we can obtain, he sometimes wrote in a manner which, judged by our standards of to-day, is ungrammatical, incorrect and obsolete, are we to be restrained from correcting his lapses, softening his asperities, and modernizing his style only because his words "have become consecrated?" It is well that there is even this restraint upon amending hands, although it is but secondary and inferior. The higher and paramount objection to such emendation is that, correct or incorrect, Shakespeare has the right to utter his own thoughts in his own words, and that we who read him have a right to his words as exactly as they can be ascertained for us. Hamlet says, "Unhand me, gentlemen,— By heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me ! Is it only because we are accustomed to the exclamation in this form, that we should refrain from modernizing one word in it, (now hardly used except in a sense directly opposed to that in which Hamlet uses it,) and reading, "By heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that stays me!" Tush! we want the text that Shakespeare wrote, with all its odor of antiquity-say rather, of perennial freshness,-about it. We seek Shakespeare's words, not something better or more modern; and not only taste but justice supports our claims. His editors and verbal critics, now that he is dead, have no more right to take away his words from him, be cause they are obsolete, than some dashing Paul's man of his day had the right to 'convey' his handkerchief, because it was of the last year's fashion. Such changes are felonies in the commonwealth of letters; and to defend or palliate them is next in guilt to committing them. In addition to the bold corruptions of his text by editors of past days, and which were in a great measure, though not thoroughly, purged by the labors of Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier, the readers of Shakespeare have been, and even in the editions of these gentlemen, are yet obliged to endure the presence of notes upon his pages, the object of which would seem beyond the reach of conjecture; for they accomplish nothing but the iteration or dilution of an idea, which the original expresses in terms too unequivocal to admit of a moment's doubt in any sane mind. In this style of annotation a passage in the Paradise Lost which describes Raphael's visit to Eden would be treated after this fashion. "A while discourse they hold; Book V. 395. 'It should be remarked 'thus began our author,' 'himself; for although his editors and biographers, 'in speaking of him, call him our author,' he could 'hardly thus designate himself in his own verse. We 'boldly stake our critical reputation upon the asser that in the words, 'when Milton does not refer to 6 'tion, that by our authour' Milton means Adam, 'whom he thus calls the author of the human race; 'and should any envious editor or critic object that 'this would make Adam responsible for a more vo'luminous and miscellaneous issue than was ever due 'to any other author, we pass by the narrow-minded 'suggestion in silent contempt. We confess that 'we pride ourselves not a little, though modestly, upon this construction of the passage; which, strange to say, has been passed over without a 'note by Hume, Addison, Tickell, Newton, Richard'son, Todd, Brydges, and in fact all the editors and 'critics of the poet.' You will not find this note in any edition of Milton with which I am acquainted; but in the Variorum Shakespeare you will meet with innumerable comments like it; and even in more recent editions there are too many which are near akin to it. But although I would defend the text of Shakespeare from mutilation, and although the words of the original folio seem to me to have been needlessly and therefore insufferably changed in many instances, I would not slight the labors of those who have heretofore endeavored to bring order out of the confusion which the printers of his plays so frequently made in them. On the contrary, I believe it to be true that we owe at least one happy and necessary conjectural emendation of the text to every one of his verbal critics, except, perhaps, Becket and Seymour; and I have not only endeavored to show that the text of the first folio is clear in many passages which have been thought obscure and which are therefore changed in the ordinary editions, but in many others (actually many, but comparatively few) the typographical corruption of which is undeniable, I have myself proposed conjectural emendations of the text. If I have been successful where others have failed, or have detected errors of the press which have escaped the eyes of my predecessors in this field of labor, it will be only a reasonable consequence of the experience of some years in the editorial room of a leading journal, where, of course, the examination and preparation of manuscript and the conjectural correction of typographical errors is a matter of daily occurrence: -an advantage possessed, I believe, by no one of Shakespeare's editors or commentators, except in a measure by Zachary Jackson and Mr. Charles Knight; the former of whom, a printer, seems to have had no qualification for his task, except the knowledge of his craft; while the latter, a publisher, was so misled by his blind reverence for the first folio, as to devote his exertions chiefly to the defence of its manifest corruptions; which is the more to be regretted because in the few cases in which he ventured on conjectural emendation he was eminently successful. If, on the contrary, it should prove that the passages in which I have proposed emendations need no change, or that the suggestions of others are more acceptable than mine, I should be the first to rejoice; for my sole desire in this matter is the integrity of Shakespeare's text. In the course of the volume there are many corrections brought forward from the labors of all the commentators, from Rowe to the Poet's last learned and discriminating verbal critic, the Rev. Alexander Dyce. All these, except when I have expressly opposed them, or characterized them as only plausible, have, in my opinion, an undeniable claim to a place in the text, as acceptable corrections of palpable typographical errors; and obviously needed as they, or at least the majority of them, are, they as well as the readings of the first folio which are shown to be clearly comprehensible, are not to be found in any of the current editions of Shakespeare's works. Some of these will doubtless be opposed upon the plea of conservatism. Many will exclaim, 'Do not disturb the old readings: the old text is consecrated! This feeling must win our respect in all cases, and command our sympathy and co-operation in those in which it really applies to Shakespeare's words, as they are given to us in the authentic edition. But such cases as the last are of extremely rare occurrence; and the veneration which Shakespeare's readers think is awakened in their minds by his words, is, in these cases, as in many others, excited by needless or indefensible changes introduced into his text by Pope, or Warburton, or Johnson, or Capell, or Malone, or other less distinguished editors, or even by accident, and the venerability of which is perhaps a hundred, perhaps fifty years of age. An example will make this clear. In Antony |