We reach, then, this conclusion, that Mr. Collier has put forth under the sanction of his name, a volume, as the "Plays of William Shakespeare," which contains at least one thousand and thirteen inadmissible alterations from the original text!!! Is it not dealing gently with the editor, to speak of such a proceeding, only as insufferable and inexcusable presumption ?— presumption which is not in the least atoned for, not even palliated, by the fact that the same volume contains a few corrections which present claims, yet to be discussed, to a place in the received text.

If it be asked why these few are to be (possibly) received, while more than one thousand and thirteen are to be positively rejected, and how those few which may be admissible, were made by the man who made the one thousand and thirteen which are inadmissible—I reply, that such of the few as are to be received, will be received entirely upon their own merits, as arbitrary conjectural emendations of passages which are evidently misprinted in the original, and also that they were made by the happy conjectures of several correctors. For we have seen that at least two hundred and forty-nine of the MS. corrector's changes are not derived from any source peculiarly his own, and that a large number of these have been made by Shakespeare's various editors and commentators-some of them even more wrongheaded than the folio guesser himself: which incontestably proves that no authority was necessary to the making of these corrections, and, as a corollary to that conclusion, not to the making of the others.

That the emendations were the work of more than one hand, will, I think, be plain to any one accustomed to read old manuscript, or any manuscript in fact, upon an examination of the very fac-simile page, which Mr. Collier, with the openness which has marked his conduct of the whole of this matter, published with his "Notes and Emendations." Upon a comparison of the manuscript line,

"So, rushing in the bowels of the French,"

99 66

about one-third down the page, with "briefly,' e," and "now," about two-thirds down, and "same" at the top of the page, it will be seen that the former is of an older date than the four latter, which are not only more modern, but bear the marks of a bolder, heavier hand. In the former, the formation of the letters is plainly upon a different, and as plainly, more ancient model, than that traceable in the latter; and the one has a painstaking, though uncertain air, while the other shows a rapid and bold, though clear and decided hand. The oldest of these hands is not more antique in appearance than much manuscript which I have seen, dated during the third and last quarters of the seventeenth century: and the most modern seems not too old to have been written in the second quarter of the eighteenth.

The conclusion that the MS. corrections are the work of more than one hand, is strongly fortified by the fact, which has an important bearing on the whole question, that during the

latter half of the seventeenth century and the first years of the eighteenth, the manuscript correction of folios seems not to have been uncommon. This was natural enough; for readers of Shakespeare could not but see the numberless typographical errors which deformed the early editions; and some would naturally be tempted to correct them, and to make the text conform to the representations upon the stage of their own day, by cutting it down, adding stage directions, &c. Accordingly we find it recorded in Wilson's Shakespeariana, published in 1827, that at the sale of the library of a Mr. Dent, who was a devoted collector of books upon our early literature, and which took place in the early part of this century, a corrected folio of this kind was sold for a large price. It is thus described:

"THIRD EDITION, folio, 1663.

"Mr. Dent's copy sold for 651. 2s. It contained many manuscript emendations, chiefly in an ancient hand, coeval with the date of the edition. The annotations in question were, in many respects, curious and important, consisting of stage directions, alterations in the punctuation, &c."—WILSON'S Shakespeariana, p. 63.

The description of this folio, which, in its MS. "stage directions, alterations in the punctuation, &c.," so much resembles Mr. Collier's, might have applied to that identical volume, except that Mr. Dent's copy was not the second but the third folio. But it should be remarked that the emendations in this had certainly been made by men of different generations, for they were not altogether, but "chiefly, in an ancient hand." Mr. Dent's folio is in the possession of Mr. Halliwell, as I have learned by a note from that gentleman. Mr. Halliwell is collating Mr. Dent's copy and some others, containing similar annotations, for his folio edition; but, he says that he finds them to be of little critical value. Mr. Singer, the editor of the Chiswick edition, has also one of these corrected folios, and knows of others. As the second, third, and fourth folios, and even the first, became so worthless for ordinary use after the labours of Rowe and Theobald, it is a wonder that so many which contained MS. corrections, survived to the beginning of this century, when the rage for Shakespeariana came in to preserve them.

I must be permitted to express my regret at the incessant insinuations made by Mr. Singer in his Text of Shakespeare Vindicated, &c., that Mr. Collier's folio is a fabrication in which the possessor is implicated. Mr. Collier's previous service in the cause of Shakespearian literature should have protected him against so needless, and therefore unjustifiable, an accusation. Without a doubt Mr. Collier believes in the antiquity as well as the value of the emendations in his folio; and that some of them are about a hundred and seventy-five years old, there can be no question. The many coincidences with the conjectures of editors of the seventeenth century, are, doubtless, the result of the fortunes of the volume, which threw it into the hands of two or three emenders of that period, as we have seen was the case with Mr. Dent's.

My course in treating this important question-the most important that has arisen in the history of Shakespearian literature-has been, not to examine the proposed emendations in detail, but to classify the changes in Mr. Collier's folio, and draw conclusions from the number and diverse character of those classes. The former course-the easier-would merely have made public the coincidence or difference of opinion between individuals: the latter, starting from recorded facts, and attaining its end by deductions inevitable from those facts, decides the question with the powers of both authority and reason.

Let us now briefly recapitulate the eonclusions to which we (reader and author) have, I trust, arrived.

We have seen that the text of Shakespeare suffered sorely at the outset from its first printers, and that their errors have been the occasion of its undergoing quite as much from the presumption and incapacity of his editors and critics; and that, to use the phrase of his player friends," from the most able to him that could but spell," all his editors, critics, and

commentators, with two or three exceptions, have wantonly, impertinently, and ignorantly mutilated his works. We have seen that great abilities have not preserved his editors and critics from the worst and most ridiculous errors; for the narrow pedagogism of Seymour, the blatant stupidity of Becket, and the complacent feeblemindedness of Jackson, did not seek to commit more insufferable outrages upon the text, than were for a time actually effected by the conceited wantonness of Pope,* the arrogance of Warburton, the solemn inflexibility of Johnson, and the smartness and mechanical ear of Steevens.

With regard to Mr. Collier's corrected folio, it has plainly appeared, from its own pages, and from the records of Shakespearian literature

That it possesses in itself no authority:

That, consequently, its proposed emendations must depend for acceptance entirely upon their intrinsic worth:

That the corrector did not feel the Poetry of Shakespeare:

That he did not take his Wit:

That he violated the Dramatic Propriety which Shakespeare observed:

That his corrections were made in disregard of the context:

That they were not made until after the Restoration, when Shakespeare's contemporaries had passed away, and emendation must have been conjectural:

That the corrector disregarded the tastes and customs of Shakespeare's day, and sought to make Shakespeare's text conform to the tastes and customs of his own day:

That he made changes in the text merely because he did not understand it:

That he blundered in making his corrections, and was obliged to erase them, and substitute others; which could not have been the case if he had had "authority:"

That the corrections which would seem most conclusively to show that he had authority, have been effected by the mere conjectures of others, and some of them by persons of very slender abilities:

That of one thousand one hundred and three proposed changes in the text of the folio of 1632, at least one thousand and thirteen are entirely inadmissible into the original text; and that of the remainder, one hundred and seventy-three are already a part of the received text; leaving one hundred and seventeen, a little more than one-twelfth of the entire number, from which future editors may carefully select emendations:

That it is highly probable, to say the least, that correctors of two or three generations laboured upon this volume:

*The justice of applying this epithet to Pope, as an editor, will not be denied by any one familiar with Shakespearian literature. The following jewel of annotation from the Variorum edition, and another from Pope's own edition, will amuse the general reader, and satisfy him as to the character of Pope's editorial labours. The first is upon that passage in the masquerade scene of Romeo and Juliet, in which old Capulet welcomes his guests. and says,

"Gentlemen, welcome! ladies that have their toes
Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you."

"Their TOES- -] Thus all the ancient copies. The modern editors, following Mr. Pope, read with more delicacy-their feet. An editor, by such capricious alterations, deprives the reader of the means of judging of the manners of different ages: for the word employed in the text undoubtedly did not appear indelicate to the audience of Shakespeare's time, though perhaps it would not be endured at this day." This strange mixture of common sense and preposterous, indelicate squeamishness, is from the pen of Malone. Steevens follows him; and gravely quotes from Comus to show that the harmless word which means the fingers of the feet," was endured, at least, in the time of Milton." In the same play, Act III., Sc. 4, Pope has this note. "Some few unnecessary verses are omitted in this scene, according to the oldest editions." For "this scene," we may read the whole play;' for Mr. Pope (he was then only Mr. Pope) took the liberty of rejecting just what he pleased of the additions which Shakespeare made to his first draught of this charming tragedy. Ample justification for the application of far more sweeping terms of condemnation to the editorial labours of Pope, Johnson, and their compeers, will be found profusely scattered through the remainder of this sketch

That there are other existing folios, similar in every respect to this, and entitled to no less deference-that is, to none:

And, finally, that this folio is filled with errors of all the various kinds committed by editors and commentators, of every grade of capacity and incapacity, during the last hundred and fifty years; and that it contains a large number of the specific mutilations perpetrated by them, and adds to those more than have heretofore been attempted by all the mutilators of the text combined.

The conclusions forced upon us by this stubborn array, attach, not only to individual changes in Mr. Collier's folio, but to the whole of the manuscript corrections, as far as their pretence to authority, or to any other consideration than that due to their intrinsic excellence is concerned; and those conclusions are, that the volume which contains them is utterly worthless as an authority, and that at least eleven-twelfths of them are not entitled to the slightest consideration, even as conjectures.

