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by all who remembered them. Burke says, "A characteristic bon-mot is a kind of oral caricature, copies of which are multiplied by every tongue that utters it; and it is much less injurious or mortifying to be the object of a satirical work which is seldom read more than once, and is often thought of no more, than to be hitched into a sarcastic couplet, or condensed into a stinging epithet, which will be equally treasured up by good-humour or ill-nature, for the different purposes of malice or merriment." Professed personal jokers are always popular in society without being loved. They are laughed at though feared, and gain listeners while they repel friends. "Never sacrifice your friend to your joke," says old Bygrove to Dashwould, in Murphy's comedy. "I never do, sir," replies Dashwould, "unless the friend happens to be the worst of the two." Steevens loved what is called fun-a disposition closely allied to mischief.

Many charges imputing a malicious nature have been made against Steevens; some are proved, and others controverted. In the preface to the works of Thomas Warton, he is accused, while in habits of intimate friendship and daily intercourse with that eminent scholar, of writing calumniating paragraphs in the newspapers against him. But these paragraphs were not written by Steevens. Mr. Seward, compiler of the "Anecdotes," who died in 1799, asserted that Bicknell, the writer of a poem called "The Dying Negro," acknowledged to him that he was the author of them.

George Steevens died at his residence in Hampstead, in 1800, being then in the sixty-fourth year of his age. The latter portion of his life he passed almost entirely in unsociable retirement, and seldom mixed with men but in booksellers' shops, or at the Shakespeare gallery, or at the morning conversazioni of Sir Joseph Banks. In touching on his unamiable qualities, justice compels the remark, that they were not tempered or controlled by any sense of religious faith. This highly gifted and accomplished scholar lived and died in a state of scepticism or unbelief on the most important subject to which man's intellect can be directed. His closing

hours, as described by Dr. Dibdin (Bibliomania, p. 589), presents a useful, and at the same time, monitory lesson, which once read is remembered for ever.

"The latter moments of Steevens were moments of mental anguish. He grew not only irritable but outrageous; and, in full possession of his faculties, raved like a maniac, which could have been expected only from a creature bred up without notions of morality or religion. Neither resignation nor joyful hope soothed his bed of death. His language was too frequently the language of imprecation, and his wishes and apprehensions such as no rational Christian can think upon without agony of heart. Although I am not disposed to admit the whole of the testimony of the good woman who watched by his bedside, and paid him, when dead, the last melancholy attentions of her office; although my prejudices, as they may be called, will not allow me to believe that the windows shook, and that strange noises and deep groans were heard at midnight in his room; yet no creature of common sense-and this woman possessed the quality in an eminent degree-could mistake oaths for prayers, or boisterous treatment for calm and gentle usage. If it be said, why draw his frailties from their dread abode ?' The answer is obvious, and, I should hope, irrefragable. A duty, and a sacred one, too, is due to the living. Past examples operate upon future ones; and posterity ought to know, in the instance of this eminent scholar and literary antiquary, that neither the sharpest art, nor the most delicate intellectual refinement can alone afford a man 'peace at the last.' The vessel of human existence must be secured by other anchors than these when the storm of death approaches."

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Reed's enlarged Steevens kept the field against all comers until the appearance of an enlarged Malone, in the same number of volumes, in 1821, under the supervision of James Boswell, the son of "Bozzy." This Variorum edition, as it is called, places the pretensions of Malone on a high pedestal. It is, as Mr. Richard Grant White says, in a recent note, "A rich storehouse of Shakespearean literature; though, like most store

houses, with its treasures it preserves heaps of dross and rubbish." Shakespearean emendation was now considered by many to have reached the point which called for a general exclamation of "Hold!-enough." The tide paused for a time, but presently rushed on again with augmented violence. A newer and faster generation asked for an accelerated rate of discovery. Young's allowance of eighty years, and even Byron's of eight, for a changing world, had become too slow for modern literary excitement. Shakespeares poured upon each other annually, and almost monthly, edited by Manley Wood, Ballantine, Britton, Chalmers, Singer, Valpy, Bowdler, Harness, Campbell, Knight, Collier, Dyce, and Staunton. Amongst the most popular, and on almost every shelf might be seen 'Knights' Pictorial Shakespeare," and "Collier's Library Editions," each in eight octavo volumes.

