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 Arrowsmith 
 
 Shakespeare's Editors and 
 Commentators
 
 Ex Libris 
 K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 BJMJifeiijh 
 
 \ 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S 
 
 EDITORS AND COMMENTATORS. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 BEV. W. E. ARROWSMITH, 
 
 INCUMBENT OF OLD ST. PANCBAS. 
 
 LONDON : 
 J. EUSSELL SMITH, 3G, SOHO SQIJAEE. 
 
 1865.
 
 HN 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 In a letter to Nicholas Okes the printer, inserted 
 at the end of Heywood's " Apology for Actors," a 
 treatise published in 1G12, speaking of William 
 Jao;o;ard the writer observes, " The infinite faults 
 escaped in my booke of Britaines Troy by the negli- 
 gence of the printer, as the misquotations, mistaking 
 of syllables, misplacing half lines, coining of strange 
 and never heard of words, these being without 
 number, when I would have taken a particular ac- 
 count of the Errata^ the printer answered me, hee 
 would not publish his owne disworkmanship, but 
 rather let his owne fault lye upon the necke of 
 the author." 
 
 Now, whatever reason Heywood had to feel him- 
 self aggrieved, a comparison of his Troja Britannica,* 
 
 * Mr. Dyce appears not to be acquainted with this poem of 
 Ileywood's, or he would hardly have ventured the bold assertion : 
 — " I have therefore not the slightest doubt that wherever 
 * statue' occurs, while the metre requires three syllables, it is an 
 error for ' statua.' Our old poets no more thought of using 
 ' statue' as a trisyllable than ' stature,' a third form of the word 
 which is not unfrequently found." Note 102. P. 217 of Vol. 5. 
 Ed. 1861i. Por, notwithstanding Ileywood's fretful outburst at 
 his printer's carelessness and selfish perversity, " statue" never 
 occurs in the Troja Britannica as a trisyllable, but it has the 
 diaeresis, e.g. : — 
 
 A 2 
 
 QGOO.rto
 
 printed by William, with tlie first Folio Sliakspeare, 
 printed by Isaac Jaggard, will sliow that the like 
 comj^laint might far more truly have been preferred 
 
 Of mai'ble statues mauy thousand more. Cant. 5. St. 111. 
 
 Two hundred of his traiue his eye hath seene 
 
 All statues. Cant. 6. St. 42. 
 
 Placing his statue that his prayse did sing, 
 
 In Eomes hye Capitoll. Cant. 8. St. 10. 
 
 On which Apolloes statue dwels for aye. Cant. 10. St. 46. 
 Besides, in Note (50) to Love's Labour's Lost. P. 243-4 of 
 Vol. 2, after reporting that, " "Whitely (in the old eds. * whitly'*), 
 has been considered by some critics as a questionable reading, 
 Rosaline being, as we learn from several places of the play, dark- 
 complexioned," — critics, by superlative euphemism thus named, so 
 devoid of all judgment as to deem " whitely" akin to fair, altliough, 
 if common observation may be our guide, whiteness, whether by 
 contrast or not, is a peculiar attribute of dark features, — Mr. Dyce 
 proceeds to remark that, " on the other hand Walker (Crit. Exam. 
 &c. Vol. 2, p. 349), cites the line with the reading 'whitely:'" 
 and quotes from North's Plutarch, " lean and whitely-faced 
 fellow:" whence two things may be concluded, one, that the epithet 
 "whitely" is not rare, since it was picked up by Walker in a 
 note of Mai one's, on a passage in Act 2. Scene 9, of the Mer- 
 chant of Venice, without any suspicion by that critic that it would 
 ever be wanted to support the authentic reading in Love's 
 Labour's Lost ; another, and that which has provoked the present 
 mooting of a point to be discussed hereafter, that Mr. Dyce is 
 evidently not aware that this adjective " whitely" occurs in Cant. 
 5. St. 74, of the Troja Britannica : — 
 
 " That hath a whitely face, and a long nose, 
 And for them both I wonderous well esteeme her." 
 
 "W hich lines do not merely furnish an instance of the epithet 
 " whitely," but, in such company as parallels Shakespeare's 
 
 * Misi:)rintcd in the Camb, Ed. " whitley."
 
 5 
 
 by Heminge and Condell against the latter, even 
 after every allowance is made for the greater 
 liability to mistake in the persons, their exits and 
 entrances, the multifarious dialogue, the broken sen- 
 tences, and varied pliraseology of a play. It would 
 therefore be manifest injustice to fasten upon the 
 editors of the Folio 1G23 blimders for which its 
 printer Jaggard is clearly accountable, or in any 
 measure to make those a ground for impugning the 
 good faith of its somewhat partial representation, that 
 " where (before) you were abused with diuerse stolne, 
 and smTcptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by 
 the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors, that 
 expos'd them : euen 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 conceiued the. 
 
 coupling of it with " a wanton." If the pertinency of this argu- 
 ment be lost upon " some critics," it only adds further proof, 
 where none is needed, that they have no pretensions to that 
 name, nor the faintest calling to interfere with Shakespeare's 
 text : for their enlightenment, however, it may be stated that 
 though "whitely" and "fair" be not near allied, "wanton- 
 ness" and " a long nose" are, at least in our early dramatic writers, 
 from whom principally old readings must be made good. That 
 Mr. ColUer should turn "Avhitely" into "witty" discloses more 
 puerility of artifice than defect of knowledge ; while its trans- 
 formation into " wightly" by the Cambridge editors should be a 
 warning to them and their compeers not to embark in novelties, 
 nor quit their proper province, but stick to the drudgery of 
 collating and compiling, for which they may not be meanly quali- 
 fied, and forbear to intrude upon even the outskirts of the domains 
 of philology, wherein they have neither part nor lot.
 
 — And what lie tliouglit, lie vttered with that easlnesse, 
 that wee have scarce receiued from him a blot in his 
 papers" — yet how many annotators, how many editors 
 of Shakespeare, down to the present time, visit the 
 sins of Jaggard upon Heminge and Condell ; do by 
 them what Heywood deprecated with respect to 
 himself, " let the faiilts of the printer lie upon their 
 necks." And because " the dram of base doth all 
 the noble substance often draw to his own scandal," 
 hence the slur derived from the printing-house upon 
 their credit as editors has left no parts of their work 
 free from question ; sound and unsound alike have 
 in turn been doubted, and tampered with : the up- 
 shot is, that in many places Shakespeare's genuine 
 language has been discarded, and the text alloyed 
 with adulterate mixtures ; exclusive of that long 
 array of un vitiated readings whereof the meaning has 
 been balked. The customary speech, and syntax of 
 the 16th century are sometimes supplanted, another 
 while hybridised, every where measured by a diction 
 and syntax prevalent in the 17th, 18th and 19th; a 
 mishap to some extent unavoidable, because the 
 dialect of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, under- 
 goes a change so gradual that it is not noted ; varia- 
 tion is lost in resemblance ; and to Englishmen read- 
 ing English an obsolete style is still unconsciously 
 identified with each successive ever- widening diver- 
 gence from it : but such has been the illiterate pedan- 
 try of officious notemongers that sentences of a con- 
 struction not less current now than 260 years ago are
 
 evermore cavilled at, and either misexpounded, or if 
 the true sense be hit, the words are wrenched, and 
 sprained, and untruly sorted. An ill-printed book, 
 but above all, minds unseasoned with Elizabethan 
 literature have wrought the biggest half of this mis- 
 chief; the only remedy for it is, what many students, 
 many interpreters, and not a few editors of Shake- 
 speare sadly lack — reading, extensive reading, to 
 quell meddlesomeness, and beget self-distrust. By 
 dint of that Englishmen will begin to comprehend, 
 how huge is the debt of gratitude owed by their 
 countrpnen to Heminge and Condell. 
 
 A little taste at the outset will be enough to evince 
 that Shakespeare, to be understood, must be read in 
 the light, and by one habituated to the light of his 
 times : thus, to ' occupy' and to ' do,' verbs that 
 in the reign of Elizabeth and her successor were 
 suggestive of " most maculate thoughts," have long 
 lost the ambiguous import, which ribald pleasantry 
 for a season lent them, and now, as of yore, — as 
 when Shakespeare was a boy, — may be uttered in 
 ears never so captious, without risk of perversion ; 
 and although " soon" in the west of England to this 
 day, as is said,* still signifies " evening," yet else-* 
 where, or to persons unversed in the nomenclature 
 of the Tudor-Stuart tera, such a signification is un- 
 known, and would be sought to as little purpose in 
 the Minsheus| of a prior, or a later date, as in the 
 
 * IlalliweU's Dictionary of Archaic and ProA'incial "Words, 
 t Minsheu's Ductor in linguas.
 
 8 
 
 grammar of a Bullokar or a Murray would tlie fact, 
 attested by a contemporary of Shakespeare, a Head- 
 Master of St. Paul's School, — that the use of " soon" 
 as an adverb, in the familiar sense of " betimes," 
 " by and by," or " quickly," had, when he wrote, 
 been eclipsed with most men by an acceptation re- 
 stricted to " nightfall :" the statement of this witness 
 is worth quoting in his own words. In the compari- 
 son of adverbs, at page 28 of his Logonomia Anglica, 
 ed. 1619, Gil writes — "Quickly cito, sooner citior 
 aut citius, soonest citissimus aut citissime, nam ' soon' 
 hodie apud plurimos significat ad primam vesperam, 
 olim cito." 
 
