothing," for "I can go no further." In "Much Ado about

"There will she hide her
To listen our purpose."

this corrupting editor has presumed to relieve the halting metre by printing,

"There will she hide her
To listen to our purpose."

In these instances, I feel convinced that the editor is right, and consequently that the critic is the blockhead who is wrong. In what follows also, I am decidedly of opinion that the scale inclines in favour of the former of these deadly opposites. The double comparative is common in the plays of Shakspeare, says Malone :-true, as I am willing to allow; but always, as I am persuaded, in consequence of the illiteracy or the carelessness of the first transcriber: for why should Shakspeare write more anomalous English than Spenser, Daniel, Hooker, and Bacon? or why in his plays should he be guilty of barba

Act v. sc. I.

"And with the brands fire the traitors' houses:"

the editor's

"And with the brands fire all the traitors' houses.”

The next charge, brought against the editor, may
of Macbeth-
be still more easily repelled. In a noted passage

risms with which those poems of his, that were | plement is as beneficial to the sense, as it is neprinted under his own immediate eye, are altoge-cessary to the rhythm. Malone's line is, ther unstained? But, establishing the double comparative as one of the peculiar anomalies of Shakspeare's grammar, Malone proceeds to arraign the unfortunate editor as a criminal, for substituting, in a passage of Coriolanus, more worthy for more worthier; in Othello-for, "opinion, a sovereign mistress, throws a more safer voice on you," "opinion, &c. throws a more safe voice on you;" and, in Hamlet, instead of "Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to the doctor," "Your wisdom should show itself more rich to signify this to the doctor." Need I express my conviction that in these passages the editor has corrected the text into what actually fell from Shakspeare's pen? Can it be doubted also that the editor is accurate in his printing of the following passage in "A Midsummer Night's Dream?" As adopted by Malone it

stands.

"So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty."

"I would while it was smiling in my face
Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this."

"Not perceiving," says Malone, "that 'sworn "He (the editor) reads 'had I but so sworn,' was used as a dissyllable," (the devil it was?) much as we think, to the advantage of the sense as well as of the metre; and supplying, as we conceive, the very word which Shakspeare had written, and the carelessness of the transcriber omitted. 'Charms' our Poet sometimes uses, according to Malone, as a word of two syllables."-No! impossible! Our Poet might, occasionally, be guilty of an imperfect verse, or the omission of his transcriber might furnish him with one: but never could he use "charms 99 as a word of two syllables. We feel, therefore, obliged by the editor's supplying an imperfect line in "The Tempest," with the very personal pronoun which, it is our persuasion, was at first inserted by Shakspeare. In the most modern editions, the line in question stands"Cursed be I that did so! all the charms," &c. but the second folio reads with unquestionable proHaving now sufficiently demonstrated the editor's priety, "Cursed be I that I did so ! all the charms, ignorance of Shakspeare's language, let us proceed &c. As hour' has the same prolonged sound with his critic to ascertain his ignorance of Shak-with fire, sire, &c. and as it is possible, though, speare's metre and rhythm. In "The Winter's Tale," says Malone, we find,

i. e., says the critic, to give sovereignty to, &c.-To
be sure and, without the insertion, in this instance,
of the preposition, the sentence would be nonsense.
As it is published by the editor, it is,-

"So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship, to whose unwish'd yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty."

"What wheels, racks, fires; what flaying, boiling In leads and oils!"

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with reference to the fine ear of Shakspeare, Í think most improbable, that it might sometimes be made to occupy the place of two syllables, I shall pass over the instance from "Richard II." in which Malone triumphs, though without cause, over his Not knowing that 'fires' was used as a dissyllable, "All's Well that End's Well," in which a defecadversary; as I shall also pass over that from the editor added the word burning, at the end of tive line has been happily supplied by our editor, the line (I wish that he had inserted it before boil-in consequence of his not knowing that 'sire' was ing')

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It is possible that fires may be used by Shakspeare as a dissyllable, though I cannot easily persuade myself that, otherwise than as a monosyllable, it would satisfy an ear, attuned as was his, to the finest harmonies of verse; yet it may be employed as a dissyllable by the rapid and careless bard; and I am ready to allow that the defective verse was not happily supplied, in that place at least, with the word, burning, yet I certainly believe that Shakspeare did not leave the line in question as Malone has adopted it, and that some word has been omitted by the carelessness of the first transcriber. In the next instance, from Julius Cæsar, I feel assured that the editor is right, as his sup

*In his "Venus and Adonis," and his "Rape of Lucrece," printed under his immediate inspection; and in his 154 Sonnets, printed from correct MSS., and no doubt with his knowledge, are not to be found any of these barbarous anomalies. "The Passionate Pilgrim," and "The Lover's Complaint," are, also, free from them. Worser and lesser may sometimes occur in these poems: but the last of these improprieties will occasionally find a place in the page of modern composition. In the "Rape of Lucrece," the only anomaly of the double negative, which I have been able to discover, is the following:

"She touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks." and the same impropriety may be found in three or four instances in the Sonnets. And substituted for nor would restore these few passages to perfect grammar.

