1854, in a paper upon Mr. Collier's recent edition of Shakespeare,-a passage which is but a fair specimen of the critical school to which it belongs. The Reviewer is speaking of those lines in Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 6, in which Banquo says of the martlet,

"Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed

The air is delicate."

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In the folio, for 'most' we have must,—a mere typographical error, which any proof reader would correct and ask no questions. But, says the Reviewer, "Mr. Collier in his new edition has 'Where they much breed,' whether upon the authority of "his manuscript annotator does not appear. Much "we should think very likely to be the true word. "Most was Rowe's conjectural emendation." does not seem to have occurred to the writer that there was no question of whether he thought this or that "very likely to be the true word." If we even go so far as to suppose that much and most are equally adapted to the context, the former requires the change of two letters in the original text, while the latter changes but one, and must therefore, as it gives an appropriate sense, be received without question.

Of a similar kind is the error into which the author of a skilfully prepared paper, in the North American Review for April, 1854, falls,-an error in which he but goes astray with some of those who have judged themselves not unfit to become Shakespeare's editors. He admits that it is better not to disturb certain passages, such as,

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"Put out the light, and then-put out the light!

"If 'twere done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well,
It were done quickly,"

Gadshill's "burgomasters and great oneyers," and Dogberry's description of himself as "a rich fellow and one that hath had losses," on the ground that, "the expressions have become consecrated, as it were, in the mind of every loving admirer of Shakespeare, and he will resist to the death any change "in them." He goes on to say-" A similar feeling แ (it would be too harsh to call it prejudice) exists "with regard to many expressions in the common 'English version of the Scriptures which might be "profitably amended, as they are either ungramma"tical, incorrect or obsolete." Is it not deplorable that intelligent men should advocate the retention of a phrase in Shakespeare's works, not on the grounds that we have the best authority to believe it his and that it conveys a sense consistent with the context, but because people have become used to it! Our Bible is a translation; and if any man be displeased with the "ungrammatical, incorrect and obsolete" expressions in it, and think that he can make a better, he may do it, and welcome: nay there is no canon, literary or ecclesiastical, to prevent the North American Reviewer himself from undertaking the task, which he would doubtless perform with ability and taste. But what has this to do with the condition of the text of Shakespeare,-an original work? If according to the best evidence

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;
No feare lest dinner coole; when thus began
Our Authour."

Book V. 395.

'It should be remarked that in the words, 'when 'thus began our author,' Milton does not refer to '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

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'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