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Up to the year 1840, all that had been done for the illustration of England's drama, and her great dramatic poet, had been accomplished by individuals; and no literary association had been formed for the purpose of collecting materials by which this great national subject might be thoroughly understood and appreciated. With this view the "Shakespeare Society" was instituted. Every thing, whether derived from manuscript or printed sources, which threw light on our early dramatic literature and stage, came within the contemplated range. Private cabinets and public libraries were solicited to lend their aid. This association lasted for ten years, from 1841 to 1851, and then died, apparently of exhaustion, having published forty-seven volumes. The contributors were zealous, supplied the matter without fee or reward, for love alone; and the matter was interesting and varied; but the expectations exceeded the realization. There was a little of the close borough system in the mode of selection, and something of the fumum ex fulgore in the result. When the last number appeared it was felt by many to be a relief; and we have never heard that efforts were made for a revival. To our positive knowledge of Shakespeare, little or nothing was added.

In 1852 the reading world was tled at the announcement that a

copy of the second folio of 1632 had fallen into the hands of Mr. J. Payne Collier, containing twenty thousand emendations or corrections in an ancient hand and character, apparently almost coeval with the date of the book. Mr. Collier having satisfied himself that this mass of improvement proceeded from one who had possessed means of being better informed than the editors of the first folio and all the subsequent commentators heaped together, formed and avowed his conviction that we were bound to admit the newly discovered substitutions as the restored language of Shakespeare. In accordance with this implicit belief he published a volume giving an account of how this precious "Perkins Folio," as he calls it, from the inscription, "Thomas Perkins, his book," on the cover-came into his possession; how he threw it aside for some time without notice; and how at last he discovered its neglected treasures. Then follow thirteen hundred and three selected alterations of the received text, preceded by a facsimile of a portion of one page. Mr. Collier concludes his accompanying preface thus :-"I shall probably be told, in the usual terms, by some whose prejudices or interests may be affected by the ensuing volume, that the old corrector knew little about the spirit or language of Shakespeare; and that in the remarks I have ventured on his emendations, I prove myself to be in a similar predicament. The last accusation is probably true. I have read and studied our great dramatist for nearly half a century, and if I could read and study him for half a century more, I should yet be far from arriving at an accurate knowledge of his works, or an adequate appreciation of his worth. He is an author whom no man can read enough, nor study enough; and as my ambition has always been to understand him properly, and to estimate him sufficiently, I shall accept, in whatever terms reproof may be conveyed, any just correction thankfully."

Mr. Collier evidently felt that he was courting a controversy, and saw a foreshadowing of much dissent; but he could scarcely anticipate that his book would be denounced as an imposture, and that it would be more than insinuated that he was himself

particeps criminis. A startling novelty generally takes at the outset. So it was in this instance. Many went with Mr. Collier, his folio, and the old corrector. Actors of eminence gave in their adhesion, adopted the new writings with marked emphasis in their delivery, and printed them in their stage versions. But the critics soon reared their crests, and the war of controversy began. Mr. Singer, Mr. Dyce, Mr. Staunton, and Mr. C. Knight, led the van of the opposition, and formidable was the brunt of their attack. They denied the value of the corrections, as well as their antiquity. Disregarding the adverse opinions thus expressed, Mr. Collier issued a second edition of his volume of notes and emendations; and shortly after the contested folio passed into the proprietorship of the late Duke of Devonshire, in the hands of whose successor it now remains. Efforts and suggestions had been made, before this transfer, for an examination of the book under proper restrictions, that the genuineness of the handwriting of the notes might be tested; but these were not responded to. Mr. Howard Staunton says, in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare, 1860, "Having myself, from the first publication of the Notes and Emendations, felt assured by the internal evidence, that they were for the most part plagiarized from the chief Shakespearean editors and critics, and the rest of quite modern fabrication, I earnestly longed to have the writing tested. That which was a desire before, became, when the present work was undertaken, a necessity; and during the year 1858, I more than once communicated to Sir Frederick Madden, as the most eminent palæontographer of the age, my motives for wishing that the volume should undergo inspection by persons skilled in ancient handwriting." The volume was subsequently obtained through the courtesy of the present Duke of Devonshire, and submitted to microscopic and chemical examination. Sir F. Madden, Professor Bodenstedt, Mr. Staunton, Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Mr. Maskelyre, and other gentlemen perfectly familiar with the writing of the period in question, were unanimously of opinion that the manuscript notes and emenda

tions are modern forgeries, although written in imitation of hands of the seventeenth century.

The controversy grew hotter. The Atheneum, the Times, the Edinburgh, the Quarterly, Messrs. Collier, Duffus Hardy, Ingleby, Hamilton, &c., encountered in the lists, and sharp cross-firing ensued, with pungent insinuations direct and indirect. But the heaviest point-blank battery was opened by an anonymous assailant in a pamphlet published in 1855, entitled "Literary Cookery, by a Detective;" the object of which was to fix on Mr. Collier the fabrication of the "Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton," attributed to Coleridge, yet with an ulterior object. Some legal proceedings emanated therefrom against the publisher, but they ended in nothing. The pamphlet, however, was suppressed or suspended, and it has become difficult to obtain a copy.

Public opinion seems to have decided, by a vast majority, that this "Perkins Folio" is not to be admitted as a genuine restoration of Shakespeare; that the "old corrector" is a comparatively recent forger; that more than three-fourths of the proposed new readings are valueless, absurd, or inadmissible; that of the small remainder which are judicious, probable, or plausible, more than half have appeared before. Mr. Collier himself draws attention to the latter fact, which, always referring to the assumed antiquity of the notes, impresses him strongly as verifying many profound conjectures and researches of Pope, Theobald, Warburton, Hanmer, Tyrwhitt, Steevens, Monk Mason, and Malone. He omits the honest old typo, Zachariah Jackson, five of whose most remarkable corrections are also in this rejected folio.

But who was the impostor? When did he perpetrate the imposition? And what was his object? These are questions which are yet sub judice. The time and trouble employed must have been out of all proportion to any feasible chance of profit from a marketable article. We cannot suffer ourselves to suppose for a moment that Mr. Collier has in the remotest degree lent himself to this mysterious transaction. He may have been a dupe. He may still, for aught we know to the contrary, overrate the value of his folio, and stickle for

its genuineness. We believe that his account of the manner in which the book came into his possession, is a true account. We do not believe that he tampered with or cooked it in any manner. We doubt the physical perseverance and possibility of one person making twenty thousand marginal notes and corrections in one book, in a simulated hand, in little more than three years, and while employed in many other active occupations. Above all, we think a long life of respectability, and half a century of fair literary reputation, should have interposed as a sufficient shield against such a heavy charge. Then there are gradations in delinquency Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. Falling men do not slide all at once into the depths of wrong. They dabble in small larcenies before they rob a church, kill a child, or forge a will. When the late Mr. Singer opened the attack, he would have won more to his way of thinking had he been less vituperative. A very dispassionate and acute Shakespearean said to us on the appearance of "The Text of Shakespeare vindicated from the Interpolations and Corruptions advocated by J. P. Collier, Esq.": "I laid Singer's book down at the end of the preface, for I saw that it was going to be one continued flourish of the tomahawk."

The attacks have been too personal and the line of defence not the most judicious. But when was controversy, whether theological, philological, or professional of any kind, other than bitter? Physicians have pulled wigs over the bed of a dying patient. Two of our greatest philosophers, Samuel Johnson and Adam Smith, interchanged common Billingsgate when they met after a literary scuffle. And when did any one ever manage his own case as well as counsel could have done it for him? Thelwall would have fastened the rope round his neck, if, as he threatened, he had taken his defence out of Erskine's hands into his own. Eugene Aram's personal pleading helped his conviction by inducing the judge to think that it was too ingenious for truth.

Every argument on every subject is based on a postulatum. Mr. Collier requires a specific one, which has been previously demanded by and

partly conceded to Malone-namely, that the transcripts of Shakespeare's plays, as prepared for publication, were taken down by the ear, in a hurry, by short-hand writers and mechanical copyists, from imperfect or careless recitations; and thus arose innumerable obscurities which have been perpetuated for more than two centuries. To this, it has been objected, that if we admit not only the hypothesis of typographic mistakes, but that of incorrect dictation or transcription from speech, there will be no end to speculative emendations. This part of the controversy is still an open question.

