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Notes.

ON THE EDITORSHIP OF SHAKSPERE.

The work that has been done, is to be done again, and no single edition will supply the reader with a text on which he can rely as the best copy of the works of Shakspeare."- Samuel JOHNSON, 1756.

The course of Shaksperean editorship, with regard to the dramatic portion of his works, exhibits four distinct phases: I. The separate publication of sixteen plays, in the quarto form, in the years 1597-1622; II. The publication of thirtysix plays in a folio volume, under the editorial care of Heminge and Condell, in 1623; III. The republication of the folio volume with the addition of "seven playes never before printed in folio," in 1664; and IV. The republication of the thirty-six plays by Nicholas Rowe, by Pope, by Theobald, by Hanmer and others, with the addition of memoirs, critical essays, emendations of the text, annotations, glossaries, etc.

The early quarto plays have become of such extreme rarity as to defy acquisition, and the folio of 1623, which should be the cynosure of future editors, is almost as rare in a PERFECT state. Recourse must be had, in both instances, to public and private collections. The later folios carry no authority, and the seven additional plays are held to be spurious. As all the above volumes are elsewhere described with more or less exactness, it is on the annotated editions only, and on the spirit of annotation which has prevailed for near a century-and-a-half, that I propose to comment.

Reflecting on the events of this latter period, and assuming that new editions of the plays of Shakspere must always be in request, I come to the conclusion that those which are now most in repute on the score of documents and annotations would be too voluminous if reprinted on the former plan of successive accumulation. The editions to which I allude are those of Johnson and Steevens, and Malone-with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators. Both those celebrated publications were formerly in ten octavo volumes; but in the last augmented impressions which were given to the public, by Reed and Boswell respectively, they both form twentyone volumes. This increase of bulk was the growth of only thirty years, and more than thirty years have since elapsed. Is the accumulative system to be continued? Are we always to approach Shakspere through a crowd of prefacewriters? Are we to accept memoirs and collections which have been superseded by the works of more fortunate inquirers? Are we to be satiated with the notes, the confutations of notes, the replies, and the rejoinders of former times? with historical facts misapplied to fiction? with parallel passages devoid of parallelism? with for

geries, and perversions of the text under fictitious names? Whatever admiration may be due to many of the commentators, the expediency of reform is unquestionable. It is manifest that other plans must be devised.

As a step in the path of improvement, I would suggest a bold and searching re-examination of the principles of editorship with reference to the plays of Shakspere, and the formation of such a series of rules as may accord with facts and common sense, and satisfy the majority of the best critics. Important hints on those points occur in the prefaces to his dramatic works, but they are sometimes much at variance with each other, and they nowhere appear collectively. Now, it is undeniable that such a code of rules, even if not the best that could be framed, would tend to the preservation of consistency; and, if unobjectionable in its main features, it might be productive of much of the benefit which new editions can be expected to derive from learned supervision. In re-editing a monographic volume, which had been committed to the press by its author, we encounter no serious difficulties, and therefore need only a few plain rules. It is much otherwise in the case of Shakspere. The folio volume of 1623 contains thirty-six_separate compositions, of very uncertain dates. It embraces a boundless variety of theme; it displays almost every variety of style; and it was set forth by men of whose literary qualifications we have not an atom of evidence! Thence arise NUMBERLESS QUERIES, the solution of which calls for much research and critical sagacity; so that without the establishment of just principles, and the formation of correspondent rules, there can neither be justness nor uniformity of editorial execution.

An attempt to frame such a series of rules is now submitted to public criticism. A rash attempt it may seem, but it is the result of deliberation; called into visible existence by the signs of the times. If the proposed rules should be condemned, or in part contested, I shall hold myself in readiness to come forward in their defence. If improvements should be suggested - for which, doubtless, there is scope-I shall receive the suggestions thankfully. If the publication of the series should be pronounced superfluous, I engage to prove that almost all the rules which it contains have been violated, even in the course of one play, by the best editors of our dramatist-and that some of the most important of them have been violated within the space of twenty lines.

CANONS OF CRITICISM; APPLICABLE TO A NEW EDITION OF THE PLAYS OF WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.

Canon I. The preliminary matter, the number and order of the plays, and their respective titles, shall be the same as in the edition which was set forth by Heminge and Condell in 1623,

Canon II. The text of the plays, errors excepted, shall be that of 1623, collated with that of such of the plays as had been published in a finished state. The deficient lists of characters shall be supplied on the

same plan as that of The tempest, and the current divi

sions into acts and scenes shall be adopted.

