A review of Doctor Johnson's new edition of Shakespeare: in which the ignorance, or inattention, of that editor is exposed, ... By W. Kenrick.

Table of contents

- [titlepage]

- PREFACE.

- THE TEMPEST,

- Vol. I. Page 8.

- Vol. I. Page 9.

- Vol. I. Page 17.

- Vol. I. page 15.

- Vol. I. Page 19.

- Vol. I. page 28.

- Vol. I. page 34.

- Vol. I. Page 38.

- Vol. I. Page 43.

- Vol. I. Page 76.

- THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

- MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM,

- Vol. I. p. 112.

- Vol. I. Page 162.

- Vol. I. Page 163.

- Vol. I. Page 167.

- MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

- Vol. I. Page 266.

- Vol. I. Page 308.

- Vol. I. Page 312.

- Vol. I. Page 318.

- Vol. I. Page 319.

- Vol. I. Page 326.

- Vol. I. Page 328.

- Vol. I. Page 333.

- Vol. I. Page 348.

- Vol. I. Page 364.

- Vol. I. Page 366.

- Vol. I. Page 372.

- Vol. I. Page 373.

- Vol. I. Page 375.

- Vol. I. Page 377.

- THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

- Vol. I. Page 389.

- Vol. I. Page 410.

- Vol. I. Page 422.

- Vol. I. Page 456.

- Vol. I. Page 469.

- AS YOU LIKE IT.

- Vol. II. Page 45.

- Vol. II. Page 54.

- Vol. II. Page 81.

- Vol. II. Page 107.

- LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

- Vol. II. Page 114.

- Vol. II. Page 121.

- Vol. II. Page 142.

- Vol. II. Page 149.

- Vol. II. Page 165.

- Vol. II. Page 170.

- Vol. II. Page 222.

- THE WINTER'S TALE.

- Vol. II. Page 242.

- Vol. II. Page 295.

- Vol. II. Page 298.

- Vol. II. Page 323.

- Vol. II. Page 324.

- TWELFTH NIGHT.

- Vol. II. Page 360.

- Vol. II. Page 362.

- Vol. II. Page 368.

- THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

- Vol. II. Page 467.

- Vol. II. Page 476.

- Vol. II. Page 478.

- Vol. II. Page 482.

- Vol. II. Page 482.

- Vol. II. Page 540.

- Vol. II. Page 493.

- THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

- Vol. III. Page 20.

- Vol. III. Page 25.

- Vol. III. Page 45.

- MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

- Vol. III. Page 176.

- Vol. III. Page 199.

- Vol. III. Page 234.

- Vol. III. Page 237.

- ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

- Vol III. Page 319.

- Vol. III. Page 323.

- Vol. III. Page 330.

- Vol. III. Page 339.

- Vol. III. Page 341.

- Vol. III. Page 358.

- Vol. III. Page 372.

- Vol. III. Page 386.

- KING JOHN.

- Vol. III. Page 415.

- Vol. III. Page 447.

- Vol. III. Page 455.

- ADVERTISEMENT.

- [errata]

- ADVERTISEMENT.

A REVIEW OF DOCTOR JOHNSON'S NEW EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE.

THE first specimen of critical sagacity, which merits attention, in this new edition of Shakespeare, occurs in the play of

A REVIEW OF DOCTOR JOHNSON'S NEW EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE: IN WHICH THE IGNORANCE, OR INATTENTION, OF THAT EDITOR IS EXPOSED, AND THE POET DEFENDED FROM THE PERSECUTION OF HIS COMMENTATORS.

By W. KENRICK.

LONDON: Printed for J. PAYNE, at the Feathers, in Pater-noster Row.

M DCC LXV.

PREFACE.

EVERY act, says goodman Delver, hath three branches: 'It is to act, to do, and to perform [*].'—Contemptible as this piece of casuistry may be deemed; certain it is, that our honest grave-digger was not mistaken in the number of those distinctions, which are necessary to the investigation of moral merit. He was not so happy, indeed, in his specification of the parts to be distinguished. His logic, however, may pass, if we conceive the first part of his division to comprehend the design or intent of the act; the second the manner of putting it in execution; and the third, the effects or consequences produced by it.

Thus, in apologizing for the present Review, there are three things to be considered. 1. The design or intent of writing it. 2. The manner in which it is written; and lastly, the probable effects or consequences that will ensue.

In respect to the former; the Reviewer begs leave to express his motives for writing in the words of an ingenious author, who stood exactly in the same predicament.
I thought it a piece of justice due to the memory of Shakespeare, to the reputation of letters in general, and of our English language in particular, to take some public notice of a performance, which, I am sorry to say, hath violated all these respects. Had this been done by a common hand, I had held my peace; and left the work to that oblivion, which it deserves: but when it came out under the sanction of a great name, that of a gentleman, who had by other writings, how justly I shall not [now] examine, obtained a great reputation for learning; it became an affair of some consequence; as chimerical conjectures and gross mistakes might by these means be propagated for truth among the ignorant and unwary; and that be established for the genuine text, nay, the genuine text amended too, which is neither Shakespeare's nor English [*].

Such being the motives of action, the intent and design of the act is plainly what is set forth in the title, viz. to defend the text of Shakespeare from the persecution of his commentators.

The Reviewer is well aware that Dr. Johnson's selfsufficiency may suggest a more sinister view. For, he doubts not, that gentleman thinks of himself, what he has said of Dr. Warburton, that he has ‘a name sufficient to confer celebrity on those who can exalt themselves into antagonists;’ and hence he may possibly impute the present work to the motive which he insinuates to have actuated the opponents of that writer. The allusion, also, of the eagle and owl, which he quotes from Macbeth, may, with a very little latitude of construction, be applied as well to himself and the Reviewer, as to Dr. Warburton and his antagonist.

'An Eagle, tow'ring in his pride of place,

'Was, by a mousing owl, hawk'd at and kill'd [†].' For tho', Dr. Johnson having neither preferment in the church, nor post in the state, the word place may seem to want that strict propriety the critics require; yet, if we reflect how nearly places and pensions are allied, there is not one of Shakespeare's commentators who would make any scruple of substituting one word for the other, reciprocally, and alternately, as he thought the case might require. There is no doubt also that, on this occasion, the word pension would be preferred; as a pension must be universally allowed, caeteris paribus, to be better than a place, to a man so fond of doing but little; as it is apprehended the reader will think is the case with Dr. Johnson.

To invalidate, however, the force of such a suggestion, the Reviewer is reduced to the necessity of apparently boasting, that, in this respect, he does not lie under the disadvantage of being exactly in the same situation with the author of the Canons of Criticism; who frankly confesses, that it was the first, as it was the only book he wrote in his life. Dr. Johnson indeed may, in all probability, have never before heard the name of the present writer. He hath nevertheless some little literary reputation to lose; which he would not unadvisedly or wantonly put to the hazard.

This long-expected edition of Shakespeare is not the first work, by many, that he hath reviewed, nor is this Review the only book he hath written: For, tho' the name of Dr. Johnson is much better known than the merit of his writings, his Reviewer, on the contrary, hath hitherto chosen rather to have the merit of his writings known than his name. The publication of the one is of consequence to the world, that of the other of none but to the writer; with whose personal importance or insignificance the public have nothing to do [*].

With regard to the second division of our prefatory sermon, respecting the manner in which this Review is written; the author can readily foresee, that he shall be thought to have treated both Dr. Johnson and Dr. Warburton with an ill-becoming levity, if not with unmerited severity: at least, this he conceives will be the opinion of those, whom an innate consciousness of their own weakness inspires with a timidity, which they miscall, and flatter themselves to be, CANDOUR. The Reviewer confesses indeed he should have been glad to have had, on this occasion, less to do with the commentary of the reverend gentleman last mentioned. And this, he hath reason to think, would have been the case, had not Dr. Johnson been prevailed on by his printer prudentially to cancel several annotations, in which he had strongly expressed his dissent from that learned scholiast. But having, on second thoughts, judged it expedient to shelter himself, as it were, under the wing of the bishop of Gloucester; it is hoped the justice due to Shakespeare will excuse the Reviewer, tho' he should be sometimes obliged, in correcting his present editor, to ruffle and expose an irreverend feather or two of the Bishop's.

That he may not be suspected, however, of attempting to injure either, from a principle of spleen or resentment, he can safely aver, with regard to both, what another of Dr. Warburton's antagonists hath declared in respect to him alone; i. e.
That he is personally a stranger to either of these gentlemen; never conversed with them; never saw them [but once]; never had the least communication with them of any kind; never hath received or solicited any favour from either; nor, on the other hand, hath been ever personally disobliged by them; so that it is impossible this proceeding can have been influenced either by disappointment or resentment. The truth is, that the Reviewer hath always understood it to be an established law in the republic of letters, wisely calculated to restrain the excesses of insult, petulance and ill-nature, too apt to shoot up in the splenetic recesses of solitary literature, that every writer should be treated on the same foot of civility, on which, when unprovoked by prior ill usage, he hath been accustomed to treat others [*].
Now, whether he he hath treated either of these gentlemen worse than they have treated Shakespeare, he dares appeal to the impartiality of the public; which, at whatever low estimation it may rate an obscure author, who hath never set his name to a book; it will hardly think there can be a greater difference between him and this par nobile fratrum of commentators, than there is between them and the inimitable writer on whose works they have so freely commented. If the Reviewer hath at any time, indeed, behaved towards these gentlemen with little ceremony, it hath been always when they deserved much less: for it is to be observed, he had nothing to do with the political characters of either. He did not think it necessary, therefore, to pay any deference to Dr. Johnson, as his majesty's pensioner; nor to Dr. Warburton, as bishop of Gloucester. Their literary character was all that concerned him; and even, viewing them in this light, he had to respect them only as commentators on Shakespeare.—

Not that the Reviewer piques himself on being deficient in point of civility, or would take upon himself to infringe the necessary forms of decency and decorum. He admits, as Dr. Johnson observes, ‘that respect is due to high place, and tenderness for living reputation:’ but then he conceives that respect to be limited both as to place and time; and cannot admit that any tenderness for the Living gives us a right to trample inhumanly and sacrilegiously on the Dead.

Had the Bishop of Gloucester, when he entered on that right-reverend function, made a public recantation of the errors of poetry, and formally renounced the pomps and vanities of verbal criticism; not one of the heresies he maintained, or the sins he committed in this kind, absurd and enormous as they were, should, with the Reviewer's consent, have risen up in judgment against him; or have been dragged from that oblivion, to which they seemed eternally consigned. But if either Dr. Warburton, or his friends, presume on the influence of lawnsleeves in the republic of letters, it is proper to inform them there are neither Bishops, Priests nor Deacons in that community. The republic of letters is a perfect democracy, where, all being equal, there is no respect of persons, but every one hath a right to speak the truth of another, to censure without fear, and to commend without favour or affection. Nor is the literary community of less dignity than the political. Popularity and influence, indeed, may be obtained, for a while, by sinister means in both; but though birth and wealth may confer eminence and power in the one, not the descent of an Alexander, nor the riches of Croesus, confer prerogative or authority in the other.

In the primitive state of society, a superiority of intellectual abilities was the foundation of all civil pre-eminence; and hence the sceptre continued to be swayed by superior wisdom through a succession of ages. The acquisitions of science and learning were held among the ancients, in no less esteem than those of conquest, and in as much greater than the possessions of royalty, as a chaplet of laurel was preferred to a coronet of mere gems and gold. Xenophon reaped more honour from his Cyropaedia, than from the famous retreat of the ten thousand; and Caesar still more from his commentary, than from all the military exploits recorded in it. As to the examples of modern times; to say nothing of James and Christina, lest it be objected that one was a weak man, and the other a foolish woman, we have seen the kings of Prussia and of Poland, the Alexander and the Nestor of our age, ambitious to become authors, and be made denizons of our little state. Frederick hath been more than once heard to say, he would give his crown, and Stanislaus, if he had not lost it, would have given another, to possess the scientific fame of Leibnitz, or the literary reputation of Voltaire.

Is it, by the way, then, to be wondered at, that a private individual, like Samuel Johnson, should be even preposterously elated at finding that homage paid to him, which has been in vain solicited by sovereigns, and is refused even to the King on his throne? Graduated by universities, pensioned by his prince, and surrounded by pedagogues and poetasters, he finds a grateful odour in the incense of adulation; while admiring booksellers stand at a distance, and look up to him with awful reverence, bowing the knee to Baal, and holding in fearful remembrance the exemplary fate of Tom Osborne; presumptuous Tom Osborne! who, braving the vengeance of this paper-crowned idol, was, for his temerity, transfixed to his mother-earth by a thundering folio! It may be a pity to disturb Dr. Johnson from so pleasing a reverie, and to dissipate so agreeable a scene of delusion; he will exclaim doubtless, with the honest citizen of Argos.

Pol me occidistis—

—cui sic extorta voluptas,

Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.

But, if the interests of our literary state require it, it cannot be doubted that the mere gratification of an individual ought to be given up for the good of the whole community.

But to proceed to the third and last head of our discourse: the object of which is the effects or consequences of the following Review. These, like the subject of our preface, may be divided also into three parts. In the first place, it is presumed the injuries done to the name of Shakespeare will be in a great measure repaired, and the lustre of his tarnished honour restored. In the second, it is feared Dr. Johnson will suffer not a little in his literary reputation; and in the last, it may be suspected, that the proprietors will be injured in the sale of the work.

In regard to the first; the pleasure, which it is presumed every true Englishman will feel, at the attempt to do justice to his favourite poet, will sufficiently exculpate the author, had it been necessary to practise a still greater severity in effecting it.

With respect to the second, it may not be improper for the writer to offer something in his justification. It is not easy to guess how far Dr. Johnson would have the respect due to living reputation extend, when applied to himself. He may possibly have adopted the opinion of Wolfius, and will plead the authority of that great civilian, to prove that men of letters ought not to detract from the unmerited reputation of others. Nemo eruditorum alterius famae ac laudi, sive meritae, sive IMMERITAE detrahere debet. In reply to this, however, Mr. de Vattel, a civilian of equal authority, though perhaps of somewhat less note, takes a different side of the question; affirming, that no person hath a just complaint, because we may deprive him of a thing to which he hath no right, and which he unjustly assumes to himself. On the other hand, he determines that the literary reputation which is gotten undeservedly, is injurious to men of true merit; who thus become sufferers by the Vain and Undeserving. When praise, continues this able civilian, is prostituted on unworthy objects, it loses its value: the world grows distrustful, and in consequence of being made the dupe of pretenders, frequently refuses to bestow its applause on the truly Meritorious. Ought we to contribute to this injustice, for fear of depriving an impostor of the reputation on which he plumes himself, and to which he hath no well-founded pretensions? Surely not! Such is the reasoning of de Vattel on this interesting point; how far it is applicable to any, or all the editors of Shakespeare, the public is to determine. It is sufficient that the Reviewer hath the civil law at least on his side, in his endeavours to do justice to merit; though he should be found to have detracted, more in effect than with design, from the reputation of the Undeserving. His conscience is perfectly easy also, from the reflection that if he had not undertaken to expose the defects of Dr. Johnson's work, somebody else would. For, as Mr. Edwards justly observes, ‘the world will not long be imposed on by ungrounded pretences to learning, or any other qualification; nor does the knowledge of words alone, if it be really attained, make a man learned. Every true judge, as he observes, will subscribe to Scaliger's opinion;’ ‘If, says that great Critic, a person's learning is to be judged of by his reading, no body can deny Eusebius the character of a learned man; but if he is to be esteemed learned, who has shewn judgment together with his reading, Eusebius is not such.’ To this it may be truly added, in the words of another author, from whom this writer also borrowed them, as he used them on a similar occasion; ‘It is not the purpose of the following remarks, to cast a blemish on his [Dr. Johnson's] envied fame; but to do a piece of justice to the real merit of the comment and the commentator; by that best and gentlest method of correction, which nature has ordained in such a case; of laughing them down to their proper rank and character.’

As to the last point, viz. the interest of the proprietors; the Reviewer thinks it very problematical whether this will be affected either way. He hath indeed known books sometimes sell the better for being publicly censured: but, be this as it may, he can truly aver that he meant them no harm; for, though it is possible that one or other of them may have sometimes failed a little in that respect to the writer, which he thinks an author has a right to expect of his bookseller, and his bookseller, if he is wise, will be ready to pay him, yet he does not harbour so much resentment against any of them, as to wish to hurt their interest. If unluckily it should turn out, however, that the sale of Dr. Johnson's edition of Shakespeare should be hence obstructed, and that it should only hobble, instead of taking a run; the proprietors have nothing to do, but to engage the Reviewer, if they can, or some body else, to furnish them with a better edition. Nor will this be a difficult task, although it would be an arduous and noble one, to give the public such a commentary as the writings of this incomparable Bard deserve.

To detain the reader but a moment longer.—Dr. Johnson, having acted, in the outrage he hath committed on Shakespeare, just like other sinners, not only by doing those things he ought not to have done, but by leaving undone those things he ought to have done; his sins of omission are not less important, though much more numerous, than those of commission. Indeed, nothing is more usual with commentators in general, than to display their own sagacity on obvious passages, and to leave the difficult ones to be explained by the sagacity of their readers [*]. The Reviewer, however, cannot be supposed here to have given a compleat commentary himself; indeed he hath been able only to include in the following sheets some few remarks on the most glaring blunders and defects that occur in this new edition; of which such wonderful things were promised and expected; and to which, having seen the prophecy fulfilled, we may apply, with as much justice as ever it was applied to any thing, that wellknown quotation from Horace.

Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?

Parturiunt montes: nascetur ridiculus mus!

Notes

*
Hamlet.
↵

*
See Appendix to the Canons of Criticism.
↵

†
See Dr. Johnson's preface to his edition of Shakespeare.
↵

*

In confirmation of what is here asserted, it may possibly be thought necessary to name some of those publications, on which the public have conferred the honour of a favourable reception.—It is presumed needless, however, to particularize performances that would certainly have been less faulty, had they been less numerous. The author contents himself, therefore, with mentioning only his Epistles to Lorenzo; and the Translations of Rousseau's Eloisa, and Emilius.

↵

*
See the preface to the Revisal of Shakespeare's text.
↵

*

Dr. Johnson, indeed, says, in his Preface: ‘Not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate.’ How he hath succeeded in these attempts, the reader is left to judge for himself on perusal of the following sheets.

↵

THE TEMPEST,

Vol. I. Page 8.

PROS. to MIR.

I have with such provision in mine art

So safely order'd that there is no SOUL:

No, not so much perdition as an hair

Betid to any creature in the vessel, &c.

This passage hath raised much contention among the commentators; though it is authorized, it seems, by the old editions. Dr. Johnson, however, says
it is apparently defective. Mr. Rowe (continues he) and Dr. Warburton, read that there is no soul lost, without any notice of the variation. Mr. Theobald substitutes no foil; and Mr. Pope follows him. To come so near the right, and yet to miss it, is unlucky; the author probably wrote no soil, no stain, no spot: for so Ariel tells,

Not a hair perish'd;

On their sustaining garments not a blemish,

But fresher than before.

And Gonzalo—The rarity of it is, that our garments being drenched in the sea, keep notwithstanding their freshness and glosses. Of this emendation I find that the author of Notes on the Tempest had a glimpse, but could not keep it.

Mr. Theobald is treated with no little severity in the preface of the present editor, for pluming himself on his critical penetration in making some discoveries that have escaped others. Dr. Johnson, however, gives himself an air of superiority in the above note, as exceptionable at least as any of Theobald's; as will appear on the slightest attention to the construction of the sentence; this pretended emendation, however plausibly supported, being in fact entirely groundless.—What can we understand by NO SOIL BETID to any creature in the vessel? Or if we can with difficulty strain out a meaning, is the stile at all like that of Shakespeare; whose attention to colloquial idiom is so close, that our language is more indebted, in this respect, to him than to any other writer; I had almost said, all other writers put together?—If the passage is to be altered, let us at least make English of it: Shakespeare very probably wrote ILL; a word easily corrupted by the transcriber into soul.

—there is no ILL,

No, not so much perdition as an hair,

Betid to any creature, &c.

To betide is to befal, to happen to, to come to pass, to become of; and would here be very improperly used with soil; for even supposing there were no impropriety in saying a soil might betide a suit of cloaths: no idiom will bear a soil betiding to a creature, when its cloathing only was meant.

But what shall we say to the speeches of Ariel and Gonzalo, that seem to favour the emendation proposed?—What, indeed, but that they are little or nothing to the purpose! The poet was evidently judicious enough to apprehend the spectator must be offended with the palpable impropriety of bringing on a parcel of people, that had been just heartily soused in the sea, without any apparent [*] soil or spot on their cloaths. To prevent him, therefore, from being thus offended on their appearance on the stage, Ariel is previously made to mention this circumstance to Prospero; and in order to reconcile the audience to it when the persons actually appear, Gonzalo is artfully made to remind them of what had been effected by the ministry of Ariel.—There is not the least necessity for telling this to the auditors three times over, or for Prospero to mention this circumstance at all to Miranda.—Prospero had before told her there was no harm done: which she thinks very strange; and he proceeds accordingly to explain from what cause there is no ill betid those, of whose danger she was so very apprehensive, and for whose safety she was so very solicitous. Hath not every friend to the reputation of Shakespeare, a right to exclaim here,—ILL BETIDE such commentators!

Vol. I. Page 9.

PROS. to MIR.

—and thy father

Was duke of Milan, and his only heir

And princess, no worse issued.

Perhaps, says our editor, it should be 'and thou his only heir.' I say, perhaps not: for, if thou be admitted, without rejecting the preceding and, the measure is destroyed; and the sense is perfect without making any such innovation, if we dele the superfluous and, which may well be spared, in the third line, and read, with Theobald, A princess.

—and thy father

Was duke of Milan, and his heir

A princess, no worse issued.

Perhaps the reader will be of my opinion, that the passage loses neither sense, spirit, nor propriety by this restoration. As Dr. Johnson tells us in his preface, that he has generally adopted Theobald's notes, unless confuted by subsequent annotators, it is to be wished he had always given his reasons for deviating from him in the text.

Vol. I. Page 17.

The note contained in this page is so far a good one, as it is necessary and proper to give the reader an idea of the system of enchantment, on which the plot and machinery of the play is conducted. I should therefore have passed it over as unexceptionable, had it come from any other pen than that of Dr. Johnson. But as the world hath been pleased very publickly to impute sentiments to him, which seem incongruous with those he here professes, I cannot pass it over without some little animadversion. The incongruity I mean lies here: the Doctor, I have been frequently informed, very religiously believes in the existence of ghosts and apparitions; although he here strongly insinuates that there never was any such thing practised as witchcraft. But if he believes the story of the witch of Endor, and that the ghost of Samu•• appeared to Saul, as doubtless he does, he must believe in 〈◊〉 exerci•e of witchcraft, and also in its power over departed spirits. For, though some divines maintain that it was the devil who appeared in the form of Samuel, and not the ghost of Samuel himself; yet, as Dr. Johnson, in the note before us, adopts the distinction made by king James in his demonology, viz. that an enchanter is one who commands the devil, whereas the witch only serves him, he cannot be allowed to shelter himself under the opinion of those learned theologues. Either Dr. Johnson therefore must give up his faith in apparitions, or retract this part of his note.—But after all, perhaps, I may have been misinformed by the wicked wits of the times; for though it be true they do avouch some corroborating circumstances, and advance some plausible pretexts, I think I can discover some fallacy at the bottom. Our editor's favourite, Hooker, it is true, talks of spirits dispersed up and down in caves and dens under the earth; and occasion may hence be taken to give out, that the visit Dr. Johnson once made to a certain cemetery was to confer with some of these spirits. But in this these superficial witlings must certainly be mistaken; the spirits mentioned by Hooker were supposed, as is here observed, to be fallen angels. Hence, though I should be brought to believe, that our editor did go from Cock-lane to Clerkenwell, to fulfil an appointment with the ghost of Fanny, I cannot possibly suspect him of ever going there purposely to meet the devil.

Vol. I. page 15.

ARIEL.

Not a soul

But felt a fever of the mad*, and plaid

Some tricks of desperation:

*In all the later editions this is changed to a fever of the mind, without reason or authority, nor is any notice given of an alteration.

I wish our editor had given his reason for restoring the former reading, against the authority of all the later editions. He will say perhaps they are of no authority, as Theobald did of the editions of Rowe and Pope. But reason and authority seem in this case to be so much at variance, that I am apprehensive our editor will go near to be thought authority-mad, at least by many, for making this restoration without assigning the motive for it. Madness hath been, with propriety, called a fever of the mind, by writers of all ages and countries; and it is at best a pleonasm, or a piece of tautology, for Ariel to say, they played tricks of desperation, after he had said they were seized with madness. Perhaps our editor might think there was an impropriety, in saying that a soul felt a fever of the mind. But, not to stand upon the philosophical distinction that might justly be made between the mind and the soul, he cannot be ignorant that the word soul is here used in the vulgar and popular sense, as a man, a person. Will he persist in thinking it a sufficient reason for abiding by the old copies, that the transcribers and compositors could read? The same plea might be argued for perpetuating a number of blunders committed in the present edition. Admitting also, after all, that the oldest copies are likely to be most authentic, and that such reading, if erroneous, could not thus pass through successive editions; yet I will undertake, in behalf of Shakespeare, to affirm, that he did not write the above sentence, as it now stands in the text. The commentators on Shakespeare are all very liberal in their declarations against the ungrammaticalness of his stile. Now I will not here contend, whether he always wrote grammatically or not; but this I will maintain, that he always wrote idiomatically; if he did not always write grammar, he always wrote English. I wish I could say as much for the new-fangled accent-tuners of the present age; who, with their quaint and affected pretensions to refinement and elegance, have so vilely corrupted the idiom of our tongue. Whosoever would recover, and ground themselves in this, must study Shakespeare, who, though he might possibly write

Not a soul

But felt the fever of the mad,

that is, such a fever as the mad, or as mad-men, feel, I will be bold to say, could never in this place write

Not a soul

But felt a fever of the mad;

for if this means any thing, it must mean they caught a fever by feeling, or being in contact with mad-men. Dr. Johnson must, therefore, retouch this restoration, if he means to do justice to the text of Shakespeare.

Vol. I. Page 19.

MIR.

The strangeness of your story put

Heaviness in me.

The strangeness] Why should a wonderful story produce sleep? I believe experience will prove, that any violent agitation of the mind easily subsides in slumber, especially when, as in Prospero's relation, the last images are pleasing.

In answer to the odd question proposed at the beginning of this note, I have only to say, as the editor so frequently does, when he meets with difficulties, I know nothing of the matter. I have for such a why no wherefore. Nay, I know not that a wonderful story does produce sleep; unless it follows from a profound observation, which possibly our editor may have made, that old women and children generally amuse themselves with relating wonderful stories just as they are going to bed. The editor believes, experience will prove that any violent agitation of the mind easily subsides in slumber. Now, if he does not mean simply by this, that when people are drowsy they cannot be violently agitated, I do believe, on the contrary, experience will prove, that no violent agitation of the mind easily subsides at all. I have indeed heard of somebody's being so desperately in love, as to fall into a profound lethargy; but I believe this too was only on the authority of some play-book, and much such another philosopher as Miranda. But, supposing the fact to be true, what does the editor mean by asking so strange a question? or what does he intend by his reply to it? Does he mean, for the credit of the poet, to account for Miranda's sleepiness from natural causes? Shakespeare is, doubtless, much obliged to him; but in this our editor seems rather too officious, as the poet hath taken care to inform us, that Prospero had caused it by the power of inchantment: a circumstance I wonder the editor should so soon forget, when he had complimented Dr. Warburton, but two or three [*] pages before, on his sagacity in discovering that Prospero's art-magic had, in this case, operated on her like a dose of liquid laudanum, and that he had wisely set it to work just as he was going to tell her the most interesting story she ever heard in her life.

Vol. I. page 28.

MIR.

Why speaks my father so urgently?

Urgently for ungently. This is probably an error of the press; as, notwithstanding the instance above given of our editor's foisting in a thou, against all propriety of measure, I think neither the emendation of sense, if any is aimed at, nor even the authority of copies, can justify the breach of measure here. And indeed, though it should be the mistake of the printer, an editor, who is employed in literal and verbal criticism, is inexcusable for not cancelling the page wherein such errors occur. Yet these mistakes seem very frequently to happen in the present edition; thus, in page 6, Gonzalo is made to say

He'll be hang'd yet,

Though every drop of water swear against it,

And gap at wid'st to glut him.

All the other editions that I have seen, read gape; but perhaps our editor had some objection to a drop of water's gaping: but surely it might gape, and even swallow, as well as swear. Or, perhaps, he thought every single drop could never gape wide enough to take down a man-of-war's boatswain; and therefore chose to read it quaintly gap; meaning that the drops separated from each other, and thereby made a gap for him in the sea. By every drop, however, Shakespeare meant all the drops, or the water collectively. After all, it is not unlikely, as our editor has no note on this word, that he did not think at all about it, but left the text to the mercy of the printer.—Poor Shakespeare!

Again in this very play, page 77. than is printed for that, and in many other places, both in the text and in the notes, these errors occur, to the great injury of the sense; so that one might be apt to think this edition (as Dr. Johnson affirms of the old ones) was AT LAST printed without correction of the press. It may be very true, as he also observes, that
before the editor's art was applied to modern languages, our ancestors were accustomed to so much negligence of English printers [*], that they could very patiently endure it.
But is it not reasonably to be expected, Dr. Johnson, that, since the editor's art hath been so very successfully applied to modern languages, our printers should be a little more careful in correcting the press? or that the editor himself should a little attend to this matter?

