RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL of GRANVILLE THESE CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON SHAKESPEARE ARE WITH ALL DECENT HUMILITY AND THE HIGHEST ESTEEM INSCRIBED AND DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. ON SHAKESPEARE. T BOOK I. SECT. I. IS a common obfervation, and therefore perhaps not altogether untrue, that critics generally fet out with these two maxims; the one, that the author must always dictate what is beft; the other, that the critic is to determine what that beft is. There is an affertion not very unlike this, that Dr. Bentley has made in his late edition of Milton: "I have "fuch 1. See his first note on Milton's Paradife loft. However to do the Dr. juftice, there are fome errors which he has undoubtedly mended, of which two are moft remarkable. B. VII, 321. The smelling gourd, which should be swelling. and .451. fowl living, which ought to have been printed, foul living. In moft of the other places, if he cannot find errors, he will make them. But methinks an author fhould 2 N Critical Obfervations Book I. fuch an esteem for our poet, that which of the "two words is the better, that I fay was dictated bear his share, as well as the transcriber: and though the context is a facred thing, and ought not to be disturbed, yet in a note a better reading may be proposed. In B. IX. 670. there is the following beautiful defcription. As when of old fome orator renound In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence In descriptions particularly the words ought to be neither embarraffed, nor ambiguous. But here, is motion the accufative or nominative cafe? If the accufative; how far fetch'd is the meaning, each part won motion? If the nominative; Milton fhould have given it, each part, each motion, each act or rather thus, in a great measure according to Dr. Bentley's reading, Stood in himself collected whole, while each Motion, each act won audience, ere the tongue. Collected whole: In feipfo totus teres, atque rotundus. Hor. L. II. f. 7. A perfon must have no feeling of poetry not to allow this the better reading; but allowing this, no rules of criticism will fuffer him to alter, what the transcriber, or printer has not first altered. In Shakespeare the editors have proposed many better readings, which they should have mention'd only in their notes; and they would thus have deferved that praise for their ingenuity, which they seem to forfeit, by going out of their province to correct the author, when they should only have corrected the faulty copy. |