† Act iii. sc. 2.

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employed as a dissyllable. In the first part of
lish," is prolonged by the editor with a syllable
Henry VI." "Rescued is Orleans from the Eng-
which he deemed necessary because he was igno-
rant that the word, English,' was used as a tri-
syllable. According to him the line is-"Rescued
is Orleans from the English wolves."
We rejoice
at this result of the editor's ignorance; and we
wish to know who is there who can believe that
'English' was pronounced, by Shakspeare or his
contemporaries, as Engerlish, or even as Engleish,
with three syllables? Again, not knowing that

Charles' was used as a word of two syllables, (and
he was sufficiently near to the time of Shakspeare
to know his pronunciation of such a common word:
but the blockhead could not be taught the most
common things,) this provoking editor instead of
"Orleans the bastard, Charles, Burgundy."
has printed,

"Orleans the bastard, Charles, and Burgundy." In the next instance, I must confess myself to be ignorant of Malone's meaning. "Astræa being used," he says "as a word of three syllables," (I conclude that he intended to say, as a word of four syllables, the diphthong being dialytically separated into its component parts, and the word written and pronounced Astraea,) for "Divinest creature, Astræa's daughter," the editor has given "Divinest creature, bright Astræa's daughter."-Shameless interpolation! Not aware that sure' is used as a dissyllable, this grand corrupter of Shakspeare's text has substituted, "Gloster, we'll meet to thy dear cost, be sure," for "Gloster, we'll meet to thy cost, be sure."-Once more, and to conclude an examination which I could extend to a much greater

bangth in favour of this much-injured editor, but which I feel to be now becoming tedious, for,

"And so to arms, victorious father,"

as the line is sanctioned by Malone, arms,' being used, as he asserts, for a dissyllable, (arms a dissyllable!) the second folio presents us with

"And so to arms, victorious, noble father."

indeed, did not wholly abstain from conjecture: presumptuous admission of conjecture. Theobald, but the palm of conjectural criticism was placed much too high for the reach of his hand.

To Theobald, as an editor of Shakspeare, succeeded Sir Thomas Hanmer, who, in 1744, published a superb edition of the great dramatist from the press of Oxford. But Hanmer, building his work on that of Pope, and indulging in the wildest and most wanton innovations, deprived his edition of all pretensions to authenticity, and, consequently, to merit.

