Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

"The

vered in his history, which may supply a topick of ridicule: thus, Stowe, the chronicler, was neither an humourist, a sectary, nor buffoon-but he had been a tailor, and might, therefore, have been suffered to mend Shakspeare's hose, but not to patch his text: if similar phraseology is produced from the poets of that time, we are called upon to recollect that there was then no regular superintendence of the press; and that, therefore, one typographical blunder may be supported by another, proceeding from equal ignorance in all the printers of the age: if Shakspeare is made to illustrate himself, by showing that in a multitude of instances he has expressed himself in the same manner as in the passage under consideration, it is answered, that we have no proof that any one of them is exhibited as it came from the pen of our author, but that they were all corruptions introduced by Heminge and Condell. Where, then, are we to seek for authority, which will be admitted as having any weight? Mr. Steevens shall inform us. genuine idiom of our language, at its different periods, can only be ascertained by reference to contemporary writers, whose works were skilfully revised as they passed through the press, and are therefore unsuspected of corruption. A sufficient number of such books are before us." I know not that a number of books, of which it can, with certainty, be said that they were skilfully revised, are to be met with. But if there were, does it follow, that no idiomatick phraseology could have been correct, which they do not contain? A certain laxity of speech is so far from being a blemish in the dialogue of a drama, that it brings it nearer to the conversation of real life; but this is not to be expected, nor would it be fitting in those graver performances, which the author would be likely to superintend with a view to secure its perfect accuracy. We must, therefore, content ourselves with such authority as we can find, and such evidence as the nature of the case will admit of; and if we can discover

in the dramas of others, as they have come down to us, examples of the same incorrectness of language, judging of it according to our present usage, as are to be found in the plays of Shakspeare, we may fairly conclude that there was not a conspiracy among all the printers of that period, to introduce the same violation of grammar, but that the error, if such it be, is to be ascribed to the poet himself. The probability of this conclusion will be strengthened, if we concur in the opinion which has, I believe, universally prevailed, that Shakspeare, with all his transcendent excellence, was a rapid and careless writer; inattentive often to matters of much more importance than the correct construction of a sentence; regardless of fame, and solicitous only for the immediate effect which he could produce upon the stage before a popular audience. But it is not against obsolete anomalies alone that Mr. Steevens has directed his hostility: he is such a purist in style, that he is desirous to exclude from the text phraseology which is not only to be met with perpetually in the present day, but of which the impropriety may admit of a question. In King John, Act II. Sc. I. vol. xv. p. 224, we meet with this line:

"With them a bastard of the king's deceased.”

This the modern editors altered to "the king deceased;" and Mr. Steevens ascribes the old reading to the error of an illiterate compositor. Mr. Malone does not contend for its accuracy, but states, what is not denied, that Shakspeare has the same phraseology elsewhere. If it be faulty at all, it is an error which might be countenanced by half of the writers even now existing; but it has the express sanction of Dr. Lowth, in his grammar. "Both the sign and the preposition seem sometimes to be used;" as "a soldier of the king's;" but here are really two possessives; for it means one of the soldiers of the king.'

[ocr errors]

I shall more than once have occasion to refer to the

1

elegant little work from which I have taken the foregoing quotation. It has been mentioned with a sneer by Mr. John Horne Tooke, it is true; but in a Bishop he could not see desert. It has well answered its purpose, which, as Lowth himself informs us, was not to enter into any subtile disquisition, but to give instruction to learners even of the lowest class. If therefore we have no recondite inquiry into the original sources of English, nor any attempt to restore the rights of those native burghers of our language, which have been pushed from their stools by the tyranny of modern usage; we have precepts given us, by which we shall be enabled to address ourselves with propriety to those living like ourselves in these degenerate days, although it would not supply us with the means of conversing with Hocleve or Hardinge. On the present occasion it will be of considerable use. Many readers, who could not readily appreciate the authority which is due to a quotation from Middleton or Marston, will have no difficulty in believing that a phrase might have passed without objection in the reign of Elizabeth, if they shall find a similar inaccuracy laid before them in the pages of Addison, Swift, or Pope. The grammatical anomalies which Dr. Lowth has pointed out to us in those distinguished writers, and others of established character, will be found, in their aggregate, to exceed in number all of those which the most strict critical investigation can discover in the plays of Shakspeare. In looking to the faults of construction, which have been objected to in our poet, it will appear that a great portion of them may be considered either as omissions or redundancies. Mr. Warton, in his Observations on the Fairy Queen, has attributed the great number of Spenser's ellipses to the difficulty of a stanza injudiciously chosen; and adds, that it may easily be conceived how that constraint, which occasioned superfluity, should, at the same time, be the cause of omission. A number of instances of ellipsis, in which he tells us the reader will find his omission of

the relative to be frequent, are collected in the seventh section of his second volume, and ascribed to the rapidity with which Spenser composed. "Hurried away by the impetuosity of imagination, he frequently cannot find time to attend to the niceties of construction; or to stand still and revise what he had before written, in order to avoid contradictions, inconsistencies, and repetitions." But, in truth, these elliptical expressions are not peculiar to Spenser, but perpetually occur in every writer of that age. In Shakspeare they are abundant; and Mr. Steevens, who is ready to sacrifice any thing for the purpose of supporting his new system of amended versification, is desirous of adding to their number. Not to fatigue the reader with a multiplication of passages to prove what I have described as the general usage of the time, I will content myself with the following: "Tis true I have profest it to you ingenuously, that rather than be yoked with this bridegroom [which] is appointed me, I would take up any husband almost upon any trust."

Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair.

"I would fain seem, sir, and as fain endeavour,
"With duteous labour to deserve the love

"Of that good gentleman [who] shall entertain me."
Night Walker, by Fletcher and Shirley.

"To survive him,

"To me is worse than death, and therefore [I] should not "Embrace the means of my escape, though offered."

Massinger's Bashful Lover.

I will add one more instance from Brathwaite, in his Contemplations, appended to his Essay on the Five Senses, 1625. Brathwaite was so far from being careless about any inaccuracies that might have crept into his text, that Mr. Haslewood considers a formal address to his readers, " upon the errata," as a distinctive mark by which his compositions may be known; yet in one of these Contemplations, intitled, The Burial of the Old Man, he thus confusedly expresses himself, from the omission of the personal pronoun: "The

crab-fish (when the oyster doth open herself) casteth a stone into her shell, and [she] being so disabled to shut herself, becomes a prey unto the crab." Yet frequent as is the occurrence of an ellipsis in our old writers, and willing as Mr. Steevens is to introduce it, when it is not found in the original text, in order that he may cut down an Alexandrine to a verse of ten syllables, he makes no scruple of filling it up when it occurs in the oldest copy. In a note on Othello, vol. ix. p.258, Mr. Malone has justified an omission of this nature, by referring the reader to a passage in Cymbeline, where several instances of similar phraseology are collected. But Mr. Steevens does not hesitate (as he says) to call, what is styled "similar phraseology," congeniality of omissions and blunders, made by transcribers, players, or printers; and, in contradiction to his own canons of versification, contends for the introduction of an Alexandrine where there was none before. Another fault, which Mr. Warton seems to consider as peculiar to Spenser, is redundancy, of which he gives the following example:

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

"Him for to seeke she left her heavenly house.

“She is unnecessary in the last line, as fair Venus is the nominative case." It is surely a very allowable licence to introduce the pronoun here, instead of sending the reader nine lines back, to the commencement of the former stanza, in quest of a nominative. In order that the meaning may be more clearly understood, which, after all, is the great object of language, many writers have made a similar sacrifice of grammatical strictness. In the absolution prayer in the Liturgy, we find, "he pardoneth and absolveth," notwithstanding the Deity is the nominative case preceding; but so far removed

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »