Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

carriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every page wit ftruggling with its own fophiftry, and learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to cenfure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was difpoffeffing their emendations, how foon the fame fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may be by fome other editor defended and established.

"Criticks I faw, that other's names efface,

"And fix their own, with labour, in the place;
"Their own, like others, foon their place refign'd,
"Or disappear'd, and left the firft behind." POPE.

That a conjectural critick fhould often be miftaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others, or himself, if it be confidered, that in his art there is no fyftem, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates fubordinate pofitions. His chance of error is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the paffage, a flight misapprehenfion of a phrafe, a cafual inattention to the parts connected, is fufficient to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he fucceeds beft he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that fuggefts another will always be able to difpute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The allurements of emendation are fcarcely refiftible. Conjecture has all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once ftarted a happy change, is too much delighted to confider what objections may rife against it.

Yet conjectural criticifm has been of great ufe in the learned world; nor is it my intention to

depreciate a ftudy, that has exercised fo many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the Bishop of Aleria 5 to English Bentley. The criticks on ancient authors have, in the exercise of their fagacity, many affiftances, which the editor of Shakspeare is condemned to want. They are employed upon grammatical and fettled languages, whofe conftruction contributes fo much to perfpicuity, that Homer has fewer paffages unintelligible than Chaucer. The words have not only a known regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and confine the choice. There are commonly more manufcripts than one; and they do not often confpire in the fame mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confefs to Salmafius how little fatisfaction his emendations gave him. Illudunt nobis conjecturæ, quarum nos pudet, pofteaquam in meliores codices incidimus. And Lipfius could complain, that criticks were making faults, by trying to remove them, Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur. And indeed, when mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipfius, notwithstanding their wonderful fagacity and erudition, are often vague and difputable, like mine or Theobald's.

Perhaps I may not be more cenfured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raifing in the

5the Bishop of Aleria] John Andreas. He was fe cretary to the Vatican Library during the papacies of Paul II. and Sixtus IV. By the former he was employed to fuperintend fuch works as were to be multiplied by the new art of printing, at that time brought into Rome. He published Herodotus, Strabo, Livy, Aulus Gellius, &c. His fchool-fellow, Cardinal de Cufa, procured him the bishoprick of Accia, a province in Corfica; and Paul II. afterwards appointed him to that of Aleria in the fame ifland, where he died in 1493. See Fabric. Bibl. Lat. Vol. III. 894. STEEVENS.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

publick expectations, which at laft I have not anfwered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to fatisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by defign what they think impoffible to be done. I have indeed difappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my tafk with no flight folicitude. Not a fingle paffage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to reftore; or obfcure, which I have not endeavoured to illuftrate. In many I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confeffed the repulfe. I have not paffed over, with affected fuperiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not inftruct him, have owned my ignorance. I might eafily have accumulated a mafs of feeming learning upon eafy fcenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that, where nothing was neceffàry, nothing has been done, or that, where others have faid enough, I have faid no more.

Notes are often neceffary, but they are neceffary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, and who defires to feel the higheft pleafure that the drama can give, read every play, from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his

fancy is once on the wing, let it not floop at correction or explanation. When his attention is ftrongly engaged, let it difdain alike to turn afide to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightnefs and obfcurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preferve his comprehenfion of the dialogue and his intereft in

the fable. And when the pleafures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

Particular paffages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind. is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal fubject; the reader is weary, he fufpects not why; and at laft throws away the book which he has too diligently studied.

Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been furveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness neceffary for the comprehenfion of any great work in its full defign and in its true proportions; a clofe approach fhows the fmaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is difcerned no longer.

It is not very grateful to confider how little the fucceffion of editors has added to this author's power of pleafing. He was read, admired, ftudied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allufions understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce, " that Shakspeare was the man, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehenfive foul. All the images of nature were ftill prefent to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily when he defcribes any thing, you more than fee it, you feel it too. Thofe, who accufe him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation; he was naturally learned; he needed not the fpectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot fay he is every where alike; were he fo, I fhould do him injury to compare him with the greatest

of mankind. He is many times flat and infipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his ferious fwelling into bombaft. But he is always great, when fome great occafion is prefented to him: no man can fay, he ever had a fit fubject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the reft of poets,

• Quantum lenta folent inter viburna cupreffi."

It is to be lamented, that fuch a writer fhould want a commentary; that his language fhould become obfolete, or his fentiments obfcure. But it is vain to carry wifhes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakspeare, by accident and time; and more than has been fuffered by any other writer fince the use of types, has been fuffered by him through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that fuperiority of mind, which defpifed its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged thofe works unworthy to be preserved, which the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of reftoring and explaining.

Among thefe candidates of inferior fame, I am now to ftand the judgment of the publick; and with that I could confidently produce my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I fhould feel little folicitude about the fentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.

Of what has been performed in this revifal, an

This paragraph relates to the edition published in 1773, by George Steevens, Efq. MALONE.

« ZurückWeiter »