a few years, another was projected; and that it might be more adequate to the claims of Shakspeare and of Britain, the conduct of it was placed, in homage to his just celebrity, in the hands of Pope. Pope showed himself more conscious of the nature of his task, and more faithful in his execution of it than his predecessor. He disclosed to the public the very faulty state of his author's text, and I have said enough to convince my readers of the collated many of the earlier editions, and he cleared suggested the proper means of restoring it he falsity of the charges of stupidity and gross igno- the page of Shakspeare from many of its deformirance, brought by Malone against the editor of the ties: but his collations were not sufficiently extensecond folio edition of our Poet's dramatic works. sive; and he indulged, perhaps, somewhat too I am far from assuming to vindicate this editor much in conjectural emendation. This exposed from the commission of many flagrant errors: but him to the attacks of the petty and minute critics; he is frequently right, and was unquestionably con- and, the success of his work falling short of his exversant, et Malone assert what he pleases, with pectations, he is said to have contracted that enhis author's language and metre. It was not, mity to verbal criticism, which actuated him during therefore, without cause, that Steevens held his la- the remaining days of his life. His edition was bours in much estimation. Malone was an inval- published in the year 1725. Before this was underuable collector of facts: his industry was indefati- taken, Theobald, a man of no great abilities and of gable: his researches were deep: his pursuit of little learning, had projected the restoration of truth was sincere and ardent: but he wanted the Shakspeare; but his labours had been suspended, talents and the taste of a critic; and of all the edi- or their result had been withheld from the press, tors, by whom Shakspeare has suffered, I must till the issue of Pope's attempt was ascertained by consider him as the most pernicious. Neither the its accomplishment, and publication. The Shakindulged fancy of Pope, nor the fondness for inno-speare of Theobald's editing was not given to the vation in Hanmer, nor the arrogant and headlong world before the year 1733; when it obtained more self-confidence of Warburton has inflicted such of the public regard than its illustrious predecessor, cruel wounds on the text of Shakspeare, as the as-in consequence of its being drawn from a somewhat suming dulness of Malone. Barbarism and broken wider field of collation; and of its less frequent and rhythm dog him at the heels wherever he treads. In praise of the third and the fourth folio editions of our author's dramas, printed respectively in 1664 and 1685, nothing can be advanced. Each of these editions implicitly followed its immediate predecessor, and, adopting all its errors, increased them to a frightful accumulation with its own. With the text of Shakspeare in this disorder, the public of Britain remained satisfied during many years. From the period of his death he had not enforced that popularity to which his title was undeniable. Great, though inferior, men, Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley, Ford, &c. got possession of the stage, and retained it till it ceased to exist under the puritan domination. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the theatre indeed was again opened; but, under the influence of the vicious taste of the new monarch, it was surrendered to a new school (the French school) of the drama; and its mastery was held by Dryden, with many subordinates, during a long succession of years. Throughout this whole period, Shakspeare was nearly for-planations to be just. gotten by his ungrateful or blinded countrymen. His After an interval of eighteen years, Shakspeare splendour, it is true, was gleaming above the horizon; obtained once more an editor of great name, and and his glory, resting in purple and gold upon the seemingly in every way accomplished to assert the hill-summits, obtained the homage of a select band rights of his author. In 1765 Doctor Samuel Johnof his worshippers: but it was still hidden from son presented the world with his long-promised the eyes of the multitude; and it was long before edition of our dramatist: and the public expectait gained its "meridian tower," whence it was to tion, which had been highly raised, was again throw its "glittering shafts over a large portion doomed to be disappointed. Johnson had a powerof the earth. At length, about the commencement ful intellect, and was perfectly conversant with huof the last century, Britain began to open her eyes man life: but he was not sufficiently versed in to the excellency of her illustrious son, THE GREAT black-letter lore; and, deficient in poetic taste, he POET OF NATURE, and to discover a solicitude for was unable to accompany our great bard in the the integrity of his works. A new and a more higher flights of his imagination. The public in perfect edition of them became the demand of the general were not satisfied with his commentary or public; and, to answer it, an edition, under the his text: but to his preface they gave the most unsuperintendence of Rowe, made its appearance in limited applause. The array and glitter of its 1709. Rowe, however, either forgetting or shrink-words; the regular and pompous march of its peing from the high and laborious duties, which he had undertaken, selected, most unfortunately, for his model, the last and the worst of the folio editions; and, without collating either of the first two folios or any of the earlier quartos, he gave to the disappointed public a transcript much too exact of the impure text which lay opened before him. Some of its grosser errors, however, he corrected; and he prefixed to his edition a short memoir of the life of his author; which, meagre and weakly written as it is, still constitutes the most authentic biography that we possess of our mighty bard.

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On the failure of this edition, after the pause of

The bow of Ulysses was next seized by a mighty hand-by the hand of Warburton; whose Shakspeare was published in 1747. It failed of success; for, conceiving that the editor intended to make his author his showman to exhibit his erudition and intellectual power, the public quickly neglected his work; and it soon disappeared from circulation, though some of its proffered substitutions must be allowed to be happy, and some of its ex

riods, with its pervading affectation of deep thought and of sententious remark, seem to have fascinated the popular mind; and to have withdrawn from the common observation its occasional poverty of meaning; the inconsistency of its praise and censure; the falsity in some instances of its critical remarks; and its defects now and then even with respect to composition. It has, however, its merits, and Heaven forbid that I should not be just to them. It gives a right view of the difficulties to be encountered by the editor of Shakspeare: it speaks modestly of himself, and candidly of those who had preceded him in the path which he was treading:

22

it assigns to Pope, Hanmer, and Warburton, those and was content to lose it!" Shakspeare lost the victims to the rage of the minute critics, their due world! He won it in an age of intellectual giants proportion of praise: it is honourably just, in short, the Anakims of mind were then in the land =

to all, who come within the scope of its observations, with the exception of the editor's great author alone. To him also the editor gives abundant praise; but against it he arrays such a frightful host of censure as to command the field; and to leave us to wonder at our admiration of an object so little worthy of it, though he has been followed by the admiration of more than two entire centuries. But Johnson was of a detracting and derogating spirit. He looked at mediocrity with kindness: but of proud superiority he was impatient; and he always seemed pleased to bring down the man of the ethereal soul to the mortal of mere clay. His maxim seems evidently to have been that, which was recommended by the Roman poet to his countrymen,

"Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos."

and in what succeeding period has he lost it? But,
not to take advantage of an idle frolic of the edi-
tor's imagination, can the things be which he as-
Can the author, whom he thus degrades,
serts?
be the man, whom the greater Jonson, of James's
reign, hails as, "The pride, the joy, the wonder
of the age!" No! it is impossible! and if we
come to a close examination of what our preface
writer has here alleged against his author, of
which I have transcribed only a part, we shall
find that one haif of it is false, and one, some-
thing very like nonsense, disguised in a garb of tin-
sel embroidery, and covered, as it moves statelily
along, with a cloud of words:-