Canon III. No emendations shall be admitted into the text but such as are requisite to give it the probable sense, or a more correct rhythm; nor shall any other circumstance than the defective state of the text itself be held to justify such emendations.

Canon IV. No additions shall be made to the plays, either in the shape of prefaces, or of lists of the characters, or of emendations of the text, or of divisions into acts and scenes or otherwise, without being indicated as such by brackets.

Canon V. No omission, or transposition, or other alteration shall be made, either in the text or in its accompaniments, without a note describing it, and stating the evidence in favour of its adoption.

Canon VI. The orthography shall be modern, when not required to be otherwise for the sake of the measure, or the rhyme, or to preserve a play upon words; but the preliminary matter of 1623 shall be printed

literatim.

Cunon VII. In the use of capitals, and in other typographical particulars, there shall be a strict uniformity of plan, which plan shall be described and exemplified. The punctuation shall be inserted as the context requires, and without regard to the early or late editions.

Canon VIII. The preface of each play shall record the evidence of its authorship, the presumed date of its composition, the peculiarities of all the editions of it previous to 1623, and the sources of its plot. The notes shall be as CONCISE as possible, and limited to the establishment of the text, and the illustration of its obscurities; rejecting all criticism on former commentators. Canon IX. A glossarial index shall comprise the titles of the plays, the names of the characters, the obsolete words and phrases, and the words used in an uncommon sense, or with a peculiar accent, or which otherwise seemed to require notes.

JOHN ASGILL.

BOLTON CORNEY.

It is much to be regretted that the materials for a Life of this most original writer, whose wit is frequently as brilliant and effective as Swift's, are So scanty. Dr. Campbell, who wrote the account of Asgill in the first edition of the Biographia Britannica, makes several references to a MS. Memoir by his intimate friend Mr. A. N. Can any of your correspondents inform me if this memoir is still in existence? Dr. Kippis, who seems to bave been in a blissful state of ignorance as to Asgill's real character, and the meaning of his writings, has added no fresh facts to the account of his prede

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ter was as extraordinary as his own, Dr. Barebone, the great builder and projector, of whom Roger North, in his yet unpublished Autobiography, has given one of those speaking portraits which place before us the living man beyond the possibility of a mistake. Barebone was one of the sons of Praise-God Barebone, and was christened at his baptism "If-Jesus-Christ-had-not-died-for-theeNorth informs us it was customary to omit all the thou-had-been-damned" Barebone; but Roger Barebone" or "Damned Dr. Barebone" being his syllables of the name except the last, "Damned ordinary appellation; which, as his morals were none of the best, appeared to suit him better than his entire baptismal prefix. Dr. Barebone-who as the author of two of the ablest of our early commercial tracts, and as one of the most enterprising men this country ever produced, deserves a notice in an English biographical dictionary, when we shall have one which is worthy of the name-died deeply involved in debt, and in appointing Mr. Asgill as his executor, made it a request in his will that he should never pay his debts. What a scene it must have been in Lincoln's Inn Hall, deserving all the graphic powers of Hogarth or Cruikshank, when to the "monster" meeting of creditors whom he had summoned to hear the will read, the executor, after producing the will, and reading it through, and giving due emphasis to the request it contained, subjoined with the greatest gravity, "You have heard, gentlemen, the Doctor's testament, and I will religiously fulfil the will of the dead." As the writer of the MS. memoir justly observes, "There was not perhaps such another pair as the doctor and the counsellor in the three kingdoms."

As some contribution to a future Life of Asgill, no complete list having yet been given of his writings, I inclose the following, which is as correct as I can at present make it. All the Tracts are in my own possession. If any of your correspondents can add to it, I shall be glad to see it rendered more complete:

1. "Several Assertions proved in order to create another Species of Money than Gold and Silver." 1696, 8vo. p. 85. 2nd edit. 1720, 8vo. p. 46.

2. 66

Essay on a Registry for Titles of Lands." Lond. 1698, 8vo. p. 43. 4th edit. 1758, Svo. p. 44. It is reprinted in State Tracts (Will. III.), vol. ii.

p. 693.

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3. Reply to some Reflections on Mr. Asgill's Essay on a Registry." 1699, 8vo. p. 39.