Vol. I. page 34.

SEB.

—Milan and Naples have

More widows in them of this business' making,

Then we bring men to comfort them:*

*It does not clearly appear whether the king and these lords thought the ship lost. This passage seems to imply that they were themselves confident of returning, but imagined part of the fleet destroyed. Why, indeed, should Sebastian plot against his brother in the following scene, unless he knew how to find the kingdom which he was to inherit?

This note serves to very little purpose in illustrating the author. It is a matter of no consequence to the spectator, whether the king and his lords thought the ship lost or not. They knew they must be somewhere in the Mediterranean. They were neither in the Atlantic ocean, nor the South-sea, and could not be cast ashore on Greenland, nor on Terra Australis incognita. And as they found the island pleasant and temperate, and affording 'every thing advantageous to life,' it was no wonder if they did not at all despair of subsisting there, till they should find means to get back to Naples, even if their own vessel and all the fleet were wrecked and gone to the bottom. But, though this annotation doth not serve to remove any difficulty, or display any merit in the author, it sufficiently serves to expose the incapacity of the annotator, for commenting on Shakespeare as a poet. He cannot see why Sebastian should plot against his brother, unless he actually knew how to find the kingdom he meant to inherit. But Sebastian's plot was natural, even supposing there had been more reason for diffidence in this particular. This editor might as well ask, why the chiefs of the rebellious party, in Henry the fourth, are made to quarrel about the division of the kingdom, before they are masters of it, and that of a kingdom of which they never are masters? Yet this is one of the finest scenes in all Shakespeare, admirably representing that anticipation of our wishes and expectations, which is daily observable in men of sanguine constitutions, and is inseparable from the human mind. We are all too apt to count our chickens before they are hatched, and even sometimes to sell them too, and spend the money; which occasions the hen to fit so long brooding over the eggs, and produce so many addled ones at last.—'My annotations are no eggs.'—I did not say they were, Dr. Johnson; but qui capit ille facit.

Vol. I. Page 38.

ANT.

Although this lord of weak remembrance,—

————

——hath here almost persuaded,

For he's a spirit of persuasion, only

Professes to persuade, the king, his son's alive:

For he's a spirit of persuasion, &c.] Of this entangled sentence I can draw no sense from the present reading, and therefore imagine that the author gave it thus:

For HE, a spirit of persuasion, only

Professes to persuade;

of which the meaning may be either that, He alone, who is a spirit of persuasion, professes to persuade the king; or that, He only professes to persuade, that is, without being so persuaded himself, he makes a show of persuading the king.

Dr. Johnson seems here to have gotten a glimpse (as he before says of another commentator) of the author's meaning, but cannot keep it. I wonder the word almost, in the preceding line, did not lead him quite into it. There is no necessity for altering the text any farther than to transpose the comma, placed after the word persuasion, to the end of the line. The meaning would then be this: He hath ALMOST [not quite] persuaded the king; for he is the SPIRIT of persuasion only, he professes to persuade: that is, ‘He has only almost persuaded the king; for he hath no solid argument or weighty reason to enforce what he says; he hath only the mere volatile spirit of persuasion; that superficial vapour of words which exhales and carries with it only the appearance, the mere shew or profession of persuading.’ —Or perhaps the word spirit is here used in a meaning nearly similar, for the mere form, apparition, semblance; that is, not the body or substance of persuasion. But be it as it will, it seems that a better sense than either of Dr. Johnson's, may be drawn from this entangled sentence, without the least alteration of Shakespeare's words. For it appears evident, from the opinion that both Antonio and Sebastian entertain of the capacity of Gonzalo, that the one would never call him the spirit of persuasion, as having the gift of elocution [*]; nor the other be at all influenced by any thing of which he might, or might not, be persuaded. So that we see neither of our editor's meanings are supportable; but both as impertinent, as the alteration of the text is unnecessary.

Vol. I. Page 43.

TRIN.

Were I in England now, as I once was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday-fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make* a man.

*That is, make a man's fortune. So in Midsummer Night's Dream.—We are all made men.

Our editor might also have added, in the Winter's Tale too, Act III. Scene 7. where the clown tells the shepherd that he is a made old man. I have no fault to find with this note, except that I think Dr. Johnson might have confessed his obligation to the author of the Canons of Criticism; who gave this meaning, after having exposed the absurdity of Dr. Warburton's very learned and ridiculous note on this passage.—This is not the only instance, however, by many, as the reader will find in the perusal of these sheets, wherein Dr. Johnson adopts the opinion of that ingenious critic, without mentioning either his name, or his book. But perhaps, after treating this gentleman so scurvily as he has done in his preface, he might be ashamed to have it known that his sentiments so frequently coincided with so indifferent a critic. Or perhaps he might think that, after having knocked him fairly on the head, the law of arms gave him a right to plunder him at pleasure.

Vol. I. Page 76.

ARIEL.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie:

There I couch, when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer, merrily.

The opinions of the commentators are strangely divided about this elegant little song. Mr. Theobald reads, in the first line, there lurk I; observing that Ariel was a spirit of a refined aethereal essence, and could not be intended to want food. Besides, the sequent lines rather countenance lurk. For my part, I am apt to be of Mr. Theobald's opinion, for another reason; and that is, I think Ariel, though he should even be supposed to have occasion for more substantial food than the cameleon; yet he cannot mean to compare himself to a bee, or a suckling of any kind. Mr. Theobald's reading is also more elegant; and yet our editor hath restored the old word suck, without giving any reason for it.—A more material alteration hath been attempted on the last line; which Mr. Theobald, in his Shakespeare Restored, conceived should be written, After sun-set merrily. This conjecture was countenanced by Mr. Pope, and adopted by Sir Thomas Hanmer: but Dr. Warburton rejected it with infinite disdain. Dr. Johnson also, having restored summer to the text, and quoted Warburton's note without any animadversion of his own, must be supposed to acquiesce in the force of what that learned commentator hath advanced; or at least, by his own confession, to have nothing better to offer.—And yet nothing, in my opinion, can be more inconclusive than the argument contained in Dr. Warburton's annotation.—It will be thought, no doubt, a little presumptuous in so petty an Aristarchus as myself, to attack conjointly two such gigantic and formidable critics. But I could not, with patience, see a Goliah treat the muse of Shakespeare like a common drab, at his pleasure; my weapon, therefore, is quickly out, you see, for ‘I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion, in a good quarrel, and the law of my side.’

Dr. Warburton's note, as it is quoted by our editor, runs thus:

After summer, merrily.] This is the reading of all the editions: yet Mr. Theobald has substituted sun-set, because Ariel talks of riding on the bat in this expedition. An idle fancy. That circumstance is given only to design the time of night in which fairies travel. One would think the consideration of the circumstances should have set him right. Ariel was a spirit of great delicacy, bound, by the charms of Prospero, to a constant attendance on his occasions. So that he was confined to the island winter and summer. But the roughness of winter is represented by Shakespeare as disagreeable to fairies, and such like delicate spirits, who, on this account, constantly follow summer. Was not this then the most agreeable circumstance of Ariel's new recovered liberty, that he could now avoid winter, and follow summer quite round the globe? But, to put the matter out of question, let us consider the meaning of this line,

There I couch when owls do cry.

Where? in the cowslip's bell and where the bee sucks, he tells us: this must needs be in summer. When? when owls cry, and this is in winter.

When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl.

LOVE's LABOUR LOST.
The consequence is, that Ariel flies after summer.

Such is Dr. Warburton's elaborate annotation: in answer to which it may be observed that, whether Theobald's reasoning be right or not, his own arguments are egregiously wrong. I will admit, with Dr. Warburton, that Ariel here speaks of himself as a kind of fairy; but, supposing no objection to be made to the difference of climates, I do not know that Shakespeare hath any where represented winter so excessively disagreeable to fairies, as to oblige them, like swallows, to expatriate on the arrival of winter. The argument he makes use of, and the quotation he brings to put the matter out of question, are insufficient, and are invalidated by many other passages in Shakespeare. He would infer from the two lines, quoted from the song in Love's Labour lost, that owls never cry but in winter. But the queen of the fairies, in the Mid-summer Night's Dream, says to her attendants,

—keep back

The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders

At our quaint Spirits.

And again, Puck, at the latter end of the same play, says,

Now the wasted brands do glow,

Whilst the scritch-owl, shrieking loud,

Puts the wretch that lies in woe,

In remembrance of a shroud.

Thus we see that the owls do cry, even in the presence of the fairies. It may not be amiss also to remark, that in the song of Winter, the owl is represented as singing a merry note; whereas, in the other passages, she is said to cry, to be clamorous: which it might with great propriety be said to do in summer, when her hooting is contrasted

To the night-warbling bird, that now, awake,

Tunes sweetest his love-labour'd song—

A circumstance that does not operate to the owl's disadvantage in the cold and dreary nights of winter, when the same hooting may even have something chearful in it; at least to those who are sitting by a good fire in the chimney-corner: While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. As to what Dr. Warburton says about following summer quite round the globe, I never before heard that summer itself went round the globe. That it vibrates from pole to pole is certain: but there is some little difference between that motion of the earth which causes summer and winter, and that which causes day and night.

In regard to Dr. Warburton's calling Theobald's reason, for altering the text, an idle fancy, and his telling us, that the circumstance of the bat is only introduced to design the time of night in which fairies travel; I must observe, that Ariel does not seem to be one of those kind of fairies, that, as Puck says,

—run

By the triple Hecat's team,

From the presence of the sun,

Following darkness like a dream.

On the contrary, he appears to execute the commands of Prospero by day-light. Nor is this inconsistent with his character, as a fairy of a superior kind. For thus, Oberon, the fairy king, on Puck's telling him of the approach of morning, which hastens away those spirits that for aye consort with black-brow'd night, replies;

But we are spirits of another sort;

I with the morning light have oft made sport;

And, like a forester, the groves may tread,

Ev'n till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,

Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,

Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

Notes

*

For that it was only the external appearance of their garments that was preserved, is evident, from the speeches of Antonio and Sebastian immediately succeeding that of Gonzalo. Our garments, says the latter, are rather new dy'd than stained with salt water. On which Antonio says to Sebastian, ‘If but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say, he lies?’ To which remark Sebastian answers, "Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report." Thus it does not appear that the creatures, the people themselves, sustained no soil, stain, or spot. On the contrary, it seems by their discourse that they were all in a very pretty pickle, notwithstanding their fair outside, which the decency of theatrical representation rendered necessary for the poet to bestow on them.

↵

*
Page 14.
↵

*
I should refer my readers to the page of the preface, from whence this passage is cited; but, behold, such is the accuracy of modern British printers! the preface is not paged at all.
↵

*

It is indeed observable that, notwithstanding Gonzalo talks so much, and is, as Antonio says, such a spendthrift of his tongue, yet Francisco gives the king more substantial reasons, in one single speech, for thinking the prince alive, than Gonzalo, with all his prattle.—And yet Alonzo is made to turn a deaf ear to him, with No, no, he's gone.

↵

THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

This play is not numbered, as Dr. Johnson observes, among the most powerful of Shakespeare's effusions. Our editor, indeed, conceives it was not very successful on the stage; and that it has escaped corruption, only because, being seldom played, it was less exposed to the hazards of transcription: Among a few other remarks of equal importance, however, which he thinks proper to make on this play, his critical acumen hath discovered a corruption of the text, in Launce's conversation with his dog.

Scene VI. Act IV.

LAUNCE.

—O, 'tis a soul thing, when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies! I would have, as one should say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it were, a dog at all things.

On this passage our learned editor thus sagaciously remarks. ‘I believe we should read I would have, &c. one that takes upon him to be a dog, to be a dog indeed, to be, &c.’

Is not this a curious and important emendation? It is, however, not quite ingenious enough to be true, or even to deserve to be true. What can Dr. Johnson mean by a dog's taking upon him to be a dog? This, every cur that's whelp'd, is, of course; but he that would be a dog indeed, as Launce says (that is, one who would be thought to be possessed of all the essential good qualities of his species) should be as it were a dog at all things.—What curst curs are crabbed critics, and carping commentators; who are ever contentious for a bone to pick; yet, when they have got one, cannot help snarling at those who afford it them!

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM,

Vol. I. p. 112.

QUEEN.

Full often she hath gossipt by my side;

And sat with me, on Neptune's yellow sands,

Marking th' embarked traders on the flood,

When we have laught to see the sails conceive,

And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind:

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate,

Following (her womb then rich with my young squire)

Would imitate; and sail upon the land,

To fetch me trifles, and return again

As from a voyage rich with merchandize.

Dr. Warburton, and our editor, have both attempted to illustrate this passage, without success. The difficulty lies in the sixth, seventh and eighth lines. Dr. Warburton says,
Following what? she did not follow the ship, whose motion she imitated; for that sailed on the water, she on the land. If by following we are to understand imitating, it will be a mere pleonasm—imitating would imitate. From the poet's description of the actions it plainly appears we should read

FOLLYING—

Would imitate.

i. e. wantoning in sport and gaiety. Thus the old English writers—and they beleeven FOLYLY and falsely—says Sir J. Mandeville, from and in the sense of folâtrer, to play the wanton. This exactly agrees to the action described.—full often has she gossipt by my side—and—when we have laughed to see.

This note, Dr. Johnson tells us, is very ingenious; but, continues he, ‘since follying is a word of which I know not any example; and the fairy's favourite might, without much licentiousness of language, be said to follow a ship that sailed in the direction of the coast, I think there is no sufficient reason for adopting it. The coinage of new words is a violent remedy, not to be used but in the last necessity.’

I will not dispute with our editor the ingenuity of Dr. Warburton's note, or that of his own; but it is certainly an ingenuity of a different kind to that which is necessary to illustrate Shakespeare. The former of these gentlemen, I remember, affected to ridicule the booksellers for believing a silly maxim, that none but a poet should presume to meddle with a poet. The event, however, hath proved this maxim to have some truth in it. If either Dr. Warburton, or Dr. Johnson, had, in criticising this passage, exercised their ingenuity as poets, instead of their ingenuity as philologers, I am persuaded they would have soon discovered its meaning. But they were too intent upon words, to attend to the images designed to be conveyed by them. The former talks of an action described in two lines, wherein nothing is spoken of but gossipping and laughing. Do these imitate a ship under sail? To have been merely playful and wanton, is not the imitation here mentioned: nor does it consist in merely following the object imitated, as Dr. Johnson conceives; for she did not only sail upon land, in the same direction along the coast as the ships did in the sea; but she returned again, which must have been in a different direction. So that it appears neither of these ingenious critics had any idea of the poetical beauty of this passage.—I shall endeavour to explain it, therefore, by a very different mode of investigation.—If the reader hath ever seen a ship scudding before the wind, with its fore-sail grown big-bellied, as the poet expresses it, with the swelling breeze; he must recollect that, in such a case, the sail projects so far forward, that it seems, to a spectator on shore, to go in a manner before the rest of the vessel; which, for the same reason, appears to follow, though closely, after, with an easy, swimming motion.—This was the moving image, which the fairy's favourite, taking the hint from, and the advantage of, her pregnancy, endeavoured to imitate; and this she did, by wantonly displaying before her the convexity of her swelling belly, and moving after it, as the poet describes, ‘—with pretty and with swimming gate.’ Such being the sense of the passage, the text is easily ascertained, by pointing and reading thus;

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate

Following her womb, then rich with my young squire,

Would imitate.

This is the method a critic should take with the poets. Trace out their images, and you will soon find how they expressed themselves, without perplexing yourself either about the meaning of antiquated words, or the coinage of new ones.

Vol. I. Page 162.

PHILIST.

—I have heard it over,

And it is nothing, nothing in the world;

Unless you can find sport in their intents,*

Extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain,

To do you service.

*Thus all the copies. But as I know not what it is to stretch and con and intent, I suspect a line to be lost.

It is very common with Dr. Johnson, when his critical sagacity is at fault, to suppose a chasm in the text, to excuse his having lost scent of the poet's meaning. There is no need, however, for such a supposition here. By intents is plainly meant the design or scheme of the piece intended for representation; the conceit of which being far-fetched or improbable, it might be with propriety enough called extremely stretched. As to this scheme or design being conn'd (if any objection be made to the supposition of its having been written, penn'd) it is no wonder such players as these are represented to be, such

A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,

Should con their several parts with cruel pain.

Vol. I. Page 163.

HIP.

I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged,

And duty in his service perishing.

THE.

Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.

HIP.

He says, they can do nothing in this kind.

THE.

The kinder we to give them thanks for nothing.

Our sport shall be, to take what they mistake;

And what poor duty cannot do,

Noble respect takes it in might not merit.

*The sense of this passage [the apprehended difficulty of which lies in the two last lines] as it now stands, if it has any sense, is this: What the inability of duty cannot perform, regardful generosity receives as an act of ability, though not of merit. The contrary is rather true. What dutifulness tries to perform without ability, regardful generosity receives as having the merit, though not the power, of complete performance. We should therefore read,

And what poor duty cannot do

Noble respect takes not in might but merit.

That is, says our editor, we should read directly contrary to what the poet has written! Nothing, however, I think, can be more plain, or more consistent with truth, than the passage as it now stands. Is it not a common thing for the lords, and other owners of estates, in many countries where the peasants are poor, and cannot pay their rent in cash, to take it in catile, or in corn? Doth not the parson, tho' he sometimes takes his tythes in a modus, frequently take them also in kind? Is not every creditor, where a debt is desperate, willing to take in meal or in malt, what he cannot get in money? And does not this mode of expression justify the speaker in saying, agreeable to the idiom of our language, that as to

—what poor duty cannot do,

Noble respect takes it in might, not merit—

That is, not as an act of ability, though not of merit, as Dr. Johnson says; but as an act of merit, though not of ability: thus in consequence of its inability, taking the will for the deed; viz. accepting the best in its might to do, for the best that might be done; rating the merit of the deed itself at nothing, agreeable to the first line of Theseus's speech,

The kinder we to give them thanks for nothing.

Vol. I. Page 167.

THE.

Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.

DEM.

No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to HEAR without warning.

On this passage our editor quotes the following note from Dr. Warburton, without animadversion. ‘Shakespeare could never write this nonsense: we should read—to REAR without warning; i. e. It is no wonder that walls should be suddenly down, when they were as suddenly up;—REAR'D without warning.’

Had our editor nothing to offer better than this? And hath he so little veneration for Shakespeare, as so readily to countenance the charge against him of writing nonsense? Did you, Dr. Johnson, ever read the scene, wherein this passage occurs, quite through? I could almost venture to affirm, that neither you nor Dr. Warburton ever could have read it through with any attention. It seems to me morally impossible, if you had, that he could have made so egregious a mistake, or you have admitted it among your notes.—Shakespeare most undoubtedly wrote it HEAR, as it stands in the text. For not to insist upon the palpable defects of Dr. Warburton's explanation, the most undoubted evidence in justification of this reading, may be deduced from the context. In the preceding page the wall makes a speech, on which Theseus says, Would you desire lime and hair to speak better? and Demetrius answers, It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse. On this Pyramus enters and closes his speech with a curse against the wall. His speech ending with the words deceiving me. Upon which Theseus again thus remarks, ‘The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.’ No, says the actor who play'd Pyramus, in truth, Sir, he should not. DECEIVING ME, is Thisbe's cue; she is to enter, and I am to spy her through the wall. You shall see, it will fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes.

Now, Pyramus and Thisbe having met and spied each other through the crevice, for which purpose only the wall was introduced, their interview is no sooner over than the actor who played the wall, apparently, without waiting for his cue, as no body speaks to him, and he speaks to no person in the drama, says,

Thus have I, wall, my part discharged so;

And, being done, thus wall away doth go.

On which Theseus observes again, as in the passage cited, ‘Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.’ To which Demetrius answers; No remedy [*], my lord, when walls are so wilful, to HEAR without WARNING. That is, so wilful as to take their cue before it be given them.

Notes

*

It is to be observed, that Demetrius doth not say, It is no wonder, as Dr. Warburton expresses it in his explanation; but There is no remedy. I cannot doubt, therefore, that the above is the plain and obvious meaning of this passage. That the expression, however, may bear a reference to some latent meaning, I do not deny; and possibly it may refer to a custom practised by the magistrates in many places abroad, of sticking up a notice or warning on the walls of ruinated and untenanted houses, for the owners either to repair or pull them quite down.

↵

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Vol. I. Page 266.

DUKE.

We have with special soul

Elected him, our absence to supply.

Dr. Warburton says, ‘This nonsense must be corrected thus; with special roll: i. e. by a special commission.’ The present editor, Dr. Johnson, thinks Warburton right in supposing a corruption, but less happy in his emendation. He reads, therefore, with special seal; which, he says, is a very natural metonymy for a special commission.—But why did not our editor obviate the objection made against this supposition of a corruption, by the author of the Canons of Criticism? Was his objection of too little weight, or was the writer of too little consequence to need a refutation? This author remarks on this passage, that ‘with special soul, may fairly be interpreted to mean, with great thought, upon mature deliberation; but that with special roll, for—by special commission, is harsh and aukward; and to elect a man by a commission, instead of—appoint him, is flat nonsense. ’ Now, this objection lies equally against Dr. Johnson's reading as against Dr. Warburton's, and must be removed before I withdraw my caveat against any innovation being made in the text. Indeed I will oppose, totis viribus, the admission of Dr. Johnson's seal, lest some future commentator should start up, and affirm that, although to elect by or with a commission may be nonsense; yet to ERECT by or with a commission is sense; to erect here meaning nothing more than to set up, to promote, which is done by commission. And how plausibly might not such an annotator maintain, that such reading would be perfectly consistent with the context?

For you must know, we have with special seal

Erected him our absence to supply;

Lent him our terror, drest him with our love,

And giv'n his deputation all the organs

Of our own power.

Might he not exclaim, ‘Is it not plain, that the duke means to say he has erected, that is, set up Angelo in the place of himself? Besides, who could refuse, after having changed two letters at the instance of Dr. Johnson, to make so small a variation as one for his successor?’ Tis only, he might plead, changing an l for an r, merely one liquid for another; the transcribers and printers might easily mistake it.— ‘Who does not see, (as Dr. Johnson says in another place) that upon such principles there is no end of correction!’ —Away, therefore, with all such trifling, and revere the TEXT of SHAKESPEARE.

Vol. I. Page 308.

ISAB.

Else let my brother die,

If not a feodary, but only he,

Owe, and succeed by weakness.

This passage seems to have confounded all the commentators. Dr. Warburton makes the following curious and learned note upon it. ‘This is so obscure a passage, but so fine in its application, that it deserves to be explained. A feodary was one that, in the times of vassalage, held lands of the chief lord, under the tenure of paying rent and service, which tenures were called feuda amongst the Goths. Now, says Angelo, we are all frail; yes, replies Isabella, if all mankind were not feodaries, who owe what they are to this tenure of imbecility, and who succeed each other by the same tenure, as well as my brother, I would give him up. The comparing mankind, lying under the weight of original sin, to a feodary, who owes suit and service to his lord, is, I think, not ill-imagined.’ —This note, with little variation, is inserted in Theobald's edition; who says it explains one of the most beautiful allusions imaginable.—The present editor inserts this note also, without any remark of his own. He observes indeed, that to owe means in this place to own, to hold, to have possession.—For my part, I never could reconcile the words of this passage, by any mode of construction, to the sense here put on it. Indeed, it never appeared to me, from the tenour of the conversation, that Isabel could possibly entertain such a constrained and far-fetched allusion, as the ingenious Dr. Warburton hath here fished out for her. I conceive her meaning to be much more simple, and if the reader observes the connection of this speech with those of Angelo that precede and follow, I doubt not but he will be of my opinion. It is true, that to owe means here, as in other parts
[*]
of Shakespeare's writings, to own, to have, to be possessed of or invested with. The word feodary, however, is not derived from feuda, nor hath its meaning here any relation to the customs of the feudal times, but is derived from foedus, a covenant, and is therefore mis-spelt, it having here the same meaning as the word feodary in the following passage in Cymbeline, where it means an accomplice, a confederate, a companion equally guilty.

—damn'd paper!

Black as the ink that's on thee: senseless bauble,

Art thou a feodarïe for this act?

Taking the words in this, their true sense, let us see if we cannot, without forcing their construction, discover a meaning more in character with the speaker, and therefore more likely to be intended by Shakespeare:

ANG.

We are all frail.

ISAB.

Else let my brother die;

If not a feodary, but only he,

Owe, and succeed by, weakness.

That is, ‘Let my brother die, if not one of his companions, if only he, of all his sex, is frail, and hath succeeded in his attempts on women, by taking advantage of a like frailty in them.’ —That this is the true sense, I think, is put past dispute by the subsequent speech of Angelo; who takes occasion, from the last suggestion of Isabel, to say ‘Nay, women are frail TOO. ’ Which is as much as if he had said, ‘Nay, the women, as you observe, are frail too.’ —Ay, says Isabel,

—As the glasses where they view themselves.

—

Women!—help heav'n! men their creation mar

In profiting by them, &c.

That is, says Dr. Johnson, ‘in imitating them, in taking them for examples.’ But I cannot see how we can, with any propriety, be said to profit by what mars our creation. I rather think Isabel means to say, that man disgraces himself by profiting or taking advantage of female weakness. And this seems to agree with the context.

Vol. I. Page 312.

DUKE.

—Reason thus with life;

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep:

Dr. Warburton, in order, I presume, to lay hold of an occasion for altering the text, excepts against this passage, as being a direct persuasive to suicide. The absurdity, however, of supposing that the speaker intended it as such, is obvious, since he is endeavouring to instil into a condemned prisoner a resignation to his sentence. Dr. Johnson observes, that the meaning seems plainly this, that ‘none but fools would wish to keep li•e; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed.’ A sense which, whether true or not, he remarks, is certainly innocent. But though our editor is graciously pleased to exculpate Shakespeare in this particular, it appears to be only that he may fall upon him with the greater violence in a page or two after; where Dr. Warburton vouchsafes to pay the poet a compliment. This passage is in the same speech as the foregoing;

—Thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provok'st; yet grosly fear'st

Thy death, which is no more.

This passage, says Dr. Warburton, ‘is evidently taken from the following, of Cicero: Habes somnum imaginem mortis, eamque quotidie induis, & dubitas quin sensus in morte nullus sit, cum in ejus simulachro videas esse nullum sensum. But the Epicurean insinuation is with great judgment omitted in the imitation.’ On this note Dr. Johnson hath made the following remark: ‘Here Dr. Warburton might have found a sentiment worthy of his animadversion. I cannot, without indignation, find Shakespeare saying, that death is only sleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a sentence which in the friar is impious, in the reasoner is foolish, and in the poet is trite and vulgar.’ —Nor can I, Dr. Johnson, without equal indignation, find you misrepresenting Shakespeare, and thence taking occasion to condemn him for what he is not culpable; lengthening out your censure with imputations that, being false in themselves, appear as invidious in the man, as they are contemptible in the critic. Would not one imagine, from the warmth with which Dr. Johnson speaks of this passage, that it militates against the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; insinuating that in death we close our eyes, and sleep for ever?—Nothing, however, can be more foreign from the plain intent of the speaker, and the obvious meaning of the passage. The duke, in the assumed character of a friar, is endeavouring to persuade Claudio to acquiesce in the sentence of death passed on him, and to prepare himself for launching into eternity. To this end he advises him to think altogether on death; and to excite him to do so, he enumerates the several foibles of humanity, and the calamities incident to human life; evidently intending by this means to wean his affections from the world, and render him less averse to part with it, and less apprehensive of the pain of dying. Thou oft provokest sleep, says he, yet absurdly fear to die; which, with regard to the painful and perplexing vigil of life, is only to go to sleep. For that he only speaks of the mere sense of death, the parting of the soul from the body, and that Claudio understood him so, is very evident, by the reply which the latter makes to his harangue; notwithstanding the very last words of it seem to be full as exceptionable as those objected to.

DUKE.

—in this life

Lie hid a thousand deaths; yet death we fear,

That makes these odds all even.

CLAU.

I humbly thank you.

To sue to live, I find, I seek to die;

And, seeking death, find life: let it come on.

If any thing further be necessary to corroborate what is here advanced, we might instance the duke's exhorting him, in scene III. of the same act, to go to his knees and prepare for death. It is highly inconsistent to think such a piece of advice should come from one who conceived death to be a perpetual sleep. Prayers must seem as superfluous to him, as the advice must appear impertinent to the prisoner. But that Claudio had the strongest notions of a future state after death is not to be doubted, since, speaking of the sin of debauching his sister, and Angelo's design to commit it, he says

If it were damnable, he being so wise,

Why would he for the momentary trick

Be perdurably fin'd?

Again, when his fears recurring, he tells his sister that ‘Death is a fearful thing,’ it is plain, he doth not confine the meaning of the word, as the Duke did, to the mere act or circumstance of dying. For when she retorts upon him, ‘And shamed life a hateful,’ he goes on, ‘Ay, but to die, and go we know not where.’ As if he had said, I do not mean the mere pain of dying; it is what is to come after death that I fear, when we are to

—go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneeded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice:

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendant world; or to be worse than worst

Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts

Imagine howling; 'tis too horrible!

Can we think that Shakespeare could so far forget himself, as to be here so very explicit regarding the notion of a future state, if but two or three pages before he had been inculcating a contrary doctrine!—What then must we think of his commentator, who affects to be moved with indignation, and in effect presumes to charge him on this account with vulgarity, folly and impiety! Shakespeare appears to have had such a regard, even for his mortal part [*], as to bestow a curse on the person who should disturb his ashes; what a severe malediction, then, would he not have bestowed on that sacrilegious hand, which hath thus mangled his immortal reputation, could he have penetrated the womb of time, or anticipated the temerity of a modern critic [†]!

