that it was, "according to the true original copies," and that it has an unquestionable claim to implicit deference from the editors of subsequent editions, except in those instances in which illegible manuscript or careless proof-reading has palpably obscured or perverted the author's meaning. John Heminge and Henry Condell say with regard to their labour of love:

"It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthy to have bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liv'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings: But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his friends the office of their care and paine, to have collected and publish'd them: and so to haue publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diuerse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the fraudes and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers."

Few readers of Shakespeare can have failed to peruse this Preface, which appears in nearly every edition of his works; but the above extract from it deserves to be ever present in the minds of all who come to the critical consideration of his text. Indeed, such is the authority of this first folio, that had it been printed with ordinary care, there would have been no appeal from its text; and editorial labours in the publication of Shakespeare's works, except from such as might think it necessary and proper to obtrude explanatory notes and critical comments upon his readers, would have been not only without justification but without opportunity. But, unfortunately, this precious folio is one of the worst printed books that ever issued from the press. It is filled with the grossest possible errors in orthography, punctuation, and arrangement. It is not surprising that Mr. Collier estimates the corrections of "minor errors," that is, of mere palpable misspelling and mispunctuation, in his amended folio, at twenty thousand. The first folio must contain quite as many such blunders; and the second is worse in this respect than the first. But beside minor errors, the correction of which is obvious, words are so transformed as to be past recognition, even with the aid of the context; lines are transposed; sentences are sometimes broken by a full point followed by a capital letter, and at other times have their members displaced and mingled in incomprehensible confusion; verse is printed as prose, and prose as verse; speeches belonging to one character are given to another; and, in brief, all the possible varieties of typographical derangement abound in that volume, in the careful printing of which of all others, save one, the world was most interested. This it is which has made the labours of careful and learned editors necessary for the text of Shakespeare; and which has furnished the excuse for the exhibition of more pedantry, foolishness, conceit, and presumption than have been exhibited upon any other subject-always excepting that of Religion; but with this advantage as to time on the side of the Shakespearian commentators-that their follies have been perpetrated within one hundred and fifty years, while the labours of commentators upon the Bible have extended through more than fifteen hundred.

The cost of the first folio was £1, equal to about five at the present day; and it is a pleasing proof of the esteem in which the works of Shakespeare were held at a period so nearly contemporaneous with him, that in spite of the numerous quarto copies of many plays, the comparatively small class which furnished purchasers, or even readers, and the rapid increase of the Puritanic school, which taught abhorrence of all stage-plays as an essential of its practice, a second folio was published nine years afterwards, in 1632. It is upon a copy of this edition, known to Shakespearian students as the second folio, that the manuscript emendations of the text which Mr. Collier advocates are made. This second folio is, in effect, but little more than a paginal reprint of the first. Comparatively few of the typographical errors of the first are corrected in the second, and not only are

the remainder faithfully reproduced, but to them are added many others equally grave and confusing. In the very points, therefore, in which the text of the first folio is faulty, that of the second is much worse; and it is important to remember this in the consideration of the subject before us.

It is not surprising, that during the Commonwealth Shakespeare's Plays were not reprinted; but in 1664 a third folio was issued, containing, in addition to those which had appeared in the two previous folios, Pericles and the six spurious plays which had been published as Shakespeare's during his life. The fourth folio appeared in 1685. Its contents are the same as those of the third. Neither of the two later folios are of the slightest authority in determining the text of Shakespeare; and the second is only of service in those instances in which it corrects typographical errors in the first.

Up to this time Shakespeare had gained or suffered from no other editing but that of his brother-players, which seems to have been limited to collecting his manuscripts, placing them in the printer's hands, and writing the Dedication and Preface to the volume. In the seventeenth century there was no verbal criticism upon his text; but his style and matter, and the construction of his plays, were made the subject of incidental comment and discussion by Mr. Thomas Rymer, Mr. Jeremiah Collier,* Mr. John Dennis, and an anonymous opponent of the second-named gentleman.t

In the year 1709, Shakespeare's Plays, "Revised and Corrected, with an account of his Life and Writings, by N. [icholas] Rowe," were published, in seven vols. 8vo. This edition contains all of the received plays, besides the six which are accounted apocryphal. Shakespeare had now for the first time an editor, in the proper sense of the word. Rowe was a poet of merit, a man of excellent sense, a scholar, and, withal, a modest and somewhat painstaking editor; and the fruit of his labours was a great improvement in the text of Shakespeare. A large number of the grosser blunders which deform the previous impressions disappeared under his pen; and it is remarkable that some of the very emendations which appear upon the margin of Mr. Collier's copy of the folio of 1632, and the credit of which that gentleman claims for his manuscript corrector, are to be found in this, the first critically prepared edition of Shakespeare's works. The fact is significant, both as regards the manuscript corrector and his advocate; for it shows that no "higher authority" than the conjectural ability of a clever and well-educated man was necessary to their production; and it also shows that Mr. Collier has issued his book of Notes and Emendations without that careful investigation which the subject demanded, and which the public had a right to expect at his hands.

