Whose paltry fustian, and base flashing wit, But live, brave Shakespeare! in thy nobler sense, In best repositories, whilst their stuff Be torn to bake under some penny puff, Or high'st preferment be to line a trunk, * .1691. The lines are not of much value, but may deserve preservation as individual testimony to the little respect with which the precious remains of our poet were treated for a long period. This, perhaps, did not apply to poetical readers; yet the fourth edition, printed in 1685, has numerous corruptions, and it is evident, from the slashing performances of Mr. Collier's expurgator as well as mine, what liberties were deemed allowable, and even necessary, to accommodate the language to the notions of those connected with the stage. In June, 1852, I purchased from Mr. Willis, the bookseller, a copy of the second folio edition of Shakespeare, in its original binding, which, like that of Mr. Collier, contains very numerous manuscript corrections by several hands; the typographical errors, with which that edition abounds, are sedulously corrected, and the writers have also tried their hands at conjectural emendation extensively. Many of these emendations correspond with those in Mr. Collier's volume, but chiefly in those cases where the error in the old copy was pretty evident, but the readings often vary, and sometimes for the better. It seems to me that the correctors, like Mr. Collier's, have often availed themselves of some edition with notes, and, as Mr. Collier says of the corrections in his volume, "In many cases the older con jectures of Pope, Theobald, Warburton, and Hanmer are remarkably confirmed." These Mr. Collier would treat as coincident anticipations, but, as they form the greater bulk of the corrections, they are far too numerous to have been fortuitous, and there can be no doubt that they have been engrafted in his book by some later hand than that of the earlier theatrical possessor, to whom the stage directions and striking out of passages, with some few of the alterations of the text, can alone be fairly attributed. A few fortuitous coincidences we might admit, but it is not within the doctrine of probabilities that two writers, at distant periods, without any communication or knowledge of each other, should in hundreds of instances coincide so exactly as we find the major part of the corrections in Mr. Collier's volume do with the later emendations, slowly elaborated by a succession of commentators, and many of them far from obvious. Where the error, as in some cases, is what Mr. Collier calls "self-evident," coincidence would be possible, but where, as in many instances, the corrections take the form of acute and happy conjecture, such extraordinary sympathy would be something miraculous. Mr. Collier's first impression that (the ink being of various shades) two distinct hands have been employed on these corrections, is undoubtedly correct; for in the case of both the second and third folios with manuscript corrections which I possess, this is evidently the case. There is a temptation to add to manuscript notes, when a volume has once been invaded in this manner, which is very frequently indulged by successive possessors. The external evidence for the authenticity of Mr. Collier's book, even in the judgment of his most friendly critics, entirely fails; the only person who could have thrown light upon it is unhappily no more. Those who knew the late Mr. Thomas Rodd, must be aware of his zeal for the illustration of Shakespeare, and his acute perception of the value of all that would be subservient to it; nor was he hasty in his examination of the literary curiosities in which he so extensively dealt. We may presume, therefore, that, had he not suspected the authenticity of these manuscript corrections, the volume would never have passed from his hands, even to favour Mr. Collier, for the paltry consideration paid for it; but would have passed to the library of the British Museum, for which Mr. Rodd had so long been an assiduous and able provider. We are reduced, therefore, to the alternative of examining the internal evidence which the contents of the volume afford. Now Mr. Collier implies, and insinuates in almost every page, that the corrections may have been, nay, were, derived from some old authentic source, and that therefore there is no appeal from their authority! Had he fortuned to chance upon some autograph remains of Shakespeare, (and I sincerely wish he yet may do so, in order that he may make the first bonfire on the occasion with his volume of Notes and Emendations and his PseudoShakespeare,) he could not have urged a more strenuous and decided claim to have them accepted as unequivocal authority! This is to be regretted, for it has been justly observed that such an uncompromising claim to authority excites a natural repugnance against enforced opinion, and endangers the success of the few suggestive emendations his volume affords. The following pages will however clearly demonstrate how very far from probable, or even possible, it is that the correctors of this volume had any ancient authority for their doings; that, on the contrary, the greater part of them are adopted from recent annotators; and that, of what are original, or can be considered new readings, abundance are changes for the worse, and a still larger number entirely unnecessary and imperti nent! Such a number of glaring mistakes and misapprehensions of the language of the poet have never before appeared at once among all the voluminous comments which have from time to time been published; and the reader has only to refer to the blunders about the words strain, voyage, imperseverant, and carve,* to be convinced that such fatal perversions of the language of the poet could not have been made by any one who could be at all held to have had old authority for what he or they have done. Indeed, it has been observed, that many of the substitutions bear such evident marks of savouring of modern phraseology, as to render it highly improbable that they were made by any one living at an earlier period than the last century. This is a conviction which nothing but the discovery of the "authorities" upon which Mr. Collier dwells would have power to shake. We can therefore yield to these manuscript corrections no more credit than we should give those of any other anonymous note-writer, whether printed or manuscript, and proceed to scrutinize their merits and defects, by which they must stand or fall. When Mr. Collier published his first edition of Shakespeare, begun in 1842, and finished in 1844, he was a strict conservative, and his notes afford critical canons * See pages 6, 27, 74, 301-2, 308-9, and PASSIM for other in stances. which are entirely at issue with his recent conduct. Thus, in one place, he tells us: "There cannot, we apprehend, be a moment's doubt as to the propriety of adhering to the text of every old edition, and of rejecting that of every modern one." (Vol. iv. p. 137.) Again: "Malone and the modern editors silently omit 'an,' probably under the notion that they had a right to correct Shakespeare's metre"! And speaking of one of Malone's additions to the text, he says: "To insert lines of his own is a province of a commentator of which we never before heard ; but this is an error to be pointed out by an annotator, not to be corrected in Malone's mode." (Vol. iv. p. 146.) How strenuously he opposed himself to alterations for the sake of the rhyme, such as he now advocates, (even when they were manifestly required from the whole of the dialogue being in rhyme,) will appear from his rejection of Theobald's judicious alteration in Midsummer-Night's Dream: "And in the wood, where often you and I And thence, from Athens, turn away our eyes, Mr. Collier adheres to the old evidently erroneous readings swell'd and companions. Yet he would now admit uncalled for rhymes substituted where they are by no means so clearly indicated. What can have converted Mr. Collier to such an entirely opposite extreme of revolutionary rashness? Is it that he has found the adherence to long-exploded typographical errors and evidently erroneous readings had been urged against his edition, and had prevented it from becom |