Vol. I. Page 318.

ISAB.

—dar'st thou die?

The sense of death is most in apprehension;

And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,

In corp'ral sufferance finds a pang as great,

As when a giant dies.

The poor beetle, &c.] The reasoning is, that death is no more than every being must suffer, though the dread of it is pepeculiar to man, or perhaps, that, we are inconsistent with ourselves when we so much dread that which we carelesly inflict on other creatures, that feel the pain as acutely as we.

The reasoning appears to be no more than is actually and obviously expressed in the text. Isabel is persuading her brother that the sense of death is felt more in apprehension than in reality; for that in reality it is next kin to nothing, the poor beetle that we tread upon, and which, it is to be supposed, can never be susceptible of much pain, feeling a pang as great as a giant; ergo, more than Claudio will feel.—This is the whole of this simple argument; which serves to corroborate what hath been said in the preceding note; and, at the same time to shew that, if any one in this play seems to believe in the mortality of the soul, it is Isabel; which, I think, it is preposterous to imagine, when we consider that she is just going into a nunnery, with a design to take the veil.

Vol. I. Page 319.

CLAUD.

The princely Angelo!

ISAB.

Oh, 'tis the cunning livery of hell,

The damned'st body to invest and cover

In princely guards.

The stupid editors, says Dr. Warburton (whose note in this passage Dr. Johnson hath quoted) mistaking guards for satellites, whereas it here signifies lace, altered PRIESTLY, in both places, to PRINCELY. Whereas Shakespeare wrote it priestly, as appears from the words themselves,

—'tis the cunning livery of hell,

The damned'st body to invest and cover

With PRIESTLY guards.

In the first place we see, that guards here signify lace, as referring to livery, and as having no sense in the signification of satellites. Now priestly guards means sanctity, which is the sense required. But princely guards means nothing but rich lace, which is a sense the passage will not bear. Angelo, indeed, as deputy, might be called the princely Angelo; but not in this place, where the immediately preceding words of, This outward-sainted deputy, demand the reading I have restored.

To this very curious argument of Dr. Warburton's, the present editor only adds the following note.

‘The first folio has, in both places, prenzie, from which the other folios made princely, and every editor may make what he can.’

It is really very kind of Dr. Johnson to give others leave to make SOMETHING of what he can make NOTHING himself.—Let us see, therefore, what others have made of it.—The author of the Canons of Criticism objects to Dr. Warburton's emendation; observing that, ‘if princely guards means nothing but rich lace, he should be glad to know how priestly guards should come to signify any thing more than black lace? ’ —The author of the Revisal of Shakespeare's Text, goes still farther, and says, ‘We should undoubtedly restore the ancient reading in both places, the princely Angelo, and in princely guards. Nothing [says he] can be weaker and more destitute of all foundation, than Mr. Warburton's criticism. Angelo is represented as supporting the state of a prince, and the authority of government, by excessive severity; but there is not the least hint [given] in the whole play of his affecting a sanctified exterior, or setting up for a devotee.’ Priestly guards, we are told, ‘means sanctity;’ but how the body could be invested or covered ‘with sanctity, Mr. Warburton hath not thought proper to explain; for I presume he doth not imagine that he wore the priestly habit, to which he could be no way entitled, as appears by his marriage afterwards, as well as from many other circumstances needless to enumerate.’ ‘In princely guards,’ most certainly signifies in a habit adorned "as becomes a prince."

If it be thought necessary to add any thing to these remarks; it may be observed, that the word guards is not strictly confined to mean lace, as Dr. Warburton insinuates; but is used for ornaments of dress, or finery in general. Thus Shakespeare, in some other of his plays, I think it is in Love's Labour Lost, speaks of the guards of Cupid's hose; in all probability meaning the clocks of his stockings [*]; which could not with propriety be called lace. Dr. Warburton, indeed, thinks the word livery, in this sentence, fixes that of guards to mere lace, because, it is true, most liveries are laced. It does not, however, follow that lace is essential to a livery, or that a livery might not be given to servants without any lace in the trimming of it: for the word livery comes either from the French livrée, of livrer, to deliver or give; or from the Italian livrea, or the Spanish librea, all having the same meaning; so that a suit of cloaths, with trimmings of a different colour, given to a servant, is as much a livery, as if it were covered with lace. Again, to come nearer the point, can we suppose that when Bassanio, in the Merchant of Venice, commands his followers to give Launcelot

—a livery

More guarded than his fellows:

he means particularly that it should have more lace on it? No, surely, he only means that it should, on the whole, be more fine and gaudy.

The meaning of the words thus settled, it is with great propriety Isabel calls the princely badges and ducal finery of Angelo the cunning LIVERY of hell; as being given him in order that he might the more effectually serve its abhorred and damnable purposes.

Vol. I. Page 326.

ELBOW.

Come your way. Sir. Bless you, good father friar.

Duke.

And you good brother father*; what offence hath this man made you? Sir.

*—father] This word should be expunged.

Why, so? Dr. Johnson.—What offence hath this word done you, Sir? Why will you not indulge the fictitious friar in the harmless jest he intends to make of the ignorance of the poor constable? You will say, perhaps, you saw no jest intended. I believe you; but certainly, such a one as it was, there was one intended; and this it is. The word friar being a corruption of the French word frere, meaning brother; the constable had, in fact, called the supposed friar good father brother; to which the other jocosely replies, by calling him in turn good brother father.—The reader will now, therefore, expunge this word, or let it stand, as he thinks proper.

Vol. I. Page 328.

LUCIO.

What is there none of Pigmalion's images, newly made woman, to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket, and extracting it clutched?

Dr. Warburton says, the meaning of this passage is, ‘Are there no women come out cured from a salivation?’ And this explanation is implicitly adopted by Dr. Johnson. The author of the Revisal, however, supposes the meaning of this very affected cant to be, ‘Are there no fresh women, no maidenheads to be had now? For (continues the Reviser, very gravely) Pigmalion's statue newly made woman, was certainly a pure virgin.’ —Now, not to controvert the virginity of a marble statue, or to query how long it remained so, when converted into flesh and blood, in the hands of

Pig (what do ye call him) malion

That long'd to use her like a stallion.

[*] I conceive these scholiasts to be all mistaken with regard to the sense of the passage. It is perfectly agreeable to the character of Lucio, to call an innocent uncome-at-able virgin a Pigmalion's statue; nor could he with any propriety give that name to a prostitute, either under a salivation, or newly come out of it. What he meant, therefore, by Pigmalion's images newly made women, was young girls newly debauched. The deflowering a maid is frequently called, by dramatic writers, the making a woman of her. Again, I think it pretty evident that Lucio is too well acquainted with rogues and bawds, too deep in "the trick of it," not to know that maidenheads were commodities they seldom dealt in. On the other hand, I think it as plain that Lucio did not ask after such battered brims as might be just come out of the powdering tub: for when the clown tells him his mistress is herself in that situation, he says, 'Tis good; it is the right of it; it must be so. Ever your FRESH whore, and your powder'd bawd: an unshunn'd consequence: it must be so.—I fancy Lucio would be apt to think such pickled devils as came out of the powdering tub, sound as they possibly might be, too stale to be called fresh meat.

IBID.—What reply? Ha! what say'st thou to this tune, matter and method? is't not drown'd i'th' last reign? Ha! what say'st thou, trot?

‘This strange nonsense (says Dr. Warburton) should be thus corrected, IT's not DOWN i'th' last REIGN. i. e. these are severities unknown to the old duke's time. And this is to the purpose.’

Very much to the purpose truly! and so the ingenious author of the Canons of Criticism hath shewn [*]; notwithstanding which, our editor, without taking the least notice of what Mr. Edwards has advanced, proceeds thus. ‘Dr. Warburton's emendation is ingenious; but I know not whether the sense may not be restored with less change. Let us consider it. Lucio, a prating fop, meets his old friend going to prison, and pours out upon him his impertinent interrogatories: to which, when the poor fellow makes no answer, he adds, What reply? Ha! what say'st thou to this? tune, matter and method—is't not! drown'd i'th' last rain? ha? what say'st thou, trot? &c. It is a common phrase used in low raillery of a man crest-fallen and dejected, that he looks like a drown'd puppy. Lucio, therefore asks him whether he was drowned in the last rain, and therefore cannot speak?’

Dr. Johnson's explanation of this passage is, in my opinion, less clear and much less consistent with his own pointing than that given by Mr. Edwards. Indeed the latter supposes Pompey's answer only to be drowned in the last rain [a proverbial phrase, he says, to express a thing which is lost, or rather not to be found]; whereas Dr. Johnson supposes that Pompey himself is taxed with having been drowned in the last rain. Taking their own authority, however, for the use of their proverbs, Mr. Edwards's explanation is not half so far-fetched as Dr. Johnson's. It is, indeed, a strange round-about kind of salutation, to ask a man whether or not he was drowned in the last rain; because, truly, he looks dejected, and therefore may be phraseologically compared to a drown'd puppy?

Dr. Gray would make a farther emendation of the text, in this passage, of which our editor hath made mention in his appendix; but seems to disapprove it. The Doctor proposes that, instead of reading what say'st thou, trot? we should read, what say'st thou to't? the word trot being seldom, if ever, used to a man.—To this Dr. Johnson replies, ‘ Trot, or as it is now often pronounced honest trout, is a familiar address to a man among the provincial vulgar.’ Now, it appears to me, although I think Dr. Gray's emendation very admissible, that Lucio might very probably here mean to give Pompey an appellation usually given to women, by way of gibing him for following so scandalous an employment as that of a bawd, usually practised by wretches of that sex. But be this as it may, I think nobody can hesitate about Dr. Johnson's being in the wrong, when he supposes that Lucio might call Pompey Bum, the cock-bawd, HONEST trout.—Trout! indeed! Dr. Johnson surely must imagine his readers to be very gudgeons, to bait his hook with such grubs, as these grub-street annotations!

Vol. I. pages 329 and 330. are inserted two notes from Dr. Warburton, without any remark of the editor's; notwithstanding they are both sufficiently refuted and exploded in the Canons of Criticism, pages 25 and 26. I must beg leave, however, for that reason to pass them over here.

Vol. I. Page 333.

ESCAL.

Double and treble admonition, and still forfeit in the same kind! this would make Mercy swear, and play the tyrant.

I doubt not but my readers have already observed that, when Dr. Johnson's sentiments coincide with Dr. Warburton's, he does not chuse to hazard them for his own; as he does when they agree with those of Edwards, and some others. But, for fear they should be wrong, he takes advantage of the verbum sacerdotis, and skulks behind the name of WARBURTON. This he does with regard to the passage now before us; and yet if I should admit a single emendation of all those Dr. Warburton proposes, I believe it would be this; and yet I don't approve of it. But the case is, I as little approve of what is advanced by others in favour of the present reading, and yet, as Dr. Johnson says, nothing better suggests itself. Dr. Warburton says, ‘We should read SWERVE, i. e. deviate from her nature. The common reading gives us the idea of a ranting whore.’ In opposition to this, the author of the Revisal says, the common reading is ‘agreeable to a very common form of expression, This would make a saint swear, and supposes it means no more than that the excess of the provocation would get the better of the mild disposition even of Mercy herself, and put her in a passion.’ In answer again to this, however, it may be observed, that we have no such very common form of speech as is here asserted. Nay, I don't know that we can possibly have occasion for such a form. Make a saint swear! Pray where are there any saints now-a-days to be met with? For my part, I never conversed with any but fictitious ones. I have heard, indeed, of things being provoking enough to make a PARSON swear, and that even in the middle of his sermon. But alas! alas! there is a great difference between saints and parsons; though I hope the author of the Revisal is too honest a man wilfully to impose a parson on his readers for a saint.—The true state of the case appears to me to be as follows: the poet did not intend, or at least did not effect, a compleat personification of Mercy. If he had, he would not have given us the idea of a ranting whore, as Dr. Warburton justly expresses it; nor would he have represented Mercy as stripped of her attributes, or put in a passion, as the Reviser has it.—It seems to me that Escalus speaks of that mercy, or merciful disposition, existing in his own breast, agreeable, and in reply, to what the bawd had said to him in the preceding speech. Your honour is accounted a MERCIFUL man. To which he answers, ‘Yes, but such provocation would make me, merciful as I am, swear and play the tyrant.’ To this it may be objected, that Escalus represents himself in this case as a ranting bully, just as Mercy, in the other, gives the idea of a ranting whore. So that, perhaps, after all, we had better abide by the literal construction of the text, and suppose the prosopopeia compleat; in which case to swear must mean to make a vow never to be moved by pleas or intercession; to be unrelenting, being one of the principal characteristics of a tyrant.

Vol. I. Page 348.

PROV.

A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully, but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless and fearless of what's past, present or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.

Desperately mortal.] This expression is obscure. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads mortally desperate. Mortally is in low conversation used in this sense, but I know not whether it was ever written. I am inclined to believe, that desperately mortal means desperately mischievous.

I wish Dr. Johnson, every time he had dictated any of the articles of his critical creed, had given us a reason for the faith that is in him. Why he should believe Barnardine to be desperately mischievous, I cannot possibly conceive. The Provost seems to give him a very different character: He hath evermore, says he, had the liberty of the prison: give him leave to escape hence, he would not: drunk many times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. We have very often awaked him, as if to carry him to execution, and shewed him a seeming warrant for it: it hath not moved him at all. Is this the description of a man desperately mischievous? I should rather think that, by desperately mortal, means totally incurable of diseases, acquired by his beastly course of life; or else that, despairing or careless of life, he looks upon himself as dead to the world, and takes no thought of what becomes of him. That he is yet desperate, or inflexibly obstinate, about even dying, is plain from his telling the friar, that he ‘will not die that day for any man's persuasion; but if they will have it so, they shall beat out his brains with billets.’

Vol. I. Page 364.

Oh! that it were as like as it is true.

Dr. Johnson hath, on this passage, silently adopted the explanation of Mr. Edwards, in opposition to that of Dr. Warburton. He does the same thing again in page 369.—See Canons of Criticism, page 144.

Vol. I. Page 366.

PETER.

—and what he with his oath

By all probation will make up full clear,

Whenever he's convented. First, for this woman.

Dr. Johnson hath here inserted the word convented, instead of convened, which was the common reading. Convented, indeed, was the reading of the first folio, which Dr. Warburton insists upon to be right [*], giving his reasons for it in the following arrogant and foolish note, which is as impertinently and fillily adopted by our editor. ‘The first folio reads convented, and this is right; for to convene signifies to assemble; but convent, to cite or summons. Yet, because convented hurts the measure, the Oxford editor sticks to convened, though it be nonsense, and signifies, whenever he is assembled together. But thus it will be, when the author is thinking of one thing, and his critic of another. The poet was attentive to his sense, and the editor, quite throughout his performance, to nothing but the measure; which Shakespeare having entirely neglected, like all the dramatic writers of that age, he has spruced him up with all the exactness of a modern measurer of syllables.’

I should be glad to know how either Dr. Warburton or Dr. Johnson came to know that Shakespeare entirely neglected measure? Shakespeare had a poetical ear; and though he might not stand to count his fingers, as probably these gentlemen do when they write verses, he wrote in general much more melodiously than any of the dramatic writers of his own age, or perhaps of the present. The Oxford editor did very wisely, therefore, in abiding by the measure, as he could do it without any injury to the sense. For to convene, as the author of the Revisal justly observes, means not only to assemble together, but to cite or cause to appear; and is rendered in Latin by cito, cieo.—To this I may add also, that cito does not mean simply to cite or summons in general, but also to summons or produce as a witness, exactly agreeable to the case before us. Thus CICERO, in hâc re te testem citabo. But perhaps these learned gentlemen will object to all this, because the verb convene is not derived from cito, cico, but from convenio: they will profit little, however, by this evasion; for the verb convenio itself is used in the sense of giving a citation or summons. Thus PLAUTUS, illum in jus conveniam. But supposing these quotations to be, as learned quotations generally are, nothing at all to the purpose, I may safely borrow a phrase from Scripture on this occasion, and say to Dr. Johnson, Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee, thou CARELESS COMMENTATOR! The author of the Revisal seems a little unhappy that, having kept no common-place-book, he cannot produce an example of the use of the word convene in the sense contended for: but, if he had turned to Dr. Johnson's common-place-book, i. e. his folio dictionary, he would have there found that this sense is properly authorized. To convene, says the lexicographer, is to summon judicially; as a proof of which he quotes the following passage from AYLIFFE; By the papal canon law, clerks, in criminal and civil causes, cannot be CONVENED before any but an ecclesiastical judge.—What a pity it is there should be so little connection between Samuel Johnson, M. A. the lexicographer, and Dr. Johnson the commentator? But so it is; nor is it any thing new; people are apt to forget themselves as they rise to preferment.

Vol. I. Page 372.

DUKE.

—laws, for all faults;

But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes

Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,

As much in mock as mark.

Our editor appears to know very little of the provincial customs and manners of his countrymen. He would else, I think, hardly have been under the necessity of being obliged to Dr. Gray, and recurring back two or three centuries for the beggar's clack-dish [*], which I myself remember to have seen carried about by those itinerants in many towns and villages in different counties of England. Again, Dr. Johnson is equally at a loss with respect to the passage before us. He hath not omitted, however, to display Dr. Warburton's erudition and sagacity on the occasion.

Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop.] Barbers shops were, at all times, the resort of idle people.

Tonstrina erat quaedam: hic solebamus ferè

Plerumque eam opperiri—

Which Donatus calls apta sedes otiosis. Formerly, with us, the better sort of people went to the barber's shop to be trimm'd, who then practised the under-parts of surgery; so that he had occasion for numerous instruments, which lay there ready for use; and the idle people, with whom his shop was generally crouded, would be perpetually handling and misusing them. To remedy which, I suppose, there was placed up against the wall a table of forfeitures, adapted to every offence of this kind; which, it is not likely, would long preserve its authority.

Such is Dr. Warburton's explanation of this passage; which, our editor says, may serve till a better is discovered. He observes, nevertheless, that ‘whoever has seen the instruments of a chirurgeon, knows that they may be very easily kept out of improper hands in a very small box, or in his pocket.’ —The truth is, that the tables of forfeits, hung up in barbers shops, are still extant in some parts of England; at least I remember to have seen one about twelve or thirteen years ago, in an excursion from Burlington to North-Allerton in Yorkshire. I think it was either at Malton or at Thirsk, and very probably it is there still. I do not, indeed, recollect the name of the operator, in whose shop it was affixed; but its contents struck me so much on reading, that I believe I can recite them from memory pretty exactly. They do not relate, however, to the handling of chirurgical instruments, but to civility and good behaviour; and seem not injudiciously calculated for a place, where persons of different stations and degrees were accustomed to meet, in order to be successively shaved. These statutes were in Rhime, and were entitled,

RULES FOR SEEMLY BEHAVIOUR.

First come, first serve.—Then come not late;

And, when arrived, keep your state [*];

For he, who from these rules shall swerve,

Must pay the forfeits.—So, observe.—

I.

Who enters here with boots and spurs,

Must keep his nook; for, if he stirs,

And gives, with armed heel, a kick,

A pint he pays for every prick.

II.

Who rudely takes another's turn,

A forfeit mug may manners learn [*].

III.

Who reverentless shall swear or curse,

Must lug seven [†] farthings from his purse.

IV.

Who checks the barber in his tale,

Must pay for each [‡] a pot of ale.

V.

Who will, or can, not miss [§] his hat

While trimming, pays a pint for that.

VI.

And he who can, or will, not pay,

Shall hence be sent half-trimm'd ‖ away;

For, will-he, nill-he, if in fault,

He forfeit must, in meal or malt.

But, mark—who is alreads in drink

The cannikin must never clink.

Vol. I. Page 373.

LUCIO.

Do you so, Sir? and was the duke a flesh-monger, a fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to be?

Dr. Johnson, who seems constantly on the watch to catch Shakespeare tripping, observes here, that ‘Lucio had not, in the former conversation, mentioned cowardice among the faults of the duke.’ But, says he, very graciously, ‘such failures of memory are incident to writers more diligent than this poet.’ —On this occasion, I cannot help remarking, that it is somewhat singular to find our editor so extremely remiss and negligent in illustrating the beauties of Shakespeare, and so very diligent in discovering his faults. This carping critic is in this particular, however, egregiously mistaken; there being no grounds for charging the poet, in this place, with want of attention to his plot. It is true, that Lucio does not expresly call the duke a coward, in that part of their conversation which passed on the stage, in scene VI. act 3. Our editor might have observed, however, that he hath a farther conversation with him in scene XI. act 4. where he begins again to talk of the old fantastical duke of dark corners; and when the duke wants to shake him off, by bidding him farewel, and telling him his company is fairer than honest, Lucio will not be thus got rid of, but follows him, saying, By my troth, I'll go with thee to the lane's end. If bawdy talk offend you, we'll have very little of it. Nay, friar, I am a kind of bur, I shall stick. Is it not very natural to suppose, that Lucio might afterwards call the duke a coward, considering the many opprobrious names he had already given him? and is the poet to be censured, because he hath made the Duke charge Lucio with a single word of detraction, which was not actually spoken before the audience? If this be not hypercriticism, I know not what is. But, to make the matter worse on the part of our unfortunate editor, the Duke doth not charge Lucio with calling him a coward, at the time when he runs on enumerating his other vices. For this was in the open street, through which the officers passed in carrying the bawds to prison: but the time is particularly specified when he called him coward, which was when the duke met him in the prison, and, as I above remarked, could not get rid of him. This is plain from the context.

LUCIO.

Come hither, goodman bald-pate; do you know me?

DUKE.

I remember you, Sir, by the sound of your voice: I met you AT THE PRISON in the absence of the duke.

LUCIO.

Oh, did you so? and do you remember what you said of the duke?

DUKE.

Most notedly, Sir.

LUCIO.

Do you so, Sir? and was the duke a fleshmonger, a fool, a coward, as you THEN reported him to be?

DUKE.

You must, Sir, change persons with me, ere you make that my report: you spoke so of him, and much more, much WORSE.

Surely Dr. Johnson must have invidiously sought occasion to depreciate the merit of Shakespeare, or he could never have laid hold of so groundless a pretext to cavil either at his inattention or want of memory.

Vol. I. Page 375.

DUKE.

It was the swift celerity of his death

Which, I did think, with flower foot came on,

That brain'd my purpose.

Dr. Warburton would alter the text to BANED my purpose; the futility of this emendation, however, is, if I mistake not, sufficiently exposed by the author of the Canons of Criticism; whose opinion Dr. Johnson adopts, without making any mention of him, as usual.

Vol. I. Page 377.

ISAB.

Most bounteous, Sir,

Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,

As if my brother liv'd, I partly think,

A due sincerity govern'd his deeds

Till he did look on me; since it is so,

Let him not die.

Dr. Johnson hath, in my opinion, a very exceptionable note on this passage. I shall quote it therefore entire, and make my observations on it afterwards.
The duke has justly observed, that Isabel is importuned, against all sense, to solicit for Angelo; yet here, against all sense, she solicits for him. Her argument is extraordinary.

A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,

'Till he did look on me; since it is so,

Let him not die.

That Angelo had committed all the crimes charged against him, as far as he could commit them, is evident. The only intent which his act did not overtake, was the defilement of Isabel. Of this Angelo was only intentionally guilty.—Angelo's crimes were such, as must sufficiently justify punishment, whether its end be to secure the innocent from wrong, or to deter guilt by example; and I believe every reader feels some indignation when he finds him spared. From what extenuation of his crime can Isabel, who yet supposes her brother dead, form any plea in his favour? Since he was good till he look'd on me, let him not die. I am afraid our varlet poet intended to inculcate, that women think ill of nothing that raises the credit of their beauty, and are ready, however virtuous, to pardon any act which they think incited by their own charms.

To expose the several fallacies suggested throughout the above note, I shall observe first, that it was very natural for Mariana to solicit Isabel's intercession for her husband, the man she so much loved. I cannot think also, that it is, in any respect, out of character for Isabel, after repeated solicitations, to be moved to oblige Mariana, who had already obliged her, so far at least as to prevent the apparent necessity of prostituting herself to Angelo: especially if we reflect on the tranquil state of mind she seems to be in with regard to her brother; in whose supposed death she appears to have acquiesced, either from principles of religion or philosophy: for when the Duke, in the foregoing page, speaking of her brother, says,

—Peace be with him!

That life is better life, past fearing death,

Than that which lives to fear: make it your comfort.

So, happy is your brother.

Isabel answers, ‘I do, my lord.’ From a principle of philosophy, she must be very conscious that the death of Angelo could not bring her brother to life again; and if to this reflection we suppose her religion might add the suggestion of Christian charity and forgiveness, I do not see any impropriety in Isabel's soliciting Angelo's pardon.

As to the argument she makes use of, and which Dr. Johnson thinks so very extraordinary, it is to be observed, that she does not make use of it as a positive plea, but introduces it with

—I PARTLY THINK

A due sincerity, &c.

Again, Dr. Johnson says, ‘the only intent which his act did not overtake, was the defilement of Isabel.’ Surely, Dr. Johnson forgets the intended execution of Claudio! There is no doubt that Angelo's guilty intentions fully deserved punishment; but as the principal of them failed of being carried into execution, I do not see why the reader should feel so much indignation at his being pardoned, especially as he must perceive the propriety of doing poetical justice to the injured Mariana; which would not be the case, if her new-made husband were to be immediately punished with the severity due to his wicked designs.

As to the sinister meaning he imputes to the poet, of intending a covert satire on the fair sex, I think enough is already said to exculpate him; I wish, therefore, Dr. Johnson were equally excusable for giving Shakespeare the appellation of varlet poet. Our editor can hardly intend here to confine that term to its simple and ancient meaning: for where is the jest or propriety of calling Shakespeare a yeoman, or servant, agreeably to the old meaning of the word varlet; which like fur, in Latin, it is allowed, originally conveyed no base or opprobrious idea?—And yet, if Dr. Johnson did not use the word in this limited and antiquated sense, what can he mean by calling Shakespeare a mean, sorry, or rascally poet? For this is the modern sense of the word; and in this sense the word varletry is inserted in a certain folio dictionary, on the authority of Shakespeare himself.—Perhaps, indeed, Dr. Johnson only meant here to express himself in a strain of wit and pleasantry. If so, let him beware how he attempts to be witty again: for surely never was such an aukward attempt made before! It is not in his nature.

Notes

*
Particularly in the Tempest; where Prospero says to Ferdinand,

—Thou dost here usurp

The name thou ow'st not.

↵

*

At least if he wrote the verses, said to be put on his grave-stone:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear

To dig the dust inclosed here.

Blest be the man that spares these stones,

And curst be he who moves my bones.

↵

†

I had written the above remarks and sent them to the press, without recollecting that a similar reference to this imprecation of Shakespeare is to be met with in the appendix to the Canons of Criticism, (last edition, page 260.) ‘I leave the public to judge, says that sensible critic, which has been engaged against Shakespeare, Mr. Warburton or I, who have in part at least vindicated that best of poets from the worst of critics; from one, who has been guilty of a greater violation of him, than that of the authors on which he imprecated vengeance in his epitaph. A violation which, were he not armed against the superstition of believing in portents and prodigies, might make him dread the apparition of that injured bard.’ —Here we see the murder comes out: Dr. Warburton, it is true, was not only armed against the superstition of believing in ghosts, by his principles as a philosopher, but also against their doing him hurt, by the awful power annexed to his sacred functions and character as a priest. But this is not the case with Dr. Johnson, whose religion and philosophy put together, it seems, cannot secure him against the terrors of such superstition: so that, as I before observed, here the secret comes out; and we see the reason for his sitting up all night, and lying a-bed all day, for fear of apparitions—It is not so much from his fear of ghosts in general, (for we know he did not appear to be afraid of Fanny) but of the ghost of Shakespeare, whose fame he is conscious of having inhumanly assassinated, and whose violated muse cries aloud for vengeance against him.

↵

*

I am well aware that our ancestors, wearing long hose, sometimes included their breeches too under that denomination; but I cannot suppose this part of the dress would be particularly specified, if lace merely was intended, unless Cupid might be supposed to have worn laced breeches without having a laced coat.

↵

*
Cotton's Virgil travestie.
↵

*
See Canons of Criticism, page 25.
↵

*
And yet Dr. Warburton, as the author of the Revisal shrewdly remarks, calls that edition, on another occasion,
the old blundering folio.

↵

*
See Vol. I. page 331. also Dr. Johnson's appendix, vol. VIII.
↵

*
That is, behave yourself agreeably to your station.
↵

*
Learn for teach, a common perversion of language; the meaning is, that, by being made to forfeit, he may thence learn better manners, than to want another time to be shaved out of his turn.
↵

†
Probably the price of a pint of beer.
↵

‡

It is not clear, whether for each means what the artizans call pints-a-piece, i. e. a pint for every person in the shop. If so, the interrupting the barber in his tale was held to be a grievous offence indeed.—But perhaps for each means only for each offence; in which case, however, it is not accurately expressed.

↵

§
To miss, in that part of Yorkshire, means to spare or to be without. Thus a man forfeited a pint for insisting upon being shaved with his hat on.
↵

‖

There is some humour in the penalty of sending the refractory away half-shaved; and it is not impossible that the ingenious author of the Upholsterer took one of his best hints from these rules. There is also no less morally in the two last lines; excellently calculated to discourage the vice of ebriety.

↵

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

Vol. I. Page 389.

GRA.

—silence is only commendable

In a neat's tongue dry'd, and a maid not vendible.

ANTH.

Is that any thing now?

All the old copies, it is said, read it is that any thing now? This being palpably defective, the later ones, in general, read as above: but Dr. Johnson supposes that we should read, is that any thing NEW? For my part, however, I can see no propriety in this supposition of novelty; nor do I think the reader will conceive there is any room for the proposed alteration, if he considers the following answer of Bassanio.—Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing more than any man in Venice: his reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two byshels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

Gratiano is indeed censured just before, for being an eternal talker; and when he goes out, repeating the above couplet, Anthonio says, Is that ANY THING now? intimating that, though he is so full of talk, there is nothing [i. e. no meaning] in it: and thus, it is plain, Bassanio understood him, by his answering—true, he speaks an infinite deal of NOTHING.

Vol. I. Page 410.

LAUNCELOT. Looking on his palm.

Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, which doth offer to swear upon a book.—I shall have good fortune. Here's a small trifle of wives, &c.

This passage hath given the commentators a world of trouble. It seems generally agreed, that Mr. Theobald's explanation is still more inexplicable than the text itself. Dr. Johnson inserts it, however; for what reason I cannot divine, unless it be to swell his book, or to serve as a foil to the superior sagacity of Dr. Warburton and himself, whose notes immediately follow. I shall only quote those of the two latter.

‘ Which doth offer to swear upon a book.] This nonsense seems to have taken its rise from the accident of a lost line in transcribing the play for the press; so that the passage, for the future, should be printed thus: Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, which doth * * * * * offer to swear upon a book I shall have good fortune. It is impossible to find, again, the lost line; but the lost sense is easy enough—if any man in Italy have a fairer table which doth [promise good luck, I am mistaken. I durst almost] offer to swear upon a book, I shall have good fortune. ’ Dr. Johnson, after condemning Theobald's note in the severest terms, and informing us that by table is meant the palm expanded, goes on very magisterially thus.—
Dr. Warburton understood the word[†], but puzzles himself, with no great success, in pursuit of the meaning.
—No wonder at that Dr. Johnson! people seldom puzzle themselves with any great success in pursuit of any thing.—But to proceed with our editor's note. ‘The whole matter is this: Launcelot congratulates himself upon his dexterity and good fortune; and, in the height of his rapture, inspects his hand, and congratulates himself upon the felicities in his table. The act of expounding his hand, puts him in mind of the action in which the palm is shewn, by raising it to lay it on the book, in judicial attestations. Well, says he, if any man in Italy have a fairer table, that doth offer to swear upon a book—here he stops with an abruptness very common, and proceeds to particulars.’ —No, Sir, he doth not stop here; but goes on, agreeable to Dr. Warburton's explanation, to say what is to be sworn upon the book, i. e. that he shall have good fortune. But this is not to be sworn either by Launcelot himself, or by any other Italian. It is the hand itself that promises so strongly, and, as it were, offers to swear upon a book, that he shall have good fortune. And in this sense the author of the Revisal takes it; though I think he has not hit off the meaning quite happily. His interpretation is, ‘If any man in Italy have a fairer table, which pronounces that I shall have good fortune, with as much assurance as if it was ready to swear it upon a book.—Here, says he, the sentence breaks off, and we must supply, I am mistaken, or some other expression of like import.’ —None of these commentators, though very sensible of the break in this passage, seem to know where it lies; but if I might be allowed to take the most trifling liberty in the world with the text, I dare say the reader would see the whole meaning and propriety of it, at one view.—Well, if any man in Italy have a fairer table!—Why, it doth offer to swear upon a book, I shall have good fortune.—Go to, &c. Taking the words, also, in this sense, there is a beauty and propriety in saying the palm offers to swear upon a book; because, in judicial attestations, the essential part of the form lies in kissing the book, which the hand may not be improperly said to do, even in laying hold of it. Dr. Johnson, apparently having a confused idea of a court of justice in his head, confounds the action of a criminal holding up his hand at the bar, with that of a witness, qualifying himself by oath, to give evidence against him. The former, indeed, must of course display the palm; but I believe the latter seldom or never does.

Vol. I. Page 422.

All that glisters is not gold,

Often have you heard that told, &c.

On these verses Dr. Johnson hath two notes; in each of which he proposes an emendation in the text; and I must do him the justice to own, that I think them both judicious and unexceptionable. He would have saved me some little trouble, si sic omnia dixisset.

Vol. I. Page 456.

DUKE.

Upon my pow'r I may dismiss the court,

Unless Bellario, a learned doctor,

Whom I have sent for to determine this,

Come here to-day.

Bellario, a learned doctor,

Whom I have sent for.—

The doctor and court are here somewhat unskilfully brought together. That the duke would, on such an occasion, consult a doctor of great reputation, is not unlikely; but how should this be foreknown by Portia?

Why will you, Dr. Johnson, be thus constantly seeking occasion to find fault with Shakespeare, for misconduct in his drama; the business of which you are evidently much too unskilled in to have a right to take upon you the authority of censuring the foremost man of all this world?—You admit it to be right that Dr. Bellario, whom we may very well suppose to be a civilian of the first rank, should be sent for, to advise in this cause. You know too, I imagine (or at least you might have known, if you had read the play) that this same Dr. Bellario (for he was a doctor too; WE are all doctors, Dr. Johnson) was a relation, a cousin, to Portia. This being premised, is it not very natural to suppose that, after Bassanio was called away in such haste to Venice, on account of the prosecution carried on against his friend Anthonio, his bride Portia would send a messenger to her cousin Bellario, in order to ask his opinion of so extraordinary a case, or to interest him in Anthonio's behalf? And can any thing be more probable than that he should inform her, on receiving such a message, that he was actually sent for to Venice on that very account? For it is to be observed, that the duke speaks as if he had sent for him some considerable time before: for he says, unless Bellario, &c. come here to DAY. His power of dismissing the court also, on his not coming, seems founded on some physical or moral impediment, that might very naturally occur, to prevent his arrival within the time: so that he must be supposed either at such a distance as made it necessary to give him a considerable timely warning, or that the extraordinary nature of the cause might make him require so much the more time to prepare himself equitably to determine it.—This being the state of the case, was not here a very apt foundation on which to build Portia's plot of officiating for the doctor? which design she no doubt concerted with him by letter, before she sent for the notes and cloaths mentioned scene V. act III. [*]—And that this was really the case seems evident, from what Portia says to Jessica, during the absence of Bassanio, and before she sends Balthazar to Bellario for the notes and clothes.—Jessica compliments her on

—a noble and a true conceit

Of god-like amity; which appears most strongly

In bearing thus the absence of her lord.

A sufficient intimation, I think, that Bassanio must have been gone some time. Again, in Portia's reply to this compliment, she says

—this Anthonio,

Being the bosom-lover of my lord,

Must needs be like my lord. If it be so,

How little is the cost I have bestowed,

In purchasing the semblance of my soul

From out the state of hellish cruelty?

Here we find Portia speaking very peremptorily and certainly of Anthonio's deliverance; and of the cost already bestowed to effect it. Is it reasonable to think she would express herself thus confidently on a mere suggestion of her own? Besides, what cost could she have bestowed? Her having bid her husband pay the bond three times over, was nothing; because she could not be sure the money would be taken. Nay, she evidently does not intend to trust to that acceptance. It is therefore, I think, very evident, that she had even at this time concerted the scheme with her cousin Bellario. How far Belmont might be from either Venice or Padua, I cannot exactly say: but it appears from circumstances, that it could not be very far. From Belmont to Venice it seems there was a common traject, or ferry; so that the distance of both from Padua could not be too great for transacting the business in question.—It is true, that the formality with which Port a introduces her charge to Balthazar, when she sends him for the notes and cloaths, seems to favour the supposition, that this was the first time she had sent to Bellario, in which case there would be some grounds for Dr. Johnson's remark; but we must observe, that Balthazar is now to be intrusted with a more important charge than he had before been, in merely carrying and bringing back a letter; or, it is not unlikely, that Portia entrusted that business with a servant of less importance. All these things duly considered, it is plain, I think, that Dr. Johnson has very rashly and unadvisedly presumed to call Shakespeare unskilful, because he wanted skill himself. I shall dismiss this note, therefore, with advising our editor never to wade so far out of his depth for the future. It is a trite adage, but it is a very good one, and worthy to be observed; Ne sutor ultra crepidam. I do not say that Dr. Johnson may not probably be well skilled in some things; not that I know that he is well skilled in any [*]; for, though I have read all his works, I declare he does not appear to me (at least so far as I myself am able to judge) to be master of any one science, or any one language, so that he must not plume himself on my suffrage. Not that I deny him to be master of the whole circle of sciences, and of all languages ancient and modern. But, if it be so; if it be really true, as his friends inform me, that he is possessed of such amazing stores of literary and scientific knowledge, I cannot help thinking him extremely culpable, not to say very ungrateful, to keep them all avariciously to himself, and fob off the public with mere shreds and patches. How dare Dr. Johnson treat that public with so much contempt, which hath done him such extravagant honour? How dare he behave to that public with such imparalell'd ingratitude, which hath given him such imparalell'd, such avowed, such unmerited encouragement?—It is true, that its having done all this is sufficient to give Dr. Johnson a very mean opinion of its spirit, taste and judgment. But he should have been aware of carrying the imposition too far; he should not have presumed to think that this public, tasteless and ignorant as he may suppose it, could ever be prevailed on to grace his waving noddle with a wreath, irreverently torn from the brows of Shakespeare!

The self-sufficient, the arrogant, Dr. Johnson may possibly conceive, that the zeal, with which the very name of Shakespeare inspires me, is counterfeited; and that I express myself thus warmly, to provoke him to a reply.—No, Dr. Johnson, you cannot reply. I must join in that deference, which I think the world hath undeservedly paid you, so far as to own, that I should never have presumed to publish any thing against Dr. Johnson, that I had not good reason to think UNANSWERABLE. It is indeed prudential in you to make a virtue of necessity, and previously to give out, that you will not do what you have so much reason to think you can not do.—Yet you have your satellites, your light-troops; you may send them out to harrass the enemy whom you dare not encounter. But, as I am no farther your enemy than as you are Shakespeare's, send who you will, as many as you will; I will undertake, under so gallant a leader, to rout an army of scribblers, to crush a myriad of cockle-shell critics, in his cause.

Vol. I. Page 469.

MESS.

—I bring word.

My mistress will before the break of day

Be here at Belmont. She doth stray about

By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays

For happy wedlock hours.

LOR.

Who comes with her?

MESS.

None but a holy hermit, and her maid.

None but a holy hermit.] I do not perceive the use of this hermit, of whom nothing is seen or heard afterwards. The poet had first planned his fable some other way, and inadvertently, when he changed his scheme, retained something of the original design.

How! the poet blundering again!—Why, what a blockhead this Shakespeare must be, Dr. Johnson? eh!—Nay, if you object to giving the appellation to Shakespeare, we must bestow it on somebody else; the word is blurted out, and cannot be recalled. Let us see if it will apply, as the lawyers say, to the author of the above comment.—

He doth not perceive the use of the hermit, because nothing is seen or heard of him afterwards.—Pray is any thing seen of him now? He is not brought on the scene; and may, for ought that effects the business of the play, exist only in nubibus. There is no doubt that the messenger tells a lye, respecting the employment of his mistress; and why may he not do the same respecting her attendants?—But perhaps the commentator may not see the use of the fiction neither, and will therefore condemn this part of the messenger's lye as unnecessary. He would do well to recollect, however, that, although nothing is heard about a hermit afterwards, a sufficient reason was given before to speak of one in this message; which is evidently a contrivance of Portia to support the imposition she is carrying on. It is to be remembered that, when Portia takes her leave of Lorenzo and Jessica, putting the management of her house and family in their hands, act III. scene 5. she says

—For mine own part,

I have tow'rd heaven breath'd a secret vow,

To live in prayer and contemplation,

Only attended by Nerissa here,

Until her husband and my lord's return.

There is a monastery two miles off,

And there we will abide.

Now, having told them this fib at her departure, nothing could be more pertinent, or indeed necessary, to keep up the probability of the story, than for the messenger to say, she was attended by a hermit; as it would be both unseemly and dangerous for two women to stray about, kneeling and praying by holy crosses, without a male attendant; and who so proper on such an occasion as an holy hermit, whose sacred character might protect them from insult?—This is sufficient to shew, that it was not unnecessary, but very pertinent to the plot, to have a hermit here spoken of; which is all the poet hath done.—Add to this, that, after all, it is possible there might really be a hermit in the case, though it was needless that he should appear. For the messenger himself might not be in the plot, and Portia have employed a hermit to deliver him the message from Portia, as he actually did deliver it to Lorenzo; unless we are to suppose that holy hermits are too inflexibly attached to truth, to assist even in so innocent an imposture: which I, who have had the honour of knowing some of those gentry, conceive not to be the case.

Notes

†
A mighty matter to understand truly! which is familiar to every strolling gypsy, and as well known to every kitchen-wench who can make shift to spell the Egyptian Fortune teller, Palmistry laid open, or the two-penny Chiromancer.
↵

*

It may not be amiss to observe here, that I have known some spectators impute the device, by which Anthonio evades the penalty of the bond, to the ingenuity of Portia.—Perhaps this is the case, indeed, with the audience in general.—But, as I think it a little out of character, in a young lady of her education, to be so well versed in the quirks and quibbles of the law; so I conceive there is sufficient reason given in the play to suppose that evasion to have been suggested by Bellario.—For she expresly mentions to the messenger notes and •••aths. These notes were, doubtless, the brief or hints for her pleading. And Bellario says in his letter to the duke, speaking of the fictitious doctor, ‘he is furnished with my opinion.’ So that I am so far from thinking that Shakespeare, as Dr. Johnson supposes, represents Portia to be a prophetess, or a witch, that I conceive his readers in general are apt to think her much more shrewd than he describes her; at least, I dare say, Dr. Johnson's readers will conclude, from this specimen of his sagacity, that whether Portia was a witch or not, he is no conjurer.

↵

*
I will except indeed the article of literary composition; in which, so far as the merit of a speech, an essay, a life, or a novel, goes, he is undoubtedly the best writer in Christendom. But his merit even here is in a great measure mechanical, and may be justly accounted for in a manner that will do little honour either to his boasted genius or learning.
↵

AS YOU LIKE IT.

Vol. II. Page 45.

AMIENS sings.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Altho' thy breath be rude.