After being compelled to such conclusions, it is difficult to understand how Mr. Collier could have been blind to the incontestable facts which establish them. The MS. corrections of this folio, warmly welcomed everywhere at first, are now, with a few exceptions, condemned by Knight, Halliwell, and Singer, the principal editors of Shakespeare, and by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, the distinguished dramatic scholar and critic, who has not yet edited Shakespeare, and has therefore no pet text to defend. Dr. Delius, too, the eminent German critic— and to attain eminence as a critic of Shakespeare in Germany, implies, perhaps, a profounder scholarship and keener insight than to reach the same position in England-Dr. Delius admits but seventeen emendations out of the whole thirteen hundred and three. Such a change in all quarters, from welcoming expectation to a scornful rejection of almost the entire labours of the corrector, and which, it must be remembered, has been worked by the emendations themselves, shows how utterly they are at variance with the spirit which Shakespearian scholars have imbibed from the works of their great master; and how inconsistent they are with the language, customs, and tone of thought of Shakespeare's day, with which the students of his works must needs make themselves familiar. In endeavouring to account for the singular fatuity which led Mr. Collier to embody them ruthlessly in a text which he calls "The Plays of Shakespeare," it is both just and charitable to conclude that, intoxicated with the delight which he would naturally feel at making a discovery which seemed at first to promise so much for the cause to which he has devoted not a little of his life, he looked only at its brightest points, and saw those double; and that we may safely expect to be able ere long, to appeal from Collier drunk with anticipated good fortune, to Collier sobered with reflection upon almost unmitigated disappointment.

It is worth while to devote a portion of this review to the consideration of a few readings of Mr. Collier's folio which form a class by themselves. These are the entire lines which, in five or six places, are inserted to supply a lacking rhyme or complete a deficient sense. These cannot in any instance be received, no matter how great the deficiency which they attempt to make up, or how remarkable their intrinsic merits;-and for this very conclusive and obvious reason.-They are not emendations of typographical errors, not the correction of that which is ill done, but the doing of that which was left undone. If there were evidence that they came from Shakespeare himself, they would be necessarily received, no matter how poor they were; that evidence not existing, they must be rejected, no matter how good or apt they are. They could be received only upon unquestionable authority; for they have no other basis on which to stand, not even the support of an erroneous text. They are 'made out of whole cloth.' As far as their authority is concerned, we know that they could not possibly have been supplied until sixteen years after Shakespeare's death; for the edition on the margins of a copy of which they are written was not published until 1632, and he died in 1616; and, besides, we have plainly seen that some of the corrections could not possibly

VOL. I.

i

have been made before 1662, when Davenant introduced the first scenery ever exhibited upon a public stage in England. Now, the interpolation of an entire line by one man in 1662, is as little justifiable as the interpolation of an entire scene by another man in 1762 or 1853. There is the same lack of authority for each. The addition is worth just as much in one case as in the other.

It must also be noted that, as these lines, if received at all, must be received upon authority, if we admit one, we must admit all. To do otherwise would be to sit in judgment upon Shakespeare's right to write his own plays as he pleased. We must therefore receive into the text the following line which is printed in italic letter, if we receive any which are similarly inserted in Mr. Collier's folio:

"Q. Margaret.-Give up your staff, Sir, and the King his realm.
Gloster.-My staff?—here, noble Henry, is my staff:

To think I fain would keep it makes me laugh."

What must be the capacity of a man to understand, much more, to emend Shakespeare's text, who could perpetrate such a ridiculous abomination as this, merely for the purpose of supplying a rhyme ?-for it must be remarked that the sense is perfect and clear without it. Who will not be grateful that there is no authority which compels us to receive such a platitude as Shakespeare's ?-and if not this, then no other line; for all not furnished us "by authentic copies, printed or manuscript," must be regarded as interpolation. If a line be wanting in the text, the hiatus must remain until it is filled up by these "authentic copies." These remarks apply, with equal force, to the arbitrary changes of a word or more at the end of a line, for the purposes of rhyme. As for instance :

"Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave;

Do him that kindness, and take leave of him."

For this the MS. corrector audaciously substitutes,

"Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave;

Do him that kindness-all that he can have."

That is, he takes out five words from the original text, and substitutes for them five others, changing the construction of the sentence to admit them, in order that two lines may rhyme! To consider gravely such mangling of the text, is to waste words and patience. And, as before, what applies to one instance, applies to all others of the same nature. We cannot permit any man to mutilate Shakespeare's text, even to better it-in the estimation of himself or a thousand like him.

With two exceptions, then, all these lines and rhyming terminations of lines must be regarded as unwarrantable interpolations. These two exceptions occur in All's Well that Ends Well, Act I., Sc. 3, and in King Henry V., Act III., Sc. 2. In the first instance the Clown sings a fragment of an old ballad which is thus mutilated in the original text:-the extract will give the reader an idea of the careless and make-shift manner in which the first folio was printed:

"Was this faire face the cause, quoth she,

Why the Grecians sacked Troy

Fond done, done, fond was this king Priam's joy
With that she sighed as she stood, bis

And gave this sentence then, among nine bad if one be good, among nine bad if one be good, there's yet one good in ten."

This Mr. Collier's folio corrects, by making a transposition in the first line and an addition to the second, so that the first stanza, when properly divided into lines, reads as follows

"Was this fair face, quoth she, the cause

Why the Grecians sacked Troy?

Fond done, done fond, good sooth it was.
Was this King Priam's joy."