except that the seven spurious plays were transferred from the beginning to the end. The poems were added also.

It is evident that Rowe took the fourth Folio as the text from which his edition was printed, and it is almost certain that he did not take the trouble to refer to, much less to collate, any of the previous Folios or Quartos. It seems, however, while the volume containing Romeo and Juliet was in the press he learned the existence of a Quarto edition, for he has printed the prologue given in the Quartos and omitted in the Folios, at the end of the play. He did not take the trouble to compare the text of the Quarto with that of F. When any emendation introduced by him in the text coincides with the reading of F1, as sometimes happens, we are convinced that it is an accidental coincidence. Being, however, a man of natural ability and taste he improved the text by some happy guesses, while, from overhaste and negligence, he left it still deformed by many palpable errors. The best part of the work is that with which his experience of the stage as a dramatic poet had made him familiar. In many cases he first prefixed to the play a list of dramatis personæ, he supplied the defects of the Folios in the division and numbering of Acts and Scenes, and in the entrances and exits of characters. He also corrected and further modernized the spelling, the punctuation and the grammar.

A characteristic specimen of blunders and corrections occurs in the Comedy of Errors, v. I. 138.

important] F. impoteant F, impotent FF, all-potent Rowe. A second Edition, 9 Volumes 12mo, was published in 1714.

Pope's edition in six volumes, 4to, was completed in 1715. On the title-page we read, 'The Works of Shakespeare, in six volumes.' The six volumes, however, included only the plays contained in the first and second Folios. The poems, with an Essay on the Rise and Progress of the Stage, and a Glossary, were contained in a seventh volume edited by Dr Sewell.

Pope, unlike his predecessor, had at least seen the first

Folio and some of the Quartos of separate plays, and from the following passage of his preface it might have been inferred that he had diligently collated them all:

This is the state in which Shakespeare's writings be at present; for since the above-mentioned folio edition [i. e. F], all the rest have implicitly followed it without having recourse to any of the former, or ever making the comparison between them. It is impossible to repair the injuries already done him; too much time has elaps'd, and the materials are too few. In what I have done I have rather given a proof of my willingness. and desire, than of my ability, to do him justice. I have discharg'd the dull duty of an editor, to my best judgment, with more labour than I expect thanks, with a religious abhorrence of all innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture. The method taken in this edition will show itself. The various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that every one may compare 'em, and those I prefer'd into the text are constantly ex fide codicum, upon authority.'

This passage, as any one may see who examines the text, is much more like a description of what the editor did not do than of what he did. Although in many instances he restored, from some Quarto, passages which had been omitted in the Folio, it is very rarely indeed that we find any evidence of his having collated either the first Folio or any Quarto, with proper care. The 'innovations' which he made, according to his own 'private sense and conjecture,' are extremely numerous. Not one in twenty of the various readings is put in the margin, and the readings in his text very frequently rest upon no authority whatever. The glaring inconsistency between the promise in the preface and the performance in the book may well account for its failure with the public.

It would, however, be ungrateful not to acknowledge that Pope's emendations are always ingenious and plausible, and sometimes unquestionably true. He never seems to nod over

that dull labour of which he complains. His acuteness of perception is never at fault.

What is said of him in the preface to Theobald's edition

is, in this point, very unjust*.

"They have both (i.e. Pope and Rymer†) shown themselves in an equal impuissance of suspecting or amending the corrupted passages, &c.'

Pope was the first to indicate the place of each new scene; as, for instance, Tempest, I. 1. 'On a ship at sea.' He also subdivided the scenes as given by the Folios and Rowe, making a fresh scene whenever a new character entered-an arrangement followed by Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson. For convenience of reference to these editions, we have always recorded the commencement of Pope's scenes.

By a minute comparison of the two texts we find that Pope printed his edition from Rowe, not from any of the Folios.