Rowe was succeeded, as an editor of Shakespeare, by Pope, who published a superb edition, in six volumes, quarto, in 1725. Pope, like most of those authors of eminence in other departments of literature, who have undertaken to regulate the text of Shakespeare, made a very poor editor. He used the quartos somewhat to the advantage, but more to the detriment of his author; foisting into the text that which Shakespeare himself had rejected. He gave us a few good, and several very pretty and plausible conjectural emendations of typographical errors; but he added to these so many which were only exponents of his own conceit and want of kindred appreciation of Shakespeare's genius, that his text, as a whole, is one of the poorest which remain to us.

Theobald, "poor, piddling Tibbald," the first hero of his Dunciad, came after Pope, and is one of the very best editors who have fallen to the lot of Shakespeare. He was the first A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage: together with the Sense of Antiquity upon this Subject. By Jeremy Collier, M.A. 8vo. London, 1698.

The Ancient and Modern Stages Surveyed; or, Mr. Collier's View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage set in a True Light, &c. 8vo. London, 1699. Neither of these books is enumerated in Mr. Halliwell's very serviceable Catalogue of Shakesperiana; though they certainly present claims to such notice equal, at least, to those of other volumes the titles of which Mr. Halliwell has recorded.

who did any great service by conjectural emendation, and the judicious use of the quartos. He issued first, Shakespeare Restored; or a Specimen of the many Errors, as well committed as unamended, in Pope's edition of this Poet, quarto, 1726-a publication which Pope never forgave; and in 1733 his edition of Shakespeare was published, in seven volumes, 8vo. It was by far the best text of Shakespeare which had appeared, and a great number of its conjectural emendations of typographical errors remain undisturbed to this day.

To Theobald, succeeded Sir Thomas Hanmer, Baronet (as Inspector Bucket would say), who published an edition, splendid for the day, in six volumes, quarto, at Oxford, in 1744. Hanmer was an accomplished gentleman, and a man of taste. He did something to better, and somewhat more to injure, the text as Theobald had left it. His labours were received with favour; but he was indebted for his success rather to fashion than to any remarkable merit, and his edition is rarely consulted; the few received, or favourably regarded emendations which he proposed being perpetuated in the text or in the notes of other editors. It should be noticed here, that many of Hanmer's questionable readings, and some which are regarded as inadmissible, are found among those the credit of which Mr. Collier claims for his manuscript corrector.

Hanmer's edition was followed, in 1747, by Bishop Warburton's. This prelate, not then mitred, was undeniably learned and able; but he was as undeniably assuming and arrogant in his personal demeanour, and he treated Shakespeare's works as he probably would have treated the player himself, had he been his contemporary. He set himself not so much to correcting the text, as to amending the writings of Shakespeare. His tone is that of haughty flippancy. Does he find a passage in which the thought, or the expression of William Shakespeare is at variance with the judgment of William Warburton ?-he immediately alters it to suit the taste of that distinguished scholar and divine, saying: "Without a doubt, Shakespeare wrote, or meant, thus." For instance, of the fine line in Hamlet,

he says:

"Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,"

"Without question Shakespeare wrote,

i.e, assault."

-' against assail of troubles,'

Again, in the following passage, from As You Like It, where, in the second Scene of the first Act, Celia, dissuading Orlando from the encounter with the Duke's wrestler, says

to him:

"If you saw yourself with your eyes, and knew yourself with your judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise."

Warburton says:

"If you saw yourself with YOUR eyes, and knew yourself with YOUR judgment.' Absurd! The sense requires that we should read our eyes, our judgment."

It seems not to have occurred to the editor that the sense might be,

"If you saw yourself with your eyes, and knew yourself with your judgment:"

and as this solution did not occur to him, he, of course, cuts the knot, and mutilates the text. So, again, in the same play, the impatient Rosalind says:

"One inch of delay is a South Sea of discovery :"

a phrase vivid with meaning; but Warburton says of it: "This is stark nonsense! We must read, off discovery." Rosalind talks of Orlando's kissing

"His kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread."