than that which has imposed its law on the present work. Authors should remember in undertaking labour of this kind that the results must be estimated by their weakest part. We might easily have quoted better and more forcible specimens of translation than those given above: indeed the later Epistles seem to be to a great extent better done by Mr. Conybeare than the earlier ones. But what has guided us in our selections is the plain duty and necessity of showing clearly to all who may be within the field of our influence, that none but men possessed of a very extraordinary degree of scholarship, and endowed with a very rare conjunction of qualities besides, should send forth a translation of Holy Scripture entirely on their own authority. If Mr. Conybeare's work had passed before publication through the hands of a few well-informed persons, able and willing to revise it and correct its faults, it must at any rate have been shorn of many of the individual singularities which are found in it, and might have been much more useful than it is now likely to be, as a guide to the student, and as a storehouse of religious knowledge for men of earnest and humble, though uninstructed, zeal and faithfulness.

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ART. IV.-Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakspeare's Plays; from early MS. Corrections in a Copy of the Folio 1632, in the Possession of J. PAYNE COLLIER, Esq., F.S.A. Whittaker & Co. Ave Maria Lane, 1853.

READER,' says Fielding in the first chapter of the tenth book of his great work, perhaps thou mayest be as learned in 'human nature as Shakspeare himself was, and perhaps thou 'mayest be no wiser than some of his editors." What the novelist says of editorial ignorance as to human nature, he might have extended to the infelicity of some individuals at least of that learned body in textual criticism, and especially to their determined adoption and defence, supported by this authority or that, of particular readings, often meaningless and often palpably absurd; of incompetency in which latter department more than one remarkable instance has arisen since his day. But we must on the present occasion dismiss the works of those labourers in the vast Shaksperian field to whom the author of the History of a Foundling then made allusion, and come down to their living representatives.

The chief editions of Shakspeare's works in our own times are those of Messrs. J. Payne Collier and Charles Knight. The former aims chiefly at the restoration of the text, the latter with its restoration also unites its illustration. With Mr. Collier's edition we have at present little to do, because the misprints and errata which he had adopted as genuine readings are now virtually corrected by him; but of Mr. Knight's we can truly say that for his critical notices and pictorial illustrations of each play, we are very greatly his debtors, and that he has so far done more, perhaps, than all the other editors put together to familiarise the minds of his readers with the res ipsæ of his author. He has also, in several instances, most successfully exposed the presumption and incorrectness of Dr. Farmer's conclusions as to Shakspeare's want of learning. Had he done no more, indeed, than merely rescue the poet's memory from the odium which had previously attached to it from his having made no other mention of his wife in his will than to leave her his second best bed, by the proof that she, as the widow of a freeholder, was entitled, without bequest, to dower, he would have done a national service, and one which future ages would not suffer to be forgotten. Of his text we wish we could speak as highly; but in truth we can only say, from long

acquaintance with and frequent comparisons of it with others, that we conceive it to be one of the most faulty in existence. You can scarcely take up a well-known passage in any play but you find in the middle some grievous marring of the sense, which but for his really valuable illustrations, would speedily consign his book to the fire. It would probably surprise Mr. Knight himself were we to insert a digest which we have made of the numberless instances in which, from blind reliance on the authority of the old edition, and in defiance of the context and common sense, he has printed for Shakspeare's genuine composition, what it is impossible, on the very face of the matter, that any author, to say nothing of Shakspeare, could possibly have penned; adopting readings which, as Mr. Dyce says, if the folios were forty instead of four, could not be right.' We shall, as we proceed, have abundant means of making good our assertion; and we speak thus strongly, because it is now in Mr. Knight's power, by removing these many and serious blots in his work, giving up some of his favourite theories, and deleting many of his foot-notes, to superadd, to the best illustrations, the most perfect text, and thus offer to the world what would then be by far the most valuable of all the editions of Shakspeare.

This he may do by simply following, instead of his own judgment, that great means of correction of the Shakspeare text which is now in almost every one's hands, the authority of which is so self-evident, and the truthfulness of its suggestions as a whole so unmistakeable, as to render it impossible for any one to pretend to edit the author's works in future without noticing it, and, we will add, implicitly adopting by far the greater number of its emendations. Our readers will easily imagine that we allude to what may justly be termed one of the most singular literary discoveries ever made; one, which at this time of day could neither have been expected nor hoped for, the corrected copy of the 1632, or second folio, edition of the works of Shakspeare, lately brought to light by Mr. J. P. Collier, in which there are, as he informs us in the volume of selections which he has published from it, and the title of which heads our present article, at least 20,000 corrections of the text of the folio, of all kinds, from the correction of a comma, up to the interpolation of omitted lines, and the addition of many hundreds of what the old editions are notoriously deficient in, stage directions. Mr. Collier, in his very interesting account of his discovery of this volume, tell us that he purchased it of the late Mr. Rodd, bookseller, of Great Newport Street, in the spring of 1849, with some other works that arrived with it from the country, and that he thought

nothing more of his purchase till the spring of 1850, when he discovered some marks in the margin which eventually led to his subjecting the book to a thorough investigation, the result of which shall be stated in his own words :