 Bating errors of the Press, most of which an aver- 
 age English scholar might, as he reads, amend for 
 himself; and forgiving Jaggard his execution of a 
 task from MS., which the reprint of 1807 failed to 
 match from letter-press, it is a great treat to ramble 
 over the Folio, photolithographed by Day, without 
 let or rub of notes, wherewith bile, or dulness, con- 
 ceit, or immaturity in the critic has overlaid and 
 depraved so many editions of the greatest poet of the 
 world. 
 
 Home Tooke spoke but the truth, when he said, 
 " it is much to be wished that an edition of Shake- 
 speare were given literatim according to the first 
 Folio ; which is now become so scarce and dear 
 that few persons can obtain it. For by the presump- 
 tuous license of the dwarfish commentators, who are 
 for ever cutting him down to thefr own size, we
 
 risque tlie loss of Shakespeare's genuine text ; which 
 that Folio assuredly contains ; notwithstanding some 
 slight errors of the press which might be noted with- 
 out altering." Diversions of Purley, ed. 1798, Vol. 2. 
 p. 52. 
 
 Forestalling a remark to have been made in due 
 course, and with a view to support this charge of 
 Home Tooke's against the commentators ; to push it 
 to the minutest particulars ; to prove that they either 
 find, or make a flaw in the clearest and most perfect 
 sentence, a passage shall be here quoted from " Mea- 
 sure for Measure," a play unpublished in Quarto, but 
 not more noticeable for the evident accuracy with 
 which it has been handed down to us in the Folio, 
 than for the strange, and manifold mistakes, com- 
 m^itted by subsequent editors and glossarists in their 
 treatment of it. 
 
 In Act 3. Sc. 1, Claudio says to his sister, 
 
 " Why giue you me this shame ? 
 Thinke you I can a resolution fetch 
 Prom flowerie tendernesse ? If I must die, 
 I will encounter darknesse as a bride, 
 And hugge it in mine armes." 
 
 This speech of Claudio is so pointed in the Folio, 
 so by Mr. Halliwell, so by the Cambridge editors, 
 (with a note that in his edition of 1857 a full stop is 
 substituted for the mark of interrogation at " tender- 
 ness" by Dyce after Heath), and so by Mr. Dyce in 
 his edition now in progress. Mr. Halliwell, adopting 
 Capell's explanation, says, the meaning is, " Why do
 
 10 
 
 you tlms put me to shame ? Think you my resolu- 
 tion is to be formed by eloquent pathos ? Claudio 
 is now indignant that his sister should imagine he had 
 not courage to prepare for death without being- 
 reasoned into it. This interpretation seems more 
 natural than Heath's, '' I must desire that you, on 
 your part, will do me the justice to think that I am 
 able to draw a resolution from this tenderness of my 
 youth, which is commonly found to be less easily 
 reconciled to so sudden and so harsh a fate.'" So far 
 Halliwell ; and ftiir fall the wit that finds " flowery 
 tenderness" in Isabel's reasoning; or thinks to cloak 
 a transparent repugnancy between the two, under the 
 appellation, " eloquent pathos ;" as if that were as 
 warranted a synonym for the one, as it may pass for 
 a tolerable description of the other ; nor sees withal 
 how absurd it would be in Claudio to emulate the 
 pathos that he decries : but happiest head of all be 
 his dole, that by altering a point, with Heath, can 
 treat '^ flowery tenderness" as the usual attribute of 
 manhood, and conceive the fetching thence a resolu- 
 tion to die to be a feat either natural or suitable. 
 The same mind that could characterise Claudio's age 
 and sex by flowery tenderness, is not such as would 
 extract from it the courage to meet an untimely and 
 a shameful death. How Mr. Dyce interprets the 
 passage can only be surmised ; the punctuation of 
 Heminge and Condell, which in his first edition was 
 dislodged by Heath's, is reinstated in his second, his 
 present edition, but it may be again over-ruled in
 
 11 
 
 his "Addenda;" for there is an odd mixture of 
 positiveness and vacillation in his comments, venial in 
 greener heads, that is very mortifying to such, and 
 they are not few in number, who entertain the highest 
 respect for his plain sense and undoubted scholarship. 
 However, you may boldly say that not an editor or 
 annotatorof them all has apprehended the poet's mean- 
 ing : certainly this has not been done by either Heath 
 or Capell : and had the right key to it, a sufficiently 
 obvious one, been known to others, the true purport 
 of Claudio's words would not be given for the first 
 time now. 
 
 " Flowery tenderness" was rightly understood by 
 preceding expositors to be a figurative expres- 
 sion, but they missed to recognise in it an abstract 
 for woman, her loveliest and most native, her first 
 best quality. As with the ancients, a point by and 
 by to be noticed, " masculine virtue," we are told,* is 
 personated by the man Perseus, so with us moderns, 
 and namely here in Shakespeare, by " floweiy tender- 
 ness" woman is expressed. Out of some dozen 
 apposite places that establish this — one, — but such a 
 one as once to have seen, much more to have edited 
 their works where it is found, forbids the thought 
 that it could ever be forgot : the sentiment is itself so 
 just, and the handling of it so exquisitely characteristic 
 of the writers. In Act 5. Sc. 2. of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's "Thierry and Theodoret," Thierry says to 
 
 his mother, 
 
 * Jonson's Masque of Queens.
 
 12 
 
 " Oh mother, do not lose your name, forget not 
 The touch of nature in you, tenderness, 
 'Tis all the soul of woman, all the sweetness." 
 
 After the liigli Eoman fashion Isabel lectures her 
 brother about death, and obtrudes her fears of his 
 courage to meet it ; whereupon poor Claudio naturally 
 enough resents this imputation upon his manhood, and 
 disdains to be beholden to his sister, to a woman, to 
 " flowery tenderness" for a resolution to die ; out- 
 bidding withal the tone of superiority assumed by the 
 weaker sex in an extravagant boast, soon to be falsified, 
 that he would " encounter darkness as a bride, and 
 hug it in his arms." 
 
 How finely are the austere precepts, the brave ad- 
 monitions of a maiden that wished " a more strict 
 restraint upon the sisterhood, the votarists of St. 
 Clare," contrasted by the poet with Juliet's timid and 
 sensitive apostrophe to the " injurious love," which 
 respites a sentenced criminal for a few hours from 
 execution, to spend the interim, as Spenser has it, 
 " half dead with dying fear," a life so punctually 
 limited, that m Shakespeare's nicer reckoning, its pro- 
 longation, which is " its very comfort," was " still a 
 dying horror" ! 
 
 Here again we have lighted upon a second passage 
 now for the first time explained aright. It is a 
 crucial instance, and from among two or three more 
 in the same play, such as affords a delicate test for 
 discriminating between the reader who is at home in 
 Shakespeare's English, and one that has studied it
 
 13 
 
 but as a strange tongue. The sense is utterly missed 
 by every editor and commentator, early or late, learned 
 or unlearned, wlio lias essayed to give it. Hanmer 
 first corrupted the text, and that is the sum of his 
 success. Mason and Dyce applaud and adopt his 
 corruption with a like result. They are as wide of 
 the true meanmg as Johnson, and Steevens, and Toilet, 
 and Halliwell. AVliat Shakespeare wrote and what 
 Heminge and Condell printed, now to a tittle re- 
 printed by ]\Ir. Staunton, is this : — 
 
 Duhe. — " There rest : 
 Tour partner (as I heare) must die to morrow 
 And I am going witli instruction to him, 
 Grace goe with you, Benedicite. \_Exit. 
 
 Jul. — Must die to morrow ? O injurious Loue 
 That respits me a life, whose very comfort 
 Is still a dying hoiTor. 
 Pro. — 'Tis pitty of him." \_Exeunt. 
 
 Mr. Dyce's note is as follows : " The folio has 
 ' Oh injurious Loue^ — well does Mason observe that 
 both Johnson's explanation of this passage (with the 
 old reading) and Steevens' refutation of it prove the 
 necessity of Hanmer's amendment (law), which 
 removes every difficulty, and can scarce be con- 
 sidered as an alteration, the ti'ace of the letters in 
 the words law and love being so nearly alike — the 
 law aifected the life of the man only" (referring to 
 Johnson^s hypothesis that Juliet's life was respited 
 on account of her pregnancy) " not that of the woman : 
 and this is the injury that Juliet complains of, as 
 she wished to die with him." It will be seen that
 
 14 
 
 neltlier Mason nor Dyce accounts for the words 
 " a life whose very comfort is still a dying horror," 
 nor for the Provost's reply, " 'tis pity of hun." The 
 replacement of " love" by " law" might be justified 
 by similarity of letters, but the obstacles to then* 
 exposition of the text thus vitiated are left as in- 
 surmountable as before. 
 
 The Cambridge editors and Mr. Halliwell retain 
 the authentic reading "love," the former without 
 comment, the latter interpreting thus : " Love here 
 as in other instances is merely used in the sense of 
 kindness. ' Injurious love' is nearly equivalent to 
 the very common phrase, mistaken kindness." So 
 far not amiss ; although more nearly spionymous with 
 "injurious love" would be " cruel kindness," words 
 by which, with yet graver meaning, the Times in a 
 leader of the 5th of November '64, reflected public 
 opinion of the attempt of certain Germans to save a 
 murderer from the gallows. But Mr. Halliwell goes 
 on : " injurious kindness w^hich spares my life, a 
 burden to me worse than death, whose very comfort 
 in the love of Claudi® is still a dying horror. 'Tis 
 pity of him, that is of Angelo, that he should be so 
 severe." Whatever be the meaning of this cloudy 
 paraphrase — the text is sunlight to it — Mr. Halli- 
 well, in common with the rest, understands the 
 respited life to be Juliet's ; he is however singular 
 in endeavouring to reconcile the Provost's reply, 
 "'Tis pity of him," with Juliet's alleged bewailment 
 of her own hard lot ; and is entitled to credit for
 
 15 
 
 confronting a difficulty, which has not been faced, 
 perhaps not observed by any but him : he is likely 
 to be as singular in the twist which he gives to the 
 Provost's words, and in applying them to Angelo. 
 
 Had Juliet's reflection not been intelligible in 
 itself, the Provost's answer would convict the editors 
 and commentators of inexcusable blundering. Let 
 jocular Grumio catch at the ambiguity in his master's 
 bidding, " Knock me here soundly,"* to make Pe- 
 truchio the subject of the knocking meant by him 
 for the gate, but let not a grave bench of Aris- 
 tarchuses enforce Grumio's syntax elsewhere, to the 
 marring of the sense, with its usual accompaniment, 
 disturbance of the text. Petruchio's "me" in 
 " knock me here soundly," and Juliet's " me" in 
 " respites me a life," bear just the same import. 
 It is a very hackneyed mode of speaking, not 
 peculiar to the English language, used both in prose 
 and verse, either in light or serious discourse. 
 
 And here one cannot but remark how preposterous 
 is that system of education which instructs a boy in 
 the usage of a Greek pronoun, and leaves him at 
 ripe age, and even to grey hairs, insensible of a pre- 
 cisely similar use of the same pronoun in English; 
 which teaches him at sixteen to construe readily 
 from a Greek Play such an instance as occurs for 
 example in the second line of Sophocles' ffidipus 
 Tyrannus,! and finds him at sixty, in a parallel 
 
 * " The Taming of the Shrew," Act I. Sc. 2.
 
 IG 
 
 instance from Shakespeare, so completely at fault 
 about the words " respites me a life," as to be driven 
 to maintain that an unrivalled dramatist, a bard of 
 bards, had represented a young lady, whose life the 
 law could not be said so much to spare, as not to 
 touch at all, one who was to " live the lease of 
 nature, and pay her breath to time and mortal 
 custom," who might survive her speech for half a 
 century, speaking of that life as " respited," and its 
 " very comfort" throughout fifty years to come, as 
 " still a dying horror" ! " Cowards, indeed, die many 
 times before their deaths," but even their life is not 
 a life-long horror of dying, not a life-long death- 
 pang. The sum is this, — " must die to-morrow," — 
 the Friar's tidings reiterated by Juliet, words under 
 which lie couched the painful suspense of death, the 
 poise and lingering descent of the executioner's 
 uplifted axe, those few but pregnant words are the 
 thesis to which her after discourse is wholly con- 
 fined, and every syllable of that discourse would be 
 as true and just in the mouth of the Provost, or of a 
 commentator, as in Juliet's: what prompted the 
 utterance of it was a "fee grief due to her single 
 breast," her lover's death the next day : of that grief 
 as the Provost's answer, " 'tis pity of him," is the 
 appropriate acknowledgment, so is it incompatible 
 with any other version of her speech than that given 
 above. 
 
 But to return whence was digressed. Granted 
 that one or two Quartos furnish better readings in a
 
 17 
 
 few instances than the Folio ; granted that they con- 
 tain passages omitted in that edition which we 
 should be sorry to lose, or which may be wanted to 
 fill up a gap in the sense ; granted that the wording 
 and sentiments of the author's MS. were not scrupu- 
 lously retained in the Play-house copies, or that 
 both have in the Folio here and there undergone a 
 little " Buttering ;" one of which last things, unless 
 Ben Jonson be not only inaccurate but untruthful, 
 must have happened in the case of the passage from 
 Julius Csesar, ridiculed in his " Staple of News," 
 and again formally censured in his '' Discoveries •," 
 granted also that such misprints as that of " clamour'" 
 for " chamber your tongues," in the Winter's 
 Tale, which supplied Taylor the Water-Poet with 
 a scrap of verbose nonsense,* may be far from soli- 
 tary, yet is Home Tooke's assertion still true, that " it 
 is much to be wished that an edition of Shakespeare 
 were given literatim according to the first Folio." 
 
 A ready means of testing the soundness of this 
 position may now be had: let the reader contrast 
 Mr. Howard Staunton's edition of Shakespeare, or 
 indeed any other,| with what, under that gentleman's 
 supervision, is already reprinted by Day, and reprinted 
 with unerring accuracy, from the edition by Heminge 
 and Condell : of the verdict of the English scholar 
 
 * " Sir Gregory Nonsense his Newes from Noplace." Taylor's 
 Workes, Ed. 1630, p. 1. 
 
 t The comparative accuracy of recent reprints of the 1st Folio 
 forms) no part of the question. 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 there cannot be a doubt. Notliing could sm-pass this 
 reprint but Avliat we have not got, and are not 
 likely to have, a text selected with judgement from 
 the earliest Quartos, and first Folio ; their various 
 readings given at foot, as well as the rare amend- 
 ments, and passing rare they are, from later editions. 
 Home Tooke inveighs against the dwarfish com- 
 mentators of his time, but they are giants beside the 
 punies of ours. Then increased acquaintance with 
 the idioms of Shakespeare's day tended to uphold 
 the original text, where now a more discursive, but 
 superficial, ill-digested reading seems prone to blemish 
 and unsettle it. With one or two distinguished ex- 
 ceptions, and those not ahvays true to themselves, 
 the modern explorers of Shakespeare's text, finding 
 in it much that is to them uncouth both in thought 
 and expression, love better to tax their ingenuity in - 
 guessing what he should have written by what they 
 can apprehend, than to search painfully for what he 
 meant by what he did write. Poeta nascitur non 
 fit, is verified also of the critic : for one that is at the 
 pains to qualify himself by research to intei-pret, a 
 score undertake on one foot to re-write Shakespeare, 
 and it is hard to determine whether the enterprise or 
 its success is more to be admired. To correct Mag- 
 nificat, and teach Shakespeare how to fashion his 
 speech, have both one disease ; and if the intensity of 
 the disease may be gathered from the spread and 
 aggravation of the symptoms, things are becoming 
 worse and worse. Time was when Zachary Jackson 
 appeared like an owl at mid-day, a sight to be won-
 
 19 
 
 dered at ; now he is in some repute, and has a host of 
 copyists — indeed the Cambridge editors pronounce 
 " the judgment of the Author of ' Shakespeare's genius 
 justified' worth all consideration," and accordingly 
 make up their hotchpot of various readings from trash 
 of his, and of his copesmate, Andrew Beckett, the 
 rank folly whereof disedges all relish for the tooth- 
 some Quarto and Folio collation, set before their guests 
 in such ill neighbourhood. To patronise quacksalvers 
 like them, and record their nostrums, belongs not to 
 the mascidine duty of an editor of Shakespeare, but 
 savom'S strongly of the office assigned by lago to his 
 pattern woman, " to suckle fools and chronicle small 
 beer." Simple vain Zachary loved his own bam 
 better than Shakespeare's house ; the smoke of his 
 conceited noddle was pleasanter to his eyes than the 
 clearest fire of his author's intellect. So it fares with 
 all the sort of them: professing to reverence the 
 memory of Shakespeare, they violate his remains; 
 the monument reared by his own genius they chip 
 and deface, they plaster and daub, or in Zachary's 
 phrase " they justify," and to get themselves a men- 
 tion, they bescribble it all over with their names. 
 The Cambridge editors appear to spare no pains to 
 propagate this vainglorious itch ; every additional 
 volume brings its additional Jackson or Beckett. 
 Nor is this prurient meddlesomeness, this hankering 
 after notoriety confined to the illiterate rout, who 
 subject the grey authority of the Folio to their 
 childish alphabetical quirks ; whose sole materials of 
 
 B 2
 
 20 
 
 criticism are syllable and sound ; their only organs 
 of judgement, tlie eye and the ear ; which shuffle 
 ' gnat' into ' quat,' ' part' into ' dart,' ' broom' into 
 ' brown,' ' degrees' into ' diseases,' ' Jupiter' into 
 ' pulpiter ;' empirics, whose acquaintance with an 
 author does not so much as embrace the evidence 
 supplied by his repeating and expounding of himself: 
 no, its taint has infected those who have proceeded 
 masters of their art, who, if they do not always, 
 when they might, illustrate Shakespeare by Shake- 
 speare, have yet for that purpose ransacked chap-books 
 and broad-sheets, have scoured the by-ways and 
 dark corners of contemporary literature, have served 
 a lifelong apprenticeship to the subject, and both 
 with their own countrymen and with foreigners are 
 its recognised oracles. 
 
 Expende Hannibalem — put Mr. Collier into the 
 scales ; say what weight is to be attached to his 
 appraisement of a suspected reading, that can garnish 
 an edition of Shakespeare, the consummate product 
 of his maturest studies, with notes of this stamp ? 
 In Vol. 1. p. [265, he says of the Merchant of Venice 
 — " there is a remarkable proof of its popularity in 
 the work of a rival dramatist, Webster ; it is in his 
 '' White Devil," (printed in 1612, but when first 
 acted is uncertain), where Vittoria, on her trial, makes 
 a reference to the heroine of Shakespeare's " Mer- 
 chant of Venice," and complains that she is 
 " So intangled iu a cursed accusation, 
 That my defence, of force, like Portia's, 
 Must personate masculine rirtue."
 
 21 
 
 In the original editions Portia's is misprinted Perseus, 
 but the Eev. Mr. Mitford suggested the excellent 
 emendation, which the Eev. Mr. Dyce (i. p. 65) was 
 too timid to adopt, thougii he had the courage to 
 print nonsense." 
 