There cannot, I think, be a more flagrant instance of that perversity of apprehension, which seems to have distinguished almost all our poet's commentators, than the difficulty they have raised about this passage. It is true they have in general been much more successful in throwing obstructions in the way of the reader, than in obviating those which common sense and simple ingenuity might naturally suggest. For my part, I should never have dreamt that these verses so greatly needed illustration, that they were corrupted, or that a line was lost and badly restored, unless the learned Dr. Warburton had told me of the first, the ingenious and sensible authors of the Canons of Criticism and of the Revisal had insinuated the second, and lastly, the learned, ingenious and sensible Dr. Johnson attempted to persuade me of the third. Indeed, they have all successfully laboured to throw some obscurity on the text, Mr. Edwards not excepted; for, though he hath facetiously and justly exposed Dr. Warburton's ridiculous emendation of the fifth line, he hath left the reader to explain the passage himself, after assuring him that it certainly is faulty.

It will, I presume, afford some entertainment to the reader to compare the several notes of these annotators; by which they will see how they have all blundered round-about the poet's meaning; perhaps for no other reason in the world than that they imagined it lay much deeper than it really does. It is not an uncommon thing for persons immoderately sagacious to look too far forward, and stumble over what lies immediately under their nose. Dr. Johnson appears, indeed, to have a very different opinion of this matter; and seems to think that Shakespeare's meaning is always very profound. Thus he tells us,
the original and predominant error of Dr. Warburton's Commentary, is acquiescence in his first thoughts; that precipitation which is produced by consciousness of quick discernment; and that confidence which presumes to do, by surveying the surface, what labour only can perform, by penetrating the bottom [*].

For my part, I had always a very different opinion of Dr. Warburton's Commentary. That he did too precipitately acquiesce in his own thoughts, may be very true; and that he surveyed only the surface of Shakespeare's writing may be no less so; but that he went very deep into the recesses of his own imagination, as well as into his stores of book-learning, for all those far-fetched allusions, quaint epithets and literary conundrums, which he imputes to Shakespeare, is, I think, not to be doubted. For it is very true, as our editor also observes, that
his notes exhibit perverse interpretations and improbable conjectures; he at one time gives the author more profundity of meaning than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader [*].

It is very natural to conclude, from this reprehension, that Dr. Johnson means to insinuate his having himself repaired the faults of Dr. Warburton, and effected that by perseverance and labour, which the reverend scholiast, his predecessor, failed to do by his vivacity and precipitation. It is certain, that labour necessarily takes up time; and so far the frequent procrastination of the present edition affords Dr. Johnson a plausible excuse for pretending to have laboured: but, on the other hand, it is as certain that time doth not necessarily include labour; for, it is notorious that an industrious gerund-grinder may do as much or more in a month, than an idler will do in seven years. It is also farther certain that, although youth and inexperience may be too hasty and precipitate, yet experience and age cannot well execute their work too expeditiously; in the former case delay may serve to correct errors, and check the inordinance and exuberance of zeal; in the latter, it produces only languor and perplexity. Thus if Dr. Johnson, instead of spiritedly repairing the neglect of those who only surveyed the surface, had boldly and immediately penetrated to the bottom, all had possibly been right: but, instead of doing this, it appears he hath been full as much too tardy as they were precipitate; and thus, leaving the weight of his learning, and the force of his reputation, to work their way without the least application of genius, he hath suffered them, by long and constant friction, to perforate or to penetrate, as he says, the bottom itself. So that the superficial meanings, which former editors skimmed from the top, are left hanging about the sides of the vessel; while the profound discoveries, weighty arguments, and striking illustrations, expected in the present edition, are all escaped through the hole which Dr. Johnson's modest industry and vast erudition have worked through the bottom.

But, to leave this digression, and return to the notes of the several commentators. Dr. Warburton's, as it is inserted by way of preference, no doubt, in the page before us, runs thus:

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

This song is designed to suit the duke's exiled condition, who had been ruined by ungrateful flatterers. Now the winter wind, the song says, is to be preferred to man's ingratitude. But why? Because it is not SEEN. But this was not only an aggravation of the injury, as it was done in secret, not seen, but was the very circumstance that made the keenness of the ingratitude of his faithless courtiers. Without doubt Shakespeare wrote the line thus,

Because thou art not SHEEN,

i. e. smiling, and shining, like an ungrateful court-servant, who flatters while he wounds, which was a very good reason for giving the winter wind the preference. So in the Midsummer Night's Dream,

Spangled star light SHEEN;

and several other places. Chaucer uses it in this sense,

Your blissful suster Lucina the SHENE.

And Fairfax,

The sacred angel took his target SHENE,

And by the Christian champion stood unseen.

The Oxford editor, who had this emendation communicated to him, takes occasion from thence to alter the whole line thus,

Thou causest not that teen.

But, in his rage of correction, he forgot to leave the reason, which is now wanting. Why the winter wind was to be preferred to man's ingratitude.

On this curious comment, the author of the Canons of Criticism hath made the following remarks:

This passage [meaning the two lines quoted from the text] is certainly faulty; and perhaps it cannot be restored, as Shakespeare gave it. Sir Thomas Hanmer at last altered it into sense; ‘Thou causest not that teen.’ But this, it seems, will not do; because, in his rage of correction, he forgot to leave the reason, why the winter wind was to be preferred to man's ingratitude. So now Mr. Warburton comes with his emendation, which he charitably communicated to Sir Thomas, though he was so graceless as not to make use of it. ‘Because thou art not SHEEN. ’ Though this matter is so clear with Mr. Warburton, every body who understands English will doubt of it; because SHEEN signifies bright, which makes no better sense than seen; nor does he produce any authority for its signifying SMILING, which is the sense he here puts upon it; and to make it pass the better, he lugs in a parcel of "smiling, shining, court servants, who flatter while they wound," of whom there is not the least hint in the song, or in the whole scene.

Mr. Edwards then goes on to enumerate Dr. Warburton's examples, which having quoted above, need not be repeated.—He proceeds— ‘These are the examples he produces; whether wisely or not, let the forest judge; but the conceit of a smiling target is entirely his own; and, if be will allow me a pun invita Minerva; for it seems in direct opposition to the famed Aegis of Pallas. But this is hardly a laughing matter: for with what face can he say smiling, shining—so Shakespeare.—Chaucer uses it in this sense,—and Fairfax—when, if he knows any thing of the language, he must know, that not one of them, in these instances, uses sheen in the sense of SMILING; and that, in its true sense of BRIGHT or shining, it would make the passage worse than he found it?’

If Sir Thomas Hanmer, as he says, took occasion, from having this emendation communicated to him, to alter the whole line; he shewed more judgment than if he had inserted such a false and nonsensical note; but, "in his rage of correction, he forgot to leave the reason, why the winter wind was to be preferred to man's ingratitude." If SHEEN does not signify smiling, I doubt Mr. Warburton will be in the same case. However Shakespeare has equally forgotten, in the next stanza, to leave the reason why a freezing sky is to be preferred to a forgetful friend; which, perhaps, may give a reasonable suspicion that the word because [*], in the first stanza, may be corrupt.

The author of the REVISAL of Shakespeare's Text, says, ‘What the meaning of the common reading, ‘Because thou art not SEEN,’ may be, it is extremely difficult to discover, which gives great ground for suspicion that it may be corrupt. Possibly it might be intended to be this: the impressions thou makest on us are not so cutting, because thou art an unseen agent, with whom we have not the least acquaintance or converse, and therefore have the less reason to repine at thy treatment of us.’

To come now to Dr. Johnson; who, after quoting Dr. Warburton's note, without mentioning a syllable of Mr. Edwards's remarks on it, proceeds thus:
I am afraid that no reader is satisfied with Dr. Warburton's emendation, however vigorously enforced; and it is indeed enforced with more art than truth. Sheen, i. e. smiling, shining. That sheen signifies shining, is easily proved; but when or where did it signify smiling? Yet smiling gives the sense necessary in this place. Sir Thomas Hanmer's change is less uncouth, but too remote from the present text. For my part, I question whether the original is not lost, and this substituted merely to fill up the measures and the rhyme. Yet even out of this line, by strong agitation, may sense be elicited, and sense not unsuitable to the occasion. Thou winter wind, says the duke[*], thy rudeness gives the less pain, as thou art not seen, as thou art an enemy that dost not brave us with thy presence, and whose unkindness is therefore not aggravated by insult.

After so many avowed assurances of the difficulty of the above passage, and the unsuccessful, though elaborate, attempts to clear it up; it may seem affectation in me to insist on its being very obvious. I must declare, however, that before I had read any of the above criticisms, it always seemed so, though I must own I did not take either the particular meaning of the words, or the general design of the song, in the same manner as is done by any of the above-mentioned critics. Dr. Warburton seems, indeed, to have misled them all, by confounding ingratitude with pretended friendship or private enmity. That flatterers are often secret enemies, and generally ungrateful, is very true; but it is by no means essential to acts of ingratitude that they should be committed in secret; and, on the contrary, though it be disingenuous, mean, and cowardly to do private injuries, it may not be ungrateful; for the doer may happen not be obliged to the person offended. With regard also to the particular case before us, there is no doubt but the banished duke had suffered enough from public and visible acts of ingratitude: the wickedness of which would therefore be aggravated, as Dr. Johnson rightly says, by insult; and would not be, like acts of false friendship or private enmity, aggravated by being done in secret. When Dr. Johnson, therefore, adopting Dr. Warburton's reasoning, tells us that smiling gives the sense necessary in this place, he is misled by the plausibility of that gentleman's argument; there being no manner of occasion, as Mr. Edwards observes, for the introduction of his flattering courtiers.

Having expatiated so much on the difficulty and misapprehension of the passage, I come now to explain it that way in which I have ever understood it; and according to which, I think, there is no manner of difficulty in reconciling the sense to the words as they now stand. Nay, I flatter myself many readers will discover more beauty in this admirable little song, than they were before acquainted with. Before I enter, however, on the explanation of particular words, I shall consider the design and tendency of the song in general. To this end it may be necessary to repeat the whole.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! &c.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friends remember'd not.

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! &c.

The reader will observe that the first verse is addressed to the WIND, and the second to the SKY; by which latter is evidently meant the air or atmosphere, as appears by the attritributes or qualities he imputes to it. It is observable, farther, that the poet has, with great judgment, kept the properties and effects of both distinct, beginning with the least hurtful, and proceeding regularly in the climax to the most cutting and severe.

This being premised, I come now to the disputed meaning of the particular words: and here all the scholiasts seem to blunder, in mistaking the sense of the word keen in the fourth line; which they take to signify sharp, cutting, piercing; whereas it only means eager, vehement; a sense equally common with the former. The poet speaks here only of a keenness of appetite; he does not mention actual biting, till he comes to address a more proper and powerful agent: for, tho' it be the property of the wind to bluster and make a noise, it doth not bite, unless it bring with it a nipping frosty air. It does not freeze more in an high wind, than when its breath is neither felt nor heard; but often less. Besides, if keen here means sharp, piercing, &c. this line hath the same meaning as the seventh line of the second verse, where the poet is at the last stage of his climax. And I think he would hardly be guilty of such a piece of tautology, in the space of so few lines, or address the less severe and powerful agent exactly in the same manner as he does that which is more so.

Taking the word in this sense, let us see its effect on the context.

Thy tooth is not so keen.

That is as much as to say, thou art not so eager to bite; thy appetite is not so voracious—thou art not so violent to distress us.

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

In other words, because thou dost not come in a visible form to confront us, notwithstanding thou insultest us with thy abusive blustering.—Thou dost not shew thy grim LOOKS, though we hear thy roaring VOICE [*].—The sight of those who have behaved to us with ingratitude is known to be particularly disgustful, even though we should despise any thing they should say or do when out of our presence [*]. It were indeed extremely offensive to see others shew their teeth at us, even though they could not bite. Perhaps Shakespeare had some distant allusion to this proverbial phrase: it is also observable, that the invisibility of the wind was a circumstance which this great poet had frequently in his mind. Thus, in Measure for Measure, he speaks of the viewless winds; an epithet, I believe, peculiar to himself.

I now trust this explanation to the reader's judgment, and should also take leave of the subject itself, were there not an expression in the last stanza; the beauty of which is, in a great measure, lost, for want of being rightly understood.—I have not undertaken, indeed, to supply the defects of the commentators; but as this song is a favourite, I cannot proceed without making a slight animadversion or two on this head. The expression I mean is, ‘Though thou the waters WARP.’ The word warp has been very differently used by different writers: it is used by some to mean contract or shrivel, to turn aside, &c. and a certain lexicographer, in his folio dictionary, quotes this very line to shew that it is used to express the effects of frost. But may we not pertinently ask him, what these effects are? Does he mean to say, that Shakespeare hath used it here in a sense different from its most general and obvious meaning? If he does, he does not understand the poet; if he does not, he knows not how to write a dictionary. To warp, here means neither to contract, nor to turn aside; for the body of water in freezing is dilated, not contracted; and though the frost may arrest or stop water in its passage, I don't know that it alters its course.

The word waters, indeed, doth not mean here, as some have supposed, water in the a•stract, as a fluid in general; it means also neither the waving, multitudinous, sea, nor the rapid unfreezing rivers, but such inland pools, lakes, and other stagnant or slowly-moving pieces of water that are subject to be affected by frost [†]. Now, it is well known that the surface of such waters, as is here meant, so long as they remain fluid, i. e. unfrozen, is apparently a perfect plane; whereas when they are frozen, this surface deviates from its exact flatness, or warps. This is peculiarly remarkable in small ponds, the surface of which, when frozen, forms a regular concave; the ice on the sides rising higher than that in the middle. Thus we see that Shakespeare need not to be obliged to any lexicographer for admitting the latitude of his expression, as he here uses the word warp in its primitive and most general signification; to make a thing cast or bend, as boards do when they are cut before they are thoroughly dry, or when they are put to the fire.

Vol. II. Page 54.

ROS.

O most gentle Jupiter!—What tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal!

Dr. Warburton tells us ‘we should read Juniper, as the following-words shew, alluding to the proverbial term of a juniper lecture: a sharp or unpleasing one! Juniper being a rough prickly plant.’

In answer to this, Dr. Johnson says, in his usual indolent and laconic manner, 'Surely Jupiter may stand.'

Ay, surely; why not? as well as Jupiter in the beginning of the 6th scene of the preceding act, where the same Rosalind says, O Jupiter! how weary are my spirits! Yet neither he, nor Dr. Warburton, boggle in the least at Jupiter there. But who told you, Dr. Johnson, that Jupiter might stand here, and gave you the same reason for it?—Did not the author of the Canons of Criticism do this? Why should you be so sparing of confessing your obligations to that gentleman?

Vol. II. Page 81.

ROS.

I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cockpigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a parrot against rain; more new-fangled than an ape; more giddy in my desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain; and I will do that, when you are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when you are inclined to sleep.

Dr. Warburton says, ‘that instead of the last word sleep, we should read weep: ’ to this reading, however, Dr. Johnson objects. ‘I know not, says he, why we should read to weep. I believe must men would be more angry to have their sleep hindered than their grief interrupted.’

What our editor suggests is certainly very true, especially of persons addicted to somnolency; but if the poet intended the antithesis Dr. Warburton seems