This has never been reprinted. The Tract published in State Tracts (Will. III.), vol. ii. p. 704., attributed to Asgill in the Biog. Brit. (title "Asgill"), is evidently not written by him. 4. An Argument proving that Man translated." 1700. 8vo. p. 103.

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5. " De Jure Divino, or the Assertion is that the Title of the House of Hanover is a Title Hereditary." 1710, 8vo. p. 38.

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12. "Pretender's Declaration transposed." 8vo. p. 19.

1716,

13. "A Question upon Divorce." 1717, 8vo. p. 20. 14. "An Abstract of the Public Funds." 1716, 4to. p. 32.

15. 66 Essay on the Nature of the Kingdom of God within us." 1718, 8vo. p. 24.

16. "The complicated Question divided upon the Bill relating to Peerage." 1719, 8vo. p. 18.

17. "Brief Answer to a brief State of the Question between the printed and painted Calicoes and the Woollen and Silk Manufactures." 1719, 8vo. p. 22.

18. "The British Merchant; or a Review of the Trade of Great Britain." Published in Numbers. No. I., Nov. 10, 1719.

19. " Computation of the Advantages saved to the Public by the South Sea Scheme." 1721, 8vo. p. 24. 20. " Extract of the Act passed 11 Geo. I., for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors; with Remarks, and a Postscript concerning Taxes." 1729, 8vo. p. 32.

21. "

The Metamorphosis of Man. Part I." 2nd edit. 1729, 8vo. p. 288.

22. "

Asgill upon Woolston." 8vo. 1730, p. 36. 23. "Essay upon Charity." 8vo. 1731, p. 18. 24. "Mr. Asgill's Case." Broadside, N. D. Folio. 25. "Mr. Holland's Answer to Mr. Asgill's Case replied to." Broadside folio. N. D.

The last two were issued in 1707, and were replied to in two broadsides: Reasons humbly offered by Mr. Holland against Mr. Asgill; and Mr. Holland's Answer to Mr. Asgill's Case.

Of the Tracts enumerated only Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. are included in the 8vo. with the title: A Collection of Tracts written by John Asgill, Esq. 1715, 8vo.

Mr. Asgill's Congratulatory Letter to the Lord Bishop of Sarum (Burnet), 1713, Svo., is not written by him.

The two best imitations of Asgill's style which I have seen are, A Letter to the People, to be left for them at the Bookseller's; with a Word or Two of the Bandbox Plot. 1712, 8vo. p. 15. Written by Tom. Burnet. And that in the Examiner, vol iii. No. 6., probably by Oldisworth.

To the list of Asgill's writings may, I think, also be added, though his name does not appear to it, Dr. Davenant's Prophecies, 1713, 8vo.; in the introduction to which, which bears all the marks

of Asgill's style, Dr. Davenant is severely ridiculed. JAMES CROSSLEY.

LINES ON THE EARL OF CRAWFORD.

These lines on the Earl of Crawford occur in a volume of poems by W. Bewick, B.A., the second edition of which was printed at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1752. I have copied them in case the editor may think them worthy of insertion in "N. & Q." They may perhaps be interesting to the noble author of Lives of the Lindsays.

"ON THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN EARL OF CRAWFORD, AND HIS VALOUR AT THE BATTLE OF GROTZKA.

"Descended from a family as good

As Scotland boasts, and from right ancient blood:
You are the ornament of all your race,
The splendour, and the glory, and their praise :
What courage you have shown, illustrious Scot!
In future ages will not be forgot:

When wicked infidels came crowding on
With horsetails mov'd, and crescents of the moon ;
With frightful regiments of foot and horse,
In dreadful numbers, and with mighty force;
With proud Bashaws, by Sultan's high command,
With flaming scimiters in nervous hand,
In Hungar plains against the Christian host,
At Grotzka, when the fatal day was lost,
You stood undaunted in the bloody field,
Withstood their fury, and disdain'd to yield,
Amidst the clouds of smoke, when bullets shower'd,
Amidst loud thunders, when dread cannons roar'd,
You with a courage like a Lindsay fought,
Shunn'd not the enemy, but danger sought;
Till crowding numbers overpowering you,
And fainting with your wounds, you weary grew;
When wounded much, and ready to be kill'd,
Amidst your foes, they forced you off the field.

Who can the hero blame, when he has done
His best in battle, and is left alone :
Whose noble courage had sustain'd the test,
By crowding numbers of the foe opprest,
Choked in his blood, wounds flaming in his breast.
Thus when the news came spreading through the main,
The dismal news of noble Crawford slain
When such unhappy tidings touch'd our ears
How pallid were our looks, with sudden fears.
How much did we suspect the doubtful truth,
Believing we had lost the warlike youth;
Whose peerless loss would Britons nearly touch,
The loss of one whom George affects so much:
Which to his country had much dearer been,
Than if a thousand others had been slain.
But Providence the wounded much did save,
And back again our noble Crawford gave;
But not without returning deadly blows,
And that with justice on his wicked foes.
Such was the courage of our British lord;
He pistol'd or he cut them down with sword,
And had but others equal courage shown,
The day which fatal was had been their own."

E. H. A.

SIR HENRY WOTTON'S LETTER TO MILTON.

Most lovers of Comus have often read with interest Sir H. Wotton's "Letter to Milton," which is in many editions prefixed. The initials M. B. refer to Michael Brainthwaite, who succeeded Wotton at Venice; and S. refers to the young Lord Scudamore, whose father resided at Paris as ambassador for King Charles I. Todd rightly suggests, from an old MS. note, that H. must have been John Hales of Eton (the "memorable"), and not Samuel Hartlib, as Thomas Warton had posed.

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It is strange that I too possess a copy of the third edition of Wotton's Reliquia (London, 1672), with many MS. notes in an old and scholarlike hand.

In said volume, H. is likewise filled up Hales; and we know that Wotton speaks of Hales as a Bibliotheca Ambulans (Rel., p. 475.); that he rejoiced when Archbishop Laud preferred him to a prebendaryship of Windsor (Ib. p. 369.); that they lived together on most intimate terms; and that, finally, Hales attended Wotton in his dying moments (Walton's Life of Sir H. W. ad calcem). Indeed (unless I mistake) Samuel Hartlib had not settled in England at this time, so that we may put him out of the question for ever.

To me the mysterious part of Wotton's "Letter to Milton," seems to lie in the initials "R" and "the late R poems." And I should be very glad to know how far Thomas Warton's observations upon them could stand the lynx-eyed scrutiny of MR. CROSSLEY, or some of your other correspondents. Why the first R. must necessarily mean John Rouse of the Bodleian (though Milton did honour him at a later period with some Latin verses), or the second R. Thomas Randolph, the adopted son of Ben. Jonson, I am unable to perceive.

Warton is wrong in saying that it appears from his monument, which he had seen in Blatherwycke Church, Northamptonshire, that Randolph had died on the 17th of March, 1634. His monument contains no date whatsoever. I visited the abovementioned church on the 17th of June ult., with the express purpose of seeing the last restingplace, or the last memorial, of one who, however unfortunate himself, was, in Warton's note at all events, associated with Milton's Comus, and send the inscription verbatim.

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Christopher Hatton, and attached to one of the pillars; and the inscription is given, but not very accurately, in Bridge's Northamptonshire (vol. ii. p. 280., Oxford, 1791, fol.). I transcribed for myself as follows:

"Memoriæ Sacrum

Thome Randolphi (dum inter pauciores) Fælicissimi
et facillimi ingenii Juvenis necnon majora promit-
tentis si fata virum non invidissent sæculo.
Here sleepe thirteene
Together in one tombe,

And all these greate, yet quarrell not for rome:
The Muses and ye Graces teares did meete
And grav'd these letters on y° churlish sheete,
Who having wept their fountaines drye
Through the conduit of the eye,

For their freind who here does lye,

Crept into his grave and dyed,
And soe the Riddle is untyed.

For web this Church, proud yt the Fates bequeath
Unto her ever honour'd trust

Soe much and that soe precious dust,

Hath crown'd her Temples with an Iuye wreath,
Wch should have Laurelle beene
But yt the grieved plant to see him dead
Tooke pet and withered.

Cujus cineres brevi hac (qua potuit) imortalitate donat Christopherus Hatton, Miles de Balneo et Musarū amator, illius vero (quem deflemus) supplendâ carminibus quæ marmoris et æris scandalum manebunt perpetuum."

Warmington.

FOLK LORE.

Rr.