 It is Mr. Collier's hard lot never to display less 
 erudition, or worse judgement, than when he is most 
 peremptory and magisterial. To this suicidal attack 
 upon him ]\Ir. Dyce rejoins, " Mr. Mitford's conjec- 
 ture, though ]\Ir. Collier pronounces it " excellent," 
 I believe to be unquestionably wrong. Apart from 
 the extreme^mprobability that Webster would make 
 Vittoria allude to a character in the Merchant of 
 Venice — the passage itself shows that neither Shake- 
 speare's Portia, nor (as I suggested in my second ed. 
 of Webster) Portia, the wife of Brutus, is the person 
 in question. Whoever that personage may have been, 
 she like Vittoria had to offer a " defence against 
 some heavy accusation" under which she laboured — 
 as to the expression " masculine virtue" I may notice 
 that Heywood in the Fifth Book of his Various His- 
 toric concemynge Women, p. 224. ed. 1624, treats 
 " of warlike women and those of masculine virtue," 
 but nothing is found there which throws any light 
 on the speech of Vittoria." 
 
 IVIr. Dyce may, according to ]\Ir. Collier, have " had 
 the courage to print nonsense," but sense or non- 
 sense, he printed what Webster wrote ; and though 
 Mr. IMitford prefer Portia's to Perseus, and Mr. Col- 
 lier dub it an "excellent emendation," yet since
 
 22 
 
 Mr. Dyce undertook to edit Webster, not Mitford or 
 Collier, and since Webster miglit not care to father 
 ]\Iitford and Collier's excellent emendation, as being 
 of the mind that " a civil doctor" is not the fittest 
 type of masculine virtue, Webster's readers, if he 
 have any, should be left in undisturbed possession of 
 what Webster wrote. Mr. Collier, among those qui 
 novo marmori ascribunt Praxitelem suo, can manu- 
 facture and antedate a thousand new readings in 
 Shakespeare, if such be his humour ; and his read- 
 ings may pass muster with Professor Mommsen, and 
 the rest, who like Shakespeare accommodated to 
 modern parlance, or recast in the grotesque mould 
 of a Jackson or a Beckett. He can also, for lack of 
 better, suborn evidence of the popularity of Shake- 
 speare's Merchant of Venice out of Mr. Mitford's cor- 
 ruption of Webster's text, but he cannot avoid the 
 proof that Webster wrote Perseus not Portia's. Let 
 the reader turn to Jonson's " Masque of Queens cele- 
 brated from the house of fame by the Queen of Great 
 Britain with her ladies at Whitehall, Feb. 2. 1609," 
 three years before Webster's White Devil was 
 printed, and he will find in it what Webster found 
 before him, how '' a person hy this time descended 
 in the furniture of Perseus, and expressing heroic and 
 masculine virtue began to speak," with a note by 
 the author that " the ancients expressed a brave and 
 masculine virtue in three figures (of Hercules, Per- 
 seus, and Bellerophon) of which," adds he, " we choose 
 that of Perseus armed as we have described him out
 
 23 
 
 of Hesiod, Scut. Here. See Apollodorus the gramma- 
 rian, libev 2. de Perseo." 
 
 Webster's allusion may be far-fetched, and its 
 wording somewhat queer, but otherwise where is the 
 difficulty ? Vittoria excuses herself for being forced 
 to lay aside modesty and womanhood, and represents 
 that in her defence she has been driven to set forth, 
 like Perseus, the language and bearing of masculine 
 virtue ; in plain words, she says that she must con- 
 duct her defence with the rough vigour of a man 
 (Perseus, not Bellario being her model) instead of the 
 bashful weakness of a woman. The inference sug- 
 gested by this dispute about Perseus appears to be, 
 that one may edit Shakespeare twice without having 
 read Ben Jonson once. And indeed his gratuitous 
 discovery of the imperfect knowledge possessed by 
 him of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, of 
 Shirley, and Middleton, as well as of Ben Jonson, 
 abundantly proclaims Mr. Collier's peculiar qualifica- 
 tions for his accomplished work, the disfigurement of 
 Shakespeare. At p. 67 of Vol. 1. in a note on a 
 Ime from Act 4. Sc. 1. of the Tempest, criticising 
 Mr. Dyce's edition of Middleton's " Spanish Gipsy," 
 he affirms in his dictatorial way — " on p. 196. ' rage^ 
 of the old copies ought to be ' rags,' " to which 
 Mr. Dyce successfully retorts — " as to ' age' which 
 I substituted for ' rage' of the old copies — 
 
 Jlv. " I coiild wish 
 
 For one hour's space I could pluck back from time 
 But thirty years, that in my fall
 
 24 
 
 Thou might' st deserve report : uoav if thou couquer'st 
 
 Tliou canst not triumph, I'm half dead already 
 
 Yet I'll not start a foot. 
 Louis. — Breathes there a spirit 
 
 lu such a heap of age ?" 
 The alteration is one of several important changes 
 made with a pen in my copy of the first 4to by some 
 early possessor, who, as he has also inserted additions 
 to the text, had in all probability seen a manuscript 
 of the play. The edition of 1816, like Mr. Collier, 
 altered '' rage" to " rags ;" but see the context ; and 
 compare in " The Old Law" by Massinger, Middleton, 
 
 and Eowley 
 
 "Take hence that pile of years." 
 
 Act 2. Sc. 1." 
 
 The context alone puts ^Ir. Collier's reading out of 
 
 court; but his evil genius betrayed him to shew that 
 
 he had overlooked, or forgotten, or never read to any 
 
 purpose Beaumont and Fletcher's " Maid's Tragedy," 
 
 where, in Act 1. Sc. 2, the context is quite as tolerant 
 
 of " rags," as in Middleton's " Spanish Gipsy," 
 
 although "age" is not there misprinted "rage." 
 
 Melantius. — " That heap of age which I should reverence 
 If it were temperate ; but testy years 
 Are most contemptible." 
 
 The like may be observed of Shirley's " School of 
 
 Complement." Act 3. Sc. 1. 
 
 Selina. — " Whither had reason so withdrawn itself 
 I could not make distinction of a man 
 From such a heap of age, aches, and rheum ?" 
 
 Mr. (.•oUicr's rage for rags has led him to give
 
 25 
 
 "rags" for "rage" ("rebellion — guarded with rage") in 
 Act 4. So. 1, of the 2nd part of K. Henry 4th, where, 
 though he have Mr. Sidney Walker, Mr. Dyce, the 
 Cambridge editors, and all the rest to abet him (Mr. 
 Halliwell excepted) it will hereafter be shown that 
 Heminge and Condell's text is without "brack," and 
 not to be mended by "rags." 
 
 It is not however of his country's speech as em- 
 ployed in the writings of her dramatists alone^ but 
 universally, in what way soever transmitted, that Mr. 
 Collier's knowledge is defective ; and he is so amus- 
 ingly unconscious of it that he does not flinch from 
 thrusting out of Shakespeare words met with every 
 where besides, and introducing in their room others 
 of his own coinage, or the refuse of some previous 
 commentator. Thus in " Measure for Measure," Act 
 
 5. Sc. 1, the Folio gives 
 
 *' Make rash remonstrance of my hidden power." 
 
 "Unquestionably the printer's error," says Mr. Collier, 
 " for ' demonstrance' : he used the wrong preposition, 
 Shakespeare elsewhere has ' demonstration' and 
 '■ demonstrate,' but this is the only place where de- 
 monstrance occurs." It is so ; the only place; and 
 Mr. Collier put it there, having borrowed it from 
 Malone's remark — " As I am not aware of remon- 
 strance being used in this sense I would read demon- 
 strance." But though Malone knew no other instance, 
 both he, and his editor, Boswell, kept the authentic 
 word in the text : to drive it thence was reserved for 
 Mr. Collier, who did know one. For just as Shake-
 
 26 
 
 speare does here, so does Shirley in his " Hyde Park'' 
 use " remonstrance" — " another misprint for demon- 
 strance," ingeminates Mr. Collier, " the same care- 
 lessness of the old compositor as to the preposition 
 having caused the error in both instances." But in 
 Act 1. Sc. 2. of " The Imposture" by the same 
 dramatist, as llr. Dyce insists, the word is found 
 again with a like meaning. Now would it not be 
 marvellous if but thrice over " the carelessness of the 
 old compositor as to the preposition" had, for a 
 counterfeit of ]\Ialone's, caused the misprint of a 
 sterling and current word ; correctly stated by Mr. 
 Grant White " to have come only comparatively of 
 late years to mean expostulation" ? Mr. Halliwell 
 observes, '^ Remonstrance seems to be used here in a 
 peculiar sense of show or discovery from the Latin 
 'monstro.'" Mr. Dyce relates that Gifford pro- 
 nounces the word in this sense " catachrestic" (an 
 epithet more applicable to half the words in our 
 language) and that Walker asks, may not the word 
 have been in use in the sense of " exhibition" ? Be- 
 hold, so probable to thinking is the use, that a mere 
 metre-monger, dismounted from his hobby, can divine, 
 and very little search, as will be seen, is needed to 
 ascertain it. 
 
 How often, when his own reading does not bestead 
 him, would recourse to his Dictionary spare many a 
 commentator much idle speculation, even to the 
 making what erewhile seemed extraordinary, or re- 
 condite, surprisingly common-place, and apparent !
 
 27 
 
 And mark liow Shakespeare's true text is needlessly 
 bandied to and fro by neglect of this vicarious 
 and clieap expedient. In 1859 Mr. Staunton edits 
 " Measure for Measure," with " demon strance" in the 
 text, pursuant to Malone's suggestion and Collier's 
 example ; in 1863 the Cambridge editors register 
 Mr. Stamiton as the first to have made this change, 
 (erroneously, that dull eminence was pre-occupied 
 by Mr. Collier) ; in 1864 Mr. Staunton in a second 
 edition replaces the original word, with the some- 
 what disingenuous foot-note : " So the old text, and 
 rightly, though Malone and other writers persist in 
 reading remonstrance." It is plain then that Malone's 
 castaway was adopted both by Mr. Collier and Mr. 
 Staunton ; the one proud to father, the other now 
 eager to disclaim all partnership in the foundling. 
 But thus do orts and leavings of past editors become 
 the main stock of present ones ; and texts of the 
 Folio which have run the gauntlet of more skilled 
 judgements are held fit material on which to try the 
 prentice hand. Both Johnson and Eichardson ad- 
 duce examples of the noun " remonstrance" in the 
 not very abusive, nor yet uncommon sense of mani- 
 festation, or declaration. These being easily acces- 
 sible need not be repeated here, but a few more shall 
 be added for the sake of the insight they afford into 
 the literary endowments, which, by popular allow- 
 ance, license a scholiast or editor of Shakespeare to 
 cashier the old text.
 
 28 
 
 In tlie " DiviFs Charter," by Barnabe Barnes, 
 1607, the Duke of (kncly says, 
 
 " Those (warres) are the same they seeme, and in such warres 
 Your Sonne shall make remonstrance of his valour, 
 And so become true champion of the Church." 
 
 Act I. Sc. 4. Sig. B. 3. 
 
 In " The Lost Lady," 1G39, the " Physitian" says, 
 
 " makes his escape, and is received 
 Of the Spartana king with all remonstrances 
 Of love, and confess'd service." — P. 4. 
 
 In Taylor's Sermons, 1653-4, we find 
 
 " They that perished in the gainsaying of Corah were out of the 
 condition of repentance ; but the people that were aifrighted with 
 the neighbourhood of the j udgement, and the expresses of Grod's 
 anger manifested in such \dsible remonstrances, they were the 
 men called to repentance." — Page 162. Serm. 13. Part 2. 
 
 In South's Posthumous Sermons, ed. 1744, we 
 
 encounter 
 
 " No : the atheist is too wise in his generation to make remon- 
 strances and declarations of what he thinks." — Serm. 3. p. 78. 
 Vol. 9. 
 
 Whatever be the authority of Barnes or Barclay, 
 it cannot be denied that Taylor and South are good 
 bail for Shakespeare's use of " remonstrance," though 
 to Malone it be unexampled, to Gifford catachrestic, 
 and to Halliwell peculiar. Neither must it be sup- 
 posed that remonstrance is some abnormal bu'tli, 
 uncountenanced by other members of its family. 
 Both Johnson and Richardson give instances of the 
 verb, signifymg to manifest, or declare ; and in Act 5. 
 Sc. 2. of Jonson's " Every Man out of his Humour," 
 
 I
 
 29 
 
 Amorplius says, " Lo, you have given yourself the 
 dor. But I will remonstrate to you the third dor, 
 which is not as the two former dors, indicative but 
 deliberative." So also Jeremy Taylor, " I did 
 insist the longer upon this instance that I might 
 remonstrate how great and how sure and how pre- 
 serving (misprint for persevering) mercies a pious 
 father of a family may derive upon his succeeding 
 generations." Page 47. Serm. 4. Part 2. And 
 again, " In order to which end my purpose now is 
 to remonstrate to you the several states of sin and 
 death together with those remedies which God had 
 proportioned out to them." Page 199. Serm. 16. 
 Part 1. We likewise find it in the translation of 
 Eabelais by Urquliart and Motteux. Book 3. chap. 
 34 : "to tell them in downright terms and to remon- 
 strate to them (orig. remonstrant), with a great show 
 of detestation of a crime so horrid, how their hus- 
 bands were jealous." At page 116 of the English 
 Mirrour, by George Whetstones, 1586, we meet 
 with " remonstration," and at page 12 of " Death's 
 Sermon unto the Living," by Charles Fitz-Geftry, 
 1662, we meet with " remonstrable," " thus you see 
 the Doctrine is for evidence most remonstrable." 
 
 If then Horace's rule hold good, enough, and more 
 than enough, has been alleged to vindicate Shake- 
 speare, Heminge and Condell, Jaggard, and the old 
 compositor, and to negative Gilford's charge of 
 catachresis, as well as Halliwell's notion of pecu- 
 liarity. But to sift the subject to the bottom, ab-
 
 30 
 
 solutely to justify this employment of the word re- 
 monstrance, to shew that it is genuine and proper, as 
 well as that it was customary and received, it may 
 be asked ; is there any solecism in the composition 
 of the verbs " revere" or " resolve" ? or will it be 
 said that " recommend" and " recompense" are open 
 to objection, because classical Latin knows no such 
 compounds as " recommendo" or " recompenso" ? On 
 the same ground is there catachresis in " revestry" 
 or " regreet" ? Cannot an actuary in casting ac- 
 counts " rebate," or when hungry take his " repast," 
 and speak so too, without abuse of speech ? GifFord 
 would not and Mr. Collier cannot deny that " renie" 
 and " renege" were once in use, (" denege" never), 
 where now, "renegade" excepted, forms with the 
 prefix ' de' are only prevalent. And it is worthy of 
 remark that although Vossius devotes two chapters, 
 the 20th and 21st in his 4th book de vitiis sermonis, 
 to compounds of ' re,' wherein he affirms " Renego 
 pro nego, denego plane culpandum;" yet, whether 
 from oversight or not, he makes no mention of " re- 
 monstro," a compound as little occurring in good 
 Latin as " renego," but in middle and low Latin by 
 no means hard to meet with. Besides the passages 
 cited by Du Cange under the words " Remonstrantia" 
 and " Remonstrare" take the two followino;: In a 
 note. Book 2. chap. 6. of Rabelais by Urquhart and 
 Motteux, explaining why the Limosins are called 
 turnip -eaters, the gloss quotes John Hotman as re- 
 porting of them, that " cum audirent quod papa erat
 
 81 
 
 vicarius Dei, immo quod ipsemet erat Deus (ut patet 
 per canonistas) miserunt sibi legationem ad remon- 
 strandam paupertatem patriae suse, in qua fere nihil 
 crescit praster rapas et castaneas." And in Part 3. 
 Sec. 2. Memb. 2. Bubs. 1. of Burton's Anatomy of 
 Melancholy, he has in a note " Tho. Campanella 
 Astrologia?, lib. 4. cap. 8. articulis 4 and 5 insaniam 
 amatoriam remonstrantia multa pros casteris accumu- 
 lat aphorismata." 
 
 And now, if it were not an ungracious office to 
 lecture a patriarch pupil, and bid hmi new-learn his 
 lesson, notwithstanding the entii'e league between 
 formal ignorance and grave obstinacy one might 
 fairly call upon Mr. Collier to do " the old com- 
 positor" right by undoing the wrong which in this 
 instance at all events, unless he would put out his 
 own, as well as other people's eyes, he must know 
 that the Queen's English has sustained at his hands. 
 That gentleman's Shakespeare is not specially under 
 review, but the labour of a life devoted to the task, 
 and the manner in which it has at last been exe- 
 cuted by him, warrant the prominence given to its 
 blots in these introductory remarks ; of which one 
 design is to exhibit the degeneracy of the existing 
 breed of expositors. Among the comments of those 
 who ranked highest in an older and abler race nothing 
 like the blemishes, thick strewn throughout Mr. 
 Collier's last edition, nothing simile aut secundum is 
 anywhere to be found. The names of Theobald, 
 Steevens, and Malone would have slept in the same
 
 32 
 
 grave, to which their coevals and posterity have 
 justly consigned the memories of Jackson and 
 Beckett, had they wrought no better for the elucida- 
 tion of Shakespeare, and therewithal for the rescue 
 of good English from the mongrel character which 
 conceit and ignorance are ever bent to impress upon 
 it. To clear up an obscurity the approved practice 
 was to borrow light from Shakespeare's time-fellows, 
 where none was reflected by himself, and not with- 
 out more ado to proscribe every hard saying as 
 spurious; or to assume a misprint, jostle out the old 
 reading, and foist into its place whatever Hob or 
 Dick may judge fittest. Day by day we are more 
 and more receding from the phraseology of Shake- 
 speare's age, and so new difficulties are daily raised, 
 new changes in the text proposed to meet the usage 
 of the hour ; with these has grown up, if they have 
 not given rise to it, a taste for cavilling and cobbling, 
 nicknamed acute and felicitous, but in truth the poor 
 make-believe of a shallow unlettered criticism : to 
 this taste Mr. Collier has catered, in his last edition 
 of Shakespeare, with a prodigality by so much more 
 censurable, as it is more mischievous, than the slavish 
 adherence to the old copies, which for the most part 
 marked his first. He has reversed the characteristics 
 of life's gradation. (" degrees," one dare not say for 
 one's head, because of its affinity, both in letters and 
 sound, to " diseases." K. Henry 4tli. Part 2. Act. 1. 
 Sc. 2.) In him the caution of youth has been suc- 
 ceeded by the i-ashness of age; the once crabbed 

 
 33 
 
 textuary, that was wont to blanch the most glaring 
 misprints, is now become the licentious innovator to 
 brand the sincerest readings. It is then of Mr. 
 Collier, as the representative and ringleader of a 
 school injurious to Shakespeare, to the old drama, 
 and to the integrity of the English language, that 
 this notice has been taken ; it is because his authority 
 has exercised a contagious influence upon minds that 
 should have been proof against its working ; be- 
 cause, as shall be forthwith indicated, an editor of 
 Shakespeare, qualified above all othei's for the office, 
 has not escaped its blight. 
 
 Appositely enough, as some no doubt will think, 
 the case exhibiting an instance of this, and which we 
 are now about to canvass, is from " Much ado about 
 Nothing:" though the statement be somewhat prolix, 
 the reader will be in fault if it does not prove in- 
 structive also. In Act 5. Sc. 1. of that play, ac- 
 cording to the Quarto (1600), and the Folio, we 
 read — 
 
 " Scambllng, outfacing, fashion-monging boys." 
 
 In the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Folios, three in number, 
 but one in effect, each faultier than its predecessor, 
 and none of any authority, as likewise in all the 
 modern editions down to Mr. Knight's, " fashion- 
 monging" becomes " fashion-mong'ring." It is not 
 a matter of any importance which mode of spelling 
 may be adopted, so far as the sense is concerned, but 
 Shakespeare being in the hands and on the lips of all, 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 upon Ills writings, next to our version of the Bible, 
 and to tlie book of Common Prayer, depend the per- 
 petuation of old, and tlie defence of calumniated Eng- 
 lish. What avails it that " monging" is found in 
 the " Funeralles of King Edward the Syxt," 1560. 
 " Tour monging of vitayles, corne, butter and cbeese." 
 
 In the " Coblers Prophesie," 1594. 
 
 " And tlie money monging mate with all his knaverie." — 
 
 Sig. B. 3. 
 
 In Lord Brooke's " Treatise of Eeligion," composed 
 many years before, but first printed in 1670. 
 
 " Book learning, arts, yea school divinity 
 New types of old law-monging Pharisies." — Stanza 67. 
 
 In Gee's " New Shreds of the Old Snare," 1624. 
 " But the Pope's benediction, or any the least touch 
 of sainting, miracle-monging fiction is able to in- 
 fuse the highest worth into the basest baggagely new- 
 nothing to hang upon the sleeve of admiring, adoring, 
 ghostly children of the Jesuites." — Pp. 49-50. What 
 avail these, or any number of like instances, buried 
 in writers that are never read ? Banish the true and 
 genuine form "monging" from Shakespeare, it be- 
 comes an outcast from our language, and leaves a 
 gap in the eldest branch of a most useful family of 
 words. 
 
 " Monging" is the present participle regularly in- 
 flected from the Anglo-Saxon verb ' mangian' to 
 traffick : in the example cited above from Baldwin 
 it is the very same word as " mangmig," merchandise. 
 Again from the verb mangian we get "monger,"
 
 ^5 
 
 now used only in composition, but in Shakespeare's 
 time occurring as a simple noun, e.g. in Ben Jonson's 
 " Tale of a Tub." 
 
 Hilts. " Here was no subtle device to get a wench ! 
 This chanon has a brave pate of his own, 
 A shaven pate, and a right monger y'vaith." 
 
 Act 2. Sc. 1. 
 In Philemon Holland's translation of " Plinies Natu- 
 rall History," 1600. " Againe it falleth out that 
 sometime one rich munger or other (pra^valens man- 
 ceps) buying up a commoditie, and bringing it wholly 
 into his owne hands for to have the monopolie of it 
 raiseththe market and enhaunceth the price." — Book 
 33, p. 485. Notwithstanding these examples, and no 
 doubt others might be adduced, the separate subsis- 
 tence of " monger" will be found on reference to 
 our Grrammarians and Lexicographers to be denied 
 by some, and questioned by most of them. Within 
 twenty years after Holland's translation, the learned 
 but crotchety master of St. Paul's School, Alexander 
 Gil, in the chapter on compounds of his ''Logonomia 
 Anglica," ed. 1619, says, "munger inseparabile est & 
 ilium denotat qui rem venalem habet ut fishmunger, 
 cetarius." Somner attaches some sort of authority to 
 this idle assertion. Lye calls the word old English 
 still found in composition. Johnson cautiously says 
 " monger is seldom or never used alone," while Todd 
 quotes the passage from the "Tale of a Tub," and 
 adds that " Wicliffe, he thinks, uses it somewhere in 
 the good sense of a trader." 
 
 - c 2
 
 36 
 
 As to " mongering," that fonn also is quite legiti- 
 mate, being the present participle of " mangheren," 
 termed by Kilian an old low Dutch word ; but why- 
 should an inflection from the more elementary and 
 indigenous root be shouldered out by one from what 
 is in all likelihood but an off'shoot from it ? 
 
 In justice to the several annotators and editors of 
 Shakespeare it is desirable, however tiresome, that 
 their comments should be set before the reader. 
 Malone notices indeed that the " old copies," — mean- 
 ing the Quarto and Folio, for he was too sagacious so 
 to designate the three Folio republications that 
 followed — read " monging," yet he put mong'ring 
 in his text : to Mr Knight is due the credit of restoring 
 the true fonn, with this brief and sensible note — 
 " Fashion-monging," so the original copies; but always 
 altered to fashion-mong'ring. The participle of the 
 Anglo-Saxon verb meaning to trade, would give us 
 monging ; as the verb gives us the noun signifying a 
 trader — " monger."" Vol. 2. p. 444. He is followed 
 by Mr. Halliwell, with a note to the same effect, and 
 by the Cambridge editors, who, with their usual 
 fidelity, the highest praise of their work, ascribe 
 " monging" to the Quarto and Folio, " mongering" 
 to the three subsequent editions. Mr. Collier's is 
 a pattern note ; the whole piece, his edition of 1856, 
 for spirit, veracity, and scholarship, sorts with it. 
 "The Rev. A. Dyce," says he, "in his ' Few notes,' 
 &c. p. 46, would have this compound spelt ' fashion- 
 monging,' merely because he so finds it in Wilson's
 
 37 
 
 * Cobler's Prophecie/ 1594. This is to desert the 
 etymology of the word ; and the same reason would 
 require adherence to every old and exploded form in 
 any other word. In Wilson's comedy we may be 
 pretty sure that the letter ' r' in mong'ring was ac- 
 cidentally omitted.'' Vol. 2. p. 71. Upon this note 
 of Mr. Collier's the subjoined comment is made by 
 Mr. Dyee in his edition now in progress. " In my 
 Few Notes, &c., p. 46, 1 have said, " Here Mr. Knight 
 alone of the modern editors follows the old copies in 
 printing fashion-monging — and rightly, &c. : but now 
 in considering the inconsistency in spelling which those 
 old copies exhibit, I think that the other modern 
 editors have done more wisely. Mr. Collier in the 
 second edition of his Shakespeare writes thus on the 
 present passage — (see above) — one of Mr. Collier's 
 many miprincipled attempts to render me ridiculous 
 in the eyes of his readers ; few of whom could be 
 expected to know (what Mr. Collier could not fail to 
 know) that in the present passage all the old editions, 
 the quarto and the four folios (Mr. Dyce is mistaken 
 about the three last) are uniform in having " fashion- 
 monging." Vol. 2. p. 155. It is to be regretted 
 that Mr. Dyce should have vailed his first and sounder 
 judgement to Mr. Collier's worthless assertion ; it is 
 yet more to be regretted that either Mr. Collier, or 
 any one else, that thinks himself competent to edit 
 Shakespeare, should ever dream that even with the 
 credulous and illiterate his bare word will either 
 avouch or refute an etymology, or that his surmise
 
 38 
 
 about letters dropt out, or prepositions mistook, will 
 countervail manifold evidence that nothing of the 
 kind has occurred. 
 
 Before commencmg a detailed and orderly com- 
 parison of the four editions of Shakespeare now issu- 
 ing from the Press, namely, the reprint of Heminge 
 andCondell's by Staunton, Halliwell's, the Cambridge, 
 and Dyce's, with others in highest repute, it only re- 
 mains to make good what was affirmed, that in inter- 
 preting Shakespeare his readers seem to have lost 
 the power to follow the same rules of construction as 
 they observe when writuig themselves, or interpret- 
 ing what is written by each other. To exemplify 
 this, we will take a particular but not a rare usage of 
 the three propositions " in," " to,*' and "into," which 
 have altogether caused more spilth of ink (for every 
 drop has been wasted) than might suffice to comment 
 Shakespeare from title-page to colophon. 
 
 Hard above all has been the fate of ' in' ; let but 
 lago say that for soldiership his comrade Cassio is 
 " a fellow almost damned in a fair wife" — that his 
 qualifications for the post of lieutenant would be 
 almost discreditable in a woman ; let him add withal, 
 as though on set pm'pose to preclude every chance 
 of being misunderstood, that Cassio possesses no 
 more strategic knowledge than " a spinster," when lo ! 
 a goodly troop of commentators, clerk and lay, bishop 
 and bookseller, lawyer and antiquary, critic pro- 
 fessional and critic amateur, home-born and out- 
 landish, men who have read much, and men who
 
 39 
 
 have read nothing, swarm forth to bury this simple 
 remark under a pile of notes, that from first to last 
 contain not an inkling of its pui-port. The passage 
 is well known, but it will be of service to bring it 
 under the reader's eye. 
 
 " (A fellow almost damn'd in a fairewife) 
 That never set a squadron in the field, 
 Nor the devision of a battle knowes 
 More then a spinster." Othello, Act 1. Sc. 2. 
 
 The words are to be taken circumscriptly, not sent 
 gadding after Bianca, or no one knows who ; their 
 meaning must be sought and found within the com- 
 pass of the line in which they stand. Had Shake- 
 speare wi'itten " A fellow almost damned in a raw 
 lad," the dullest brain could scarcely have missed the 
 imputation that Cassio's military abilities would be 
 almost disallowed, condemned as hardly up to the 
 mark in an inexperienced boy : or had the words run, 
 "a fellow almost damned in an old maid," then, 
 though it might not be understood how an officer, 
 after lago's report, of Cassio's incapacity^ should be 
 almost damned in one of her sex and condition, she 
 at any rate could not, like the '' fair wife," have been 
 discovered at Cyprus in a young courtezan. Or not 
 altering a syllable, with only a slight change in their 
 order, let us place the words thus ; 
 
 " A fellow in a fair wife almost damned," 
 by this disposition of them, the reader is pinned to 
 their true construction : the alliance between Cassio 
 and the fair wife is closer than the commentators
 
 40 
 
 suspected; they liai-p upon conjugal union, laga 
 speaks of virtual identity ; they seek the coupling of 
 two persons in wedlock, he contemplates an embodi- 
 ment of the soldiership of the one in the condition 
 of the other, and so incoi-porated he pronounces it 
 to be "in a fair wife" almost reproveable ; adding, 
 in the same vein, that it was no better than might 
 be found hi "a spinster." To dwell on this point 
 longer would be to upbraid the reader's under- 
 standing. 
 
 Although however its sense has lain hid, the 
 authentic reading of Heminge and Condell main- 
 tains its ground, their " wife" having outfaced Han- 
 mer's " phiz" — " a fellow almost damned in a fair 
 phiz," and outlived Tyrwhitt's " life," so well spoken 
 of by Steevens and Eitson, the "spinster" quite 
 forgot. Mr. Grant White has indeed printed " wise" 
 for " wife ;" without any meaning, but solely because 
 the long s and / are often confounded : thus does 
 every one "play at loggats" with Shakespeare's 
 remains. 
 
 Touching the next preposition " to," it has not 
 been so unlucky ; if it be a sore stumbling-block in 
 that line of the Duke's address to Escalus, " But that 
 to your sufficiency as your worth is able," still a 
 general, albeit hazy conception of the sense has 
 been arrived at : and notwithstanding its vitiation 
 by some editors and its question by all, both 
 the line itself, and the whole speech to which it 
 belongs, may, if any other, be safely upheld to have
 
 41 
 
 been recorded by Heminge and Condell precisely 
 as it was penned by Shakespeare : for no one text 
 can there be amassed such overpowering testimony : 
 it is thrust upon you from all sides ; in Shakespeare 
 himself it is not wanting, and in writers both of 
 prose and verse, before, at, and after his time vol- 
 umes of proof may be had. Eeserving it on account 
 of its length for another occasion, we shall conclude 
 with the case of the preposition " into," as it occurs 
 in Act 1. Sc. 2, of the '' Tempest," thus given by 
 Heminge and Condell : — 
 
 " Like one 
 "WTio hauiug into truth, by telling of it, 
 Made such a synner of his memorie 
 To credite his owne lie, he did beleeue 
 He was indeed the Duke." 
 
 Now it should be 'premised that the punctuation of 
 the Folio, like most books of its date, is faulty, and 
 not otherwise to be regarded than as it tends to 
 support, or at all events not to overthrow the sense : 
 to read " Good :" in the third line of this play, " Good : 
 speake to the mariners:" with the pause indicated 
 by a colon; or to read "For why?" in the 11th 
 verse of the 16th Psalm, and the 41st verse of the 
 105th Psalm (old version) as a question, though 
 printed with a mark of interrogation, whether sanc- 
 tioned or not by Cowper in his " John Gilpin," or by 
 Henderson's recitation of that ballad, betokens ignor- 
 ance not only of the old capricious punctuation, but 
 of the significance of phrases in vulgarest use. On
 
 42 
 
 the other hand, it sometimes happens that the point- 
 ing in the original copies preserves the sense, which 
 modem editors have hopelessly stopped out. Take 
 a notable example in " Measm-e for Measure," Act 4. 
 Sc. 2. The Duke exhibits a letter to the Provost, 
 and says, " The contents of this is the retume of the 
 Duke ; you shall anon over-reade it at your pleasm-e : 
 where you shall finde within these two dales, he will 
 be heere. This is a thing that Angelo knowes not,* 
 for hee this very day receives letters of strange tenor, 
 perchance of the Duke's death, perchance entering 
 into some monasterie, but by chance nothing of what 
 is writ." So Heminge and Condell, reprinted with- 
 out variance of speck or dot, by Mr. Staunton. All 
 modern editors point the concluding words thus — 
 "but, by chance, nothing of what is writ;" — then 
 having by their pointing extinguished the sense, some 
 corrupt, all misinterpret the sentence. Hanmer, at 
 Warburton's instance, and Warburton, interpolating 
 the adverb, "here," print "here writ:" in his present 
 edition Mr. Dyce follows them : Mr. Halliwell makes 
 no addition to the old text beyond the fatal commas. 
 So also the Cambridge editors. But Mr. Halliwell 
 gives it a most portentous meaning : like Mr. Staun- 
 ton, who having newly turned "prenzie" into "re- 
 verend" therein only keeps decorum, he makes out 
 that "writ" is here " holy writ," and signifies "truth ;" 
 because we say, to take for writ or gospel, i. e. take 
 for true, therefore in this place, " nothing of what is 
 writ," amounts to "nothing of what is true." So
 
 43 
 
 that according to editors and commentators, past and 
 present, Shakespeare makes the Duke positively 
 affirm that Angelo knew not of his coming, that on 
 the contrary he had that very day received letters of 
 strange tenor, letters pm-posely designed to mislead 
 him ; and then m the same breath makes the Duke 
 allege that it was by chance Angelo did not know 
 " the truth," that it was by chance he did not know 
 the contents of the letter in his hand, which an- 
 nounced the Duke's return within two days. This is 
 to outbrave Shakespeare, not to expound him : this 
 is to put Shakespeare not only not to speak like 
 Shakespeare, but not even like one that knew his 
 own mind. Let the reader be assured Shakespeare 
 is justly chargeable with no such contradiction. 
 According to Heminge and Condell the Duke tells 
 the Provost that in Angelo's letters of sti'ange tenor 
 everything is written conjecturally, perchance of the 
 Duke's death, perchance entering into some monastery, 
 " but by chance nothing of what is writ," i.e. except 
 as a matter of chance nothing of what is writ — 
 nothing of what is writ in the letters received by 
 Angelo is set down otherwise than uncertainly. 
 
 Here happily, as in other places not a few, is no 
 room for cogging in words to get a meaning, no room 
 for experimenting on resemblance of letters, or the 
 clink of syllables : your critic ocular and auricular 
 is baffled; unable to ring his changes of "close" 
 into"glose," " remonstrance" into " demonstrancd," 
 "crime" into "grime," "a point" into "report,"
 
 u 
 
 "sob" into "bob" or "fob" (a change at which all 
 Shakespeare's boys laughed in amazement), the verbal 
 pedlar is out of his element, groping in the darkness 
 which envelopes every one unfamiliar with such 
 constructions as do not survive in modern literature. 
 In the above example from " Measure for Mea- 
 sure" we have seen how, as Chaucer sings, "the 
 reader that pointeth ill, a good sentence may oft 
 spill ;" that in fact the sense has been lost by the ad- 
 dition of points absent in the Folio ; but its common 
 fault in punctuation is on the side of excess : such is 
 the case in the passage from the Tempest ; the line, 
 — " who having into truth, by telling of it," has a 
 comma too much ; for the constniction is, " telling of 
 it into truth." There exists little or no difference of 
 opinion as to the general purport of the whole pas- 
 sage, which is understood to convey the same thought 
 as these words in South's 8tli Sermon, p. 305. Vol. 2. 
 ed. 1697. "like those who by often repeating a lie 
 to others come at length to believe it themselves," 
 or as expressed more at large, in Ford's Play, by 
 King Heniy, touching the impostor Perkin War- 
 beck; 
 
 " The lesson prompted and well eonn'd was moulded 
 Into familiar dialogue, oft rehearsed, 
 Till learnt by heart, 'tis now received for truth." 
 
 Act 5. Sc. 2. 
 
 But though the sentiment be trivial, the vulgar 
 
 construction in this place — " a sinner into truth," for 
 
 a sinner against truth, — has never been parallelled, 
 
 and until that be done, no good reason can be given
 
 45 
 
 why a different syntax, neither strained, nor infre- 
 quent, shoukl not prevail. 
 
 Perhaps the ensuing extracts will help to facilitate 
 the apprehension of words so joined as in — " telling 
 of it into truth." " After a further quantity of 
 useless butchery and carnage, and after the innumer- 
 able hospitals have been some more times filled and 
 emptied, this truth will grow into a familiar fact, and 
 the next thing then necessary will be to have ready 
 prepared some feasible line of frontier which may 
 also be discussed into familiarity T — The Times^ Oct. 
 10, 1862. " Why thus also it is with the mind of 
 man : after he is offended, if he will not be brought 
 to discharge his thoughts of the offence, he may thmk 
 and think so long, till he has tliought a distasteful 
 apprehension into an action of murder." — South, Serm. 
 9. p. 281. Vol. 10. ed. 1744. " For bring all the 
 force of rhetoric in the world, yet vice can never he 
 praised into virtue" — Ibid. Serm. 8. p. 190. Vol. 8. 
 This use of the preposition "into," with a like use, 
 in a contrary sense, of the preposition " out of," occurs 
 in South above a score times ; so that a perusal of 
 that Divine's sermons alone would train the reader 
 to an easy recognition of Shakespeare's " telling a lie 
 into truth." But although more frequent in South 
 than any other writer, it is by no means peculiar to 
 him. Ben Jonson in his " Time Vindicated" has : 
 
 " Swears him into name, 
 Upon his Word and sword, for the sole youth 
 Dares make profession of poetic truth 
 Now militant amongst us."
 
 46 
 And in his " Underwoods," 
 
 " Keep you sucli 
 That I may love your person, as I do, 
 "Without your gift, though I can rate that too 
 By tlianhing thus the courtesy to life 
 "Which you will bury." 
 
 Epistle to Sir Edw. Sackville. 
 
 Of these ilhistrations of the syntax ascribed to 
 " into" in the line quoted from the Tempest, the ex- 
 tract fi'om the Times testifies to its continued use, 
 and all of them corroborate it. " To tell a lie into 
 truth," the language here attributed to Shakespeare 
 is not a whit more forced or ungrammatical than " to 
 discuss a frontier into familiarity," " to think an 
 apprehension into an action," " to praise vice into 
 virtue," " to swear a youth into name," or " to thank 
 a com'tesv to life." 
 
 Prospero's observation amounts to this ; that a 
 man may forge a lie, and repeat it until it passes 
 with him into truth, his memory thereby losing at 
 each repetition some part of its sense of the original 
 falsehood, until it has, in that respect, become such a 
 sinner, has so far transgressed its duty, and foregone 
 its office, that the man credits the lie of which he 
 had been himself the author. But surely we bum 
 daylight ; the lines are clearer than exposition ; 
 comment and paraphrase only obscure them. For 
 those who reject the construction asserted here, 
 and are still disposed to maintain that " sinner into 
 truth" is right, it behoves them to furnish at least
 
 47 
 
 one sample of the usage they assume. They are 
 to show that "a sinner into truth" is equivalent 
 to " a sinner against truth." Let them then ad- 
 dress themselves to the task, and to be success- 
 ful, for it is not the work of a day, let them do 
 so horse and foot, or in our grandsires' phrase, the 
 meaning of which, as of very many other of their 
 sayings, has perished with them, let them do so 
 "for the heavens." In the meantime it will be 
 safer with Halliwell, Dyce, and the Cambridge 
 editors to repeal Heminge and Condell's banished 
 text, which is much likelier to be genuine than the 
 reading " unto" for " into," a corruption introduced 
 by Warburton, and espoused by his successors of 
 greatest note. 
 
 Vying with Warburton, Mr. Collier, in his attempt 
 to expedite this knot, has by a further corruption 
 knocked out the brains of the entire passage. What 
 before imported but an error of construction he has 
 sublimed into stark staring nonsense, not only not 
 Shakespeare's sense, which theretofore had still been 
 substantially saved, but into no man's sense, into 
 sheer fatuity. It was universally admitted that ac- 
 cording to Shakespeare a liar by lying made his 
 memory a sinner against "truth;" no, prints Mr. 
 Collier, in contempt of Shakespeare, of his editors, 
 and commentators, and of all reason, " a sinner 
 against untruth ;" that is, a liar, by commission of it 
 sins against the sin he commits ; a sinner, by leasing
 
 48 
 
 trespasses against leasing, his sin ; in a word, a 
 sinner by the sin sins against the sin. 
 
 Eeferring to this improvement of Shakespeare by 
 Collier, Mi*. Staunton intimates that " it has not re- 
 ceived the attention it deserves :" verily the Cam- 
 bridge editors are absolved ; Jackson and Beckett 
 are not after all such scandals to criticism. 
 
 " Those * foolish' creatures yet do look well favoau'ed 
 When others are more ' foolish ;' not being the worst 
 Stands in some rank of praise." 
 
 Reckless of the absurdity entailed, and bent only 
 upon obtaining an antecedent close at hand before 
 the pronoun "it" Mr. Collier crops the syllable 
 " un" from Warburton's "unto," and claps it before 
 "truth." No doubt in this syllabic legerdemain 
 there was a certain politic diift ; for had not Steevens, 
 Mason, Malone, and KJnight pronounced the sentence 
 to be ungrammatical or involved? Was not the 
 pronoun "it" adjudged to be without a correlative? 
 and does not the quintessence of Journal literature 
 esteem Priscian's head more than a little scratched 
 by relative and antecedent standing so far apart, and 
 in preposterous order too? Sure Shakespeare was 
 ill-advised to set "it," the pronoun, foremost, at the 
 beginning, and " lie," its noun, hindmost, at the end 
 of the sentence ! 
 
 Now what may be forgiven to weakness offended 
 by the unusual distance between noun and pronoun, 
 and the postposition of the antecedent in Prospero's 
 speech, becomes insufferable when a greater weak-
 
 49 
 
 ness, in the absence of any stumbling-block, mounts' 
 into the scorner's seat, and denounces as bad gram- 
 mar this reversed order of noun and pronoun, or 
 relative and antecedent, although not only common 
 in every writer of our own language, good, bad, and 
 indifferent, but common in every language with 
 which we are acquainted. 
 
 In the Saturday Review^ a periodical that num- 
 bers among its contributors, linguists, who, on their 
 own showing, might appear to have rocked the 
 cradle, and to understand the first lispings of articu- 
 late speech, to whom Psammitichus with his goats 
 is a mere novice in the origin of tongues, there may 
 be found every now and then supercilious glancings 
 at the grammar of its contemporaries. Thus in its 
 number of the 7th of Jan. '65, a cynic, snarling 
 at an article in the Times upon the disappearance 
 of the natives of Tasmania, fleers betrs^een brackets 
 at the grammatical composition of the following 
 sentence — " a charioteer who had been arrested by 
 the Emperor was very popular with them, {the only 
 antecedent word is Tliessalonica) and the inhabitants 
 were therefore assembled at the Hippodrome mider 
 the pretext of witnessing the races, and were then 
 barbarously massacred, &c." 
 
 To say nothing of the ignorance of the figure 
 metonymy betrayed by this critic, on finding in the 
 same article Attica represented by Athens, it is pitiable 
 to think that University training should disqualify a 
 pupil for seeing in " the inhabitants" an antecedent
 
 50 
 
 to " them ;" that his classics, his verbum personale^ 
 should deprive him of all other notion of antecedency 
 than what consists in a verbal sequence ; that pro- 
 fundity and freedom of thought, the boastful preroga- 
 tives of your Saturday Reviewer^ should be overawed 
 and cowed by a tenn of art, and a grammatical symbol 
 held paramount to the principles of which it, in com- 
 mon with others of the same mint, is but a lame and 
 inadequate exponent. To be so logical it is a wonder 
 that these writers stick so much in the rind of the 
 letter of their grammar rules, that they are not on 
 that very account led to a truer appreciation of the 
 spirit of them. However it is quite obvious that the 
 sagacity which is at fault, and cannot scent its way 
 through the two particles " and the" to an antecedent 
 for " them" of the Times' article, would have a hope- 
 less hunt over a file of words eleven deep for an 
 antecedent to "it" in the passage from the Tempest. 
 
 Conversant only with rectilinear stereotyped Eng- 
 lish, and for his theory of what it ought to be be- 
 holden to a style modelled upon his limited experience 
 of what it is, your hide-bound scholar would make 
 the " foot the tutor," just as though every custom in 
 the common law of speech were over- ridden by certain 
 compendious grammatical statutes, which are at most 
 but declaratory of that, and being framed in general 
 and comprehensive terms admit of a thousand excep- 
 tions : he does not understand that the marshalling 
 of words, except in the most primitive and rudi- 
 mentary essays, is not invariably regulated by their
 
 51 
 
 dependence on each other, as that is defined in 
 syntactical formula} : he is unfitted to apprehend how 
 by the transposition of noun and pronoun, or relative 
 and antecedent, inharmonious clumsiness of construc- 
 tion may be avoided, and thought kept on its way in 
 more miinterrupted, evener flow, without sacrifice of 
 lucidity. But he can libel Shakespeare, and his mother 
 tongue ; he can prate, as if no one were capable of in- 
 diting current English without the intervention of their 
 fescue whose childish puberty is not yet emancipated 
 from the pedagogue's ferule. 
 
 If any think lightly of these verbal questions to 
 which Shakespeare's text has given rise, or count 
 the time spent on them ill bestowed, let him be- 
 think him of the philosopher's maxim, ra eV tt] 
 (f)coi/7J Tcou iu Trj yj/vx^j iraOrjixaTCov crvji^oAa : let 
 him reflect that words are both the canal and 
 criteria of thought; that to ascertain a speaker's 
 meaning you must first understand his speech ; 
 and that that will not be mastered, where either by 
 gross anachronism the properties of a language at 
 epochs three centuries apart are blindly confused, 
 or its artless exorbitancies girthed with the strait belt 
 of pedantic canons. 
 
 Successive expositors of Shakespeare have run 
 tracing each other along the groove of both these 
 errors, every fresh relay propagathig the faults It 
 inherited and bequeathing more of its own. Hence 
 their commentaries are chiefly valuable, where they 
 possess any value at all, for graduating the several
 
 52 
 
 stages of departiu'e from its former self wliicli the 
 Englisli language has travelled through since the 
 days of Rowe, and for announcing the occasional 
 recovery of superannuated idioms which at a later 
 period has from time to time been achieved by some 
 few of head-piece extraordinary. And yet it will not 
 cost much pains to show that, with the command of 
 libraries and of printing which we now enjoy, Shake- 
 speare ought to be better edited, better understood, 
 than he ever has been since his fellows Heminge and 
 Condell first enriched their country with the dearest 
 heirloom that it owns. This shall be the labour of the 
 following chapters. 

 
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