Infert se septus nebula, mirabile dictu,

But the

Per medios, miscetque viris neque cernitur ulli. To discover the falsity or the inanity of the ideas, In the pre-eminence of intellect, when it was imme- which strut in our editor's sentences against the diately in his view, there was something which ex- fame of his author, we have only to strip them of cited his spleen; and he exulted in its abasement. the diction which envelopes them; and then, with In his "Shakspeare, in his comic scenes, is a Shakspeare in our hands, to confront them, in page, But we have deviated from our seldom successful when he engages his characters their nakedness, with the truth as it is manifested in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sar- in his page. casm: their jests are commonly gross, and their straight path to regard our editor as a critic in his pleasantry licentious. In tragedy, his performance preface, when we ought, perhaps, to consider him seems to be constantly worse as his labour is more. only in his notes, as a commentator to explain the As an unfolder of The effusions of passion, which exigence forces out, obscurities; or, as an experimentalist to assay are, for the most part, striking and energetic: but the errors of his author's text. whenever he solicits his invention or strains his intricate and perplexed passages, Johnson must faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, be allowed to excel. His explanations are always meanness, tediousness, and obscurity! In narra-perspicuous; and his proffered amendments of a tion he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, corrupt text are sometimes successful. and a wearisome train of circumlocution, &c. &c. expectations of the world had been too highly His declamations or set speeches are commonly raised to be satisfied with his performance; and cold and weak, for his power was the power of it was only to the most exceptionable part of it, Nature! when he endeavoured, like other tragic the mighty preface, that they gave their unmingled In the year following the publication of writers, to catch opportunities of amplification; applause. and, instead of inquiring what the occasion demand-Johnson's edition, in 1766, George Steevens made ed, to show how much his stores of knowledge his first appearance as a commentator on Shakcould supply, he seldom escapes without the pity speare; and he showed himself to be deeply con"But the admirers versant with that antiquarian reading, of which his or resentment of his reader ?" of this great poet have never less reason to indulge predecessor had been too ignorant. In 1768, an their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he edition of Shakspeare was given to the public by seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and Capell; a man fondly attached to his author, but mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of much too weak for the weighty task which he ungreatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses dertook. He had devoted a large portion of his of love. He is not long soft and pathetic without life to the collection of his materials: he was an some idle conceit or contemptible equivocation. He industrious collator, and all the merit, which he no sooner moves than he counteracts himself; and possesses, must be derived from the extent and terror and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are the fidelity of his collations. In 1773 was pubchecked and blasted with sudden frigidity!" The lished an edition of our dramatist by the associaegregious editor and critic then proceeds to con- ted labours of Johnson and Steevens; and this found his author with his last and most serious edition, in which were united the native powers charge, that of an irreclaimable attachment to the of the former, with the activity, the sagacity, and offence of verbal conceit. This charge the editor the antiquarian learning of the latter, still forms illustrates and enforces, to excite our attention and the standard edition for the publishers of our Poet. to make an irresistible assault on our assent, with In 1790 Malone entered the lists against them as a variety of figurative and magnificent allusion. a competitor for the editorial palm. After this First, "a quibble is to Shakspeare, what luminous publication, Malone seems to have devoted the vapours (a Will o' the wisp) are to travellers: he remaining years of his life to the studies requisite follows it at all adventures: it is sure to lead him out for the illustration of his author; and at his death of his way, and sure to ingulf him in the mire. It he bequeathed the voluminous papers, which he has some malignant power over his mind, and its had prepared, to his and my friend, James Bosfascinations are irresistible," &c. It then becomes well, the younger son of the biographer of Johna partridge or a pheasant; for "whatever be the son; and by bim these papers were published in dignity or the profundity of his disquisition, &c. &c. twenty octavo volumes, just before the close of let but a quibble spring up before him and he leaves his own valuable life. That the fund of Shakhis work unfinished." It next is the golden apple spearian information has been enlarged by this of Atalanta:-"A quibble is to Shakspeare the publication, cannot reasonably be doubted: that As my opinion of Magolden apple for which he will always turn aside the text of Shakspeare has been injured by it, may from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A confidently be asserted. quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such lone, as an annotator on Shakspeare, has been delight that he was content to purchase it at the already expressed, it would be superfluous to resacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth; and, peat it. His stores of antiquarian knowledge were lastly, the meteor, the bird of game, and the golden at least equal to those of Steevens: but he was apple are converted into the renowned queen of not equally endowed by Nature with that popular Egypt: for "a quibble is to him (Shakspeare) commentator: Malone's intellect was unquestionthe fatal Cleopatra, for which he lost the world, ably of a subordinate class. He could collect and

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