Cure for the Ague. About a mile from Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, on a spot where two roads cross each other, are a few oak trees called cross oaks. Here aguish patients used to resort, and peg a lock of their hair into one of these oaks, then, by a sudden wrench, transfer the lock from their heads to the tree, and return home with the full conviction that the ague had departed with the severed lock. Persons now living affirm they have often seen hair thus left pegged into the oak, for one of these trees only was endowed with the healing power. The frequency of failure, however, to cure the disease, and the unpleasantness of the operation, have entirely destroyed the poWood tells us that Randolph died in March pular faith in this remedy; but that expedients 1634, at the house of William Stafford of Blather- quite as absurd and superstitious, and even more diseases, is wycke, and that he was buried on the 17th day of disgusting, are still practised to remove the same month "in an ile joining to B. Church, fully proved by several instances recorded in among the Stafford family." In this he is followed "N. & Q." And here I must express, what will be by the Biographia Britannica, from whence, as well as from Wood, I learn that the author of the sidered by some of its readers an extraordinary inscription was Randolph's friend Peter Hanstead opinion, that education alone has not, and will not, expel superstition. It may change its character, but it will not rid the mind of its baneful in

of Cambridge. The tablet on which it is written is of white marble, erected at the expense of Sir

con

fluence.

Superstition, I believe, may be proved to be perfectly independent of education, as it exists almost equally among the highly educated and the most ignorant, while persons from both these classes may be found equally free from its degrading trammels. A work designed to illustrate this fact or opinion would be extremely interesting and instructive, and I shall be glad to hear that some able person has entered on such an undertaking. The folk lore of " N. & Q." will be very useful, and may be made more so towards the accomplishment of this object, if instances of superstitious notions and practices among the higher classes, and they abound, be also included. I am prepared to contribute some instances, and I shall do it the more readily when a definite and useful object is known to be in view.

W. H. K.

Weather Prophecy (Vol. v., p. 534.).—I have heard the very same prophecy in Sweden, where it is said never to fail. This summer the oak has come out before the ash in Aberdeenshire, which I beg thus to place on record. G. J. R. G.

Ellen Castle, Aberdeenshire.

PRINTER'S ERRORS IN THE INSEPARABLE PAR-TICLES IN SHAKSPEARE.

Among the most frequent causes of obscurity in the text of the old editions, this stands pre-eminent. The instances are many and manifold. Two passages in the play of King Lear have occurred to me, which need, I think, only be pointed out to carry conviction even to the most rigid stickler for the integrity of the old copies.

In Act II. Sc. 1., where Edmund misrepresents to his father his encounter with his brother Edgar, he says: "Full suddenly he fled.” On which Gloucester exclaims:

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The printer has, singularly enough, committed the same mistake in the first line of Act IV. A passage from which, as it stands in all the late editions, it would be vain to try to extract a meaning.

Edgar enters in his disguise, and is made to say: "Yet better thus and known to be contemn'd

Than still contemn'd and flatter'd." Now it must be evident to common sense, that he alludes to his disguised condition; and that to make sense of the passage, we must read, as Johnson suggested:

"Yet better thus unknown," &c.

Edgar could not mean to say that he was known in his disguise! The plain meaning must be, "It is better to be contemned in this beggarly disguise unknown, than in my true rank and character to be flattered though secretly contemned."

From a similar lapse of the printer, a passage in King John, Act III. Sc. 1., has been made the subject of much unnecessary comment, some of which, from its pseudo-Collins character, might well have been spared. Constance says:

"O Lewis, stand fast; the devil tempts thee here In likeness of a new untrimmed bride."

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Theobald proposed to read, a new and trimmed bride." And Dr. Richardson, in his excellent Dictionary, suggests that untrimmed was a mere corruption of entrimmed. MR. DYCE, to whom every reader of our early drama is so much indebted, informs me that he hastily fell into the views of the commentators regarding the meaning of untrimmed, but that he is now convinced it is here simply an error of the printer for uptrimmed; a mistake easily made at press. Trimmed up, and decked up, were the current phrases applied to a bride dressed for her nuptials. We have both phrases in Romeo and Juliet: Capulet says to the nurse,

-

"Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up.” He had previously said to his wife:

"Go thou to Juliet, help to deck her up." It is satisfactory, by such a simple and undoubted correction, to get rid of heaps of idle babble and verbiage about a word that the poet certainly never wrote, and certainly never conceived, with the meaning that some of the commentators would give to it. This will be evident from a passage in his eighteenth sonnet: "And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance, on Nature's changing course, untrimm'd." S. W. SINGER.

DR. CUMMING ON ROMANS VIII.

I cannot pretend to any acquaintance with Dr. Cumming's works, which appear to be at present very popular, and am therefore unable to say

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