'The ink was of various shades, differing sometimes on the same page, and I was once disposed to think that two distinct hands had been employed upon them; this notion I have since abandoned, and I am now decidedly of opinion that the same writing prevails from beginning to end, but that the amendments must have been introduced from time to time, during perhaps the course of several years. The changes in punctuation alone, always made with nicety and patience, must have required a long period, considering their number; the other alterations, sometimes most minute, extending even to turned letters and typographical trifles of that kind, from their very nature could not have been introduced with rapidity, while many of the errata must have severely tasked the industry of the old corrector.

Then comes the question, why any of them were made, and why such extraordinary pains were bestowed on this particular copy of the folio, 1632? To this inquiry no complete reply, that I am aware of, can be given; but some circumstances can be stated which may tend to a partial solution of the difficulty.

'Corrections only have been hitherto spoken of; but there are at least two other very peculiar features in the volume. Many passages, in nearly all the plays, are struck out with a pen, as if for the purpose of shortening the performance; and we need not feel much hesitation in coming to the conclusion, that these omissions had reference to the representation of the plays by some company, about the date of the folio, 1632. To this fact we may add, that hundreds of stage-directions have been inserted in manuscript, as if for the guidance and instruction of actors, in order that no mistake might be made in what is usually denominated "stage-business." It is known that in this respect the old printed copies are very deficient; and sometimes the written additions of this kind seem even more frequent, and more explicit, than might be thought necessary. The erasures of passages and scenes are quite inconsistent with the notion that a new edition of the folio, 1632, was contemplated; and how are they, and the new stage-directions, and "asides," to be accounted for, excepting on the supposition that the volume once belonged to a person interested in, or connected with, one of our early theatres? The continuation of the corrections and emendations, in spite of and through the erasures,' (for Mr. Collier had said in a foot-note, that some of the alterations are made upon erasures, as if the corrector had either altered his mind as to particular changes, or had obliterated something that had been written before, and possibly by some person not so well informed as himself,-p. viii.) 'may show that they were done at a different time, and by a different person,but who shall say which was done first; or whether both were not, in fact, the work of the same hand?'-Pp. viii.—x.

There are, then, two points, as Mr. Collier tells us, which bestow a peculiar value on these emendations. First, they were evidently made about the time the book was printed; and are therefore the work of some one very nearly, if not quite, contemporary with Shakspeare; and, secondly, the corrector was plainly a person who must have been connected with one of the theatres of the time. He may,' to use Mr. Collier's own words,

'have been a manager or a member of a company; and as an 'admirer of Shakspeare, as well as for his own theatrical pur( poses, he may have taken the trouble from time to time to set 'right errors in the printed text, by [for?] the more faithful delivery of their parts by the principal actors. This might have been accomplished by him as a mere spectator, and he may have employed the edition nearest his own day as the receptacle of his notes; he may, however, have been aided by the prompt-books; and the whole appearance of our volume 6 seems to afford evidence that the work of correction was not 'done speedily, nor continuously, but as the misprints became apparent, and the means of correcting them occurred. Thus 'a long interval may have elapsed before this copy of the second 'folio was brought to the state in which it has reached us.'P. xv. The volume which contains the emendations, is in fact to be regarded something in the light of a proof corrected after, instead of before, publication.

6

At the risk of repeating what has been already said, and what our readers are perhaps well aware of, we must be permitted, before proceeding more immediately to the subject of our article, and in order to a better appreciation of the real value of Mr. Collier's discovery, to give a short account of the different early editions of Shakspeare's Works.

Shakspeare was born in the year 1564; and in 1589 he was established in London,' says Mr. Knight, as shareholder in the leading company of players.'

In 1591, Spenser, at a time when the stage had undergone a temporary eclipse, thus complains, in his 'Tears of the Muses,' of the silence of one who, it is self-evident, even if Mr. Knight had not, with an almost unnecessary diligence, proved it,—could have been no other than Shakspeare:

'And he, the man whom Nature self had made
To mock herself, and truth to imitate;

With kindly counter under mimic shade;
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late:
With whom all joy and jolly merriment,
Is also deaded and in dolor drent-
Instead thereof, scoffing scurrility

And scornful folly with contempt is crept;
Rolling in rhymes of shameless ribaldry,
Without regard or due decorum kept;
Each idle wit at will presumes to make,
And doth the learned's task upon him take.
'But that same gentle spirit from whose pen

Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow,
Scorning the boldness of such base-born men,
Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw,

Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell,
Than so himself to mockery to sell.'