Where, then, amidst the Augean mass of jarring criticism and disputed readings, is a student of Shakespeare to look for the nearest and safest approach to his true text? We answer, without hesitation, to the first folio of 1623, with all its misprints, omissions, and obscurities. It was given to us seven years after his death, by his fellow-players, and they pledge themselves to have taken it from "the true original copies." These copies were certainly the property of the theatre which had purchased and held them, and were either in the handwriting of the author, or warranted by him as genuine. They formed the basis of the prompt books, which in their class are as authentic as the log of a ship, or the ledger of a counting-house. Heminge and Condell had free access to them, and could not possibly think there were other references which might be preferable. Cavillers who dispute this conclusion would contest the validity of a document extracted from Doctor's Commons. They belong to the school of Sir Hudibras

"Who could distinguish and divide,

A hair 'twixt south and south-west side.
On either which they would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute."

Young readers of Shakespeare who do not wish to be delayed or confused by the farthing candles of an army of expounders, which often cast more gloom than light over the road they pretend to irradiate, should read Dr. Johnson's preface once and again, and they will not only become familiar with one of the most masterly pieces of composition in our language, but they will know more of the great bard,

and will gleam a more distinct image of his character and genius, of the scope of his mind, and the depth of his knowledge, than they will subsequently extract from a whole library of misty conjecture and tiresome speculation. They will think too, when they compare all, that much of the latter might have been spared. In the meantime let us direct their attention to a passage containing sound advice as to the best course to adopt in the profitable and agreeable study::

"Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasures which the drama can give, read every play from the first to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald or Pope; let him read through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue, and his interest in the fable; and when the delights of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness and read the commentators."

Shakespeare knew everything-no one disputes this, let the channels through which he acquired his knowledge be what they may. One of the most pleasing of the traditions which have reached us, and which we willingly believe to be true, records a conversation between Ben Jonson, Sir John Suckling, Sir William Davenant, Endymion Porter, and "the ever memorable" John Hales of Eton, as he is called in his book of "Golden Remains." At this meeting, Sir John Suckling, who was a professed admirer of Shakespeare, undertook his defence against Jonson's charge of his want of classical learning. Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told them that if Mr. Shakespeare had not read the ancients, he had likewise not stolen anything from them; and that if he, Ben Jonson, would produce any one topic finely treated by any of them, he would undertake to show something upon the same subject at least as well written by Shakespeare. The challenge was afterwards repeated more definitely in a literary society during the last century, and trium

phantly carried in favour of the great modern. Very recently, a similar question came up again at a party where the late Douglas Jerrold was present, who undertook to produce, within so many minutes, a passage apposite to anything that might be proposed. "Find us something about the treadmill," said one who thought he had hit upon a poser. "The subject is hardly fair," observed another, "seeing that it is an invention of yesterday." The objection was overruled, out came watches, but before time was called, "I have it," cries the wit, "in a line from Lear:"

"Down, thou climbing sorrow."

If votes were to carry the day, we believe they would run heavily in favour of a holocaust of the pyramid of Shakespearean emendations which darkens his meaning by the multiplying of vain words. His real admirers care very little for his commentators, and the solemn dissertations in which they commonly indulge on trifling questions of punctuation; for their irrelevant quotations from black-letter lore, their pedantic references to obsolete customs, and their wild inductions. It is true, if we wish or think it incumbent on us to understand every word of an author who has been dead two hundred and forty-six years, we must accept the services of the antiquary and verbal critic, encumbered as they may be, by pleonasm and insipidity. But these helps change to serious impediments and standing nuisances when their inordinate bulk hides and half-extinguishes the original inspiration.

But, how is Shakespeare, the highpriest of pure, unsophisticated nature, likely to fare in his lawful home on the metropolitan stage, in these days of high pressure sensation? This era of sensation dramas, sensation novels, sensation theology, and sensation everything? Badly, we fear. Clouds are gathering, and thunder has been heard on the left. Mr. and Mrs. Kean have terminated their engagement at the Princess's, which is no longer a Shakespearean temple. Mr. Phelps has retired from the management of Sadler's Wells, and Mr. Fechter is about to open the Lyceum. These are tokens of an eclipse, but, as we hope, only a tem

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