A second edition, 10 volumes, 12mo, was published in 1728, 'by Mr Pope and Dr Sewell.' In this edition, after Pope's preface, reprinted, comes: 'A table of the several editions of Shakespeare's plays, made use of and compared in this impression.' Then follows a list containing the first and second Folios, and twenty-eight Quarto editions of separate plays. It does not, however, appear that even the first Folio was compared with any care, for the changes made in this second edition are very few.

Lewis Theobald had the misfortune to incur the enmity of one who was both the most popular poet, and, if not the first, at least the second, satirist of his time. The main cause

* Capell's copy now before us contains the following note in Capell's handwriting: This copy of Mr Theobald's edition was once Mr Warburton's; who has claim'd in it the notes he gave to the former which that former depriv'd him of and made his own, and some Passages in the Preface, the passages being put between hooks and the notes signed with his name. E. C.' The passage quoted from Theobald's Preface is one of those between hooks.

Thomas Rymer, whose book, called A short View of Tragedy of the last Age, 1693, gave rise to a sharp controversy.

of offence was Theobald's Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors committed as well as unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this Poet, 1726. Theobald was also in the habit of communicating notes on passages of Shakespeare to Mist's Journal, a weekly Tory paper. Hence he was made the hero of the Dunciad till dethroned in the fourth edition to make way for Cibber; hence, too, the allusions in that poem:

'There hapless Shakespear, yet of Theobald sore,
Wish'd he had blotted for himself before;'

and, in the earlier editions,

'Here studious I unlucky moderns save,
Nor sleeps one error in its father's grave;
Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek,
And crucify poor Shakespear once a week.'

Pope's editors and commentators, adopting their author's quarrel, have spoken of Theobald as 'Tibbald, a cold, plodding, and tasteless writer and critic.' These are Warton's words. A more unjust sentence was never penned. Theobald, as an Editor, is incomparably superior to his predecessors, and to his immediate successor, Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his materials. He was the first to recal a multitude of readings of the first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed by previous editors. Many most brilliant emendations, such as could not have suggested themselves to a mere 'cold, plodding, and tasteless critic,' are due to him. If he sometimes erred-'humanum est.' It is remarkable that with all his minute diligence*, (which even his enemies conceded to him, or rather of which they accused him) he left a goodly number of genuine

*

Capell, who might be supposed to write 'sine ira et studio,' denies to Theobald even this merit: 'His work is only made a little better [than Pope's] by his having a few more materials; of which he was not a better collator than the other, nor did he excel him in use of them.' The result of the collations we have made leads us to a very different conclusion.

readings from the first Folio to be gleaned by the still more minutely diligent Capell. It is to be regretted that he gave up numbering the scenes, which makes his edition difficult to refer to. It was first published in 1733, in seven volumes, 8vo. A second, 8 volumes, 12mo, appeared in 1740.

In 1744, a new edition of Shakespeare's Works, in six volumes, 4to, was published at Oxford. It appeared with a kind of sanction from the University, as it was printed at the Theatre, with the Imprimatur of the Vice-Chancellor, and had no publisher's name on the title-page. The Editor is not named-hence he is frequently referred to by subsequent critics as 'the Oxford Editor';-but as he was well known to be Sir Thomas Hanmer, we have always referred to the book under his name. We read in the preface: What the Publick is here to expect is a true and correct Edition of Shakespear's Works, cleared from the corruptions with which they have hitherto abounded. One of the great admirers of this incomparable author hath made it the amusement of his leisure hours for many years past to look over his writings with a careful eye, to note the obscurities and absurdities introduced into the text, and according to the best of his judgment to restore the genuine sense and purity of it. In this he proposed nothing to himself but his private satisfaction in making his own copy as perfect as he could; but as the emendations multiplied upon his hands, other Gentlemen equally fond of the Author, desired to see them, and some were so kind as to give their assistance by communicating their observations and conjectures upon difficult passages which had occurred to them.'

From this passage the character of the edition may be inferred. A country gentleman of great ingenuity and lively fancy, but with no knowledge of older literature, no taste for research, and no ear for the rhythm of earlier English verse, amused his leisure hours by scribbling down his own and his friends' guesses in Pope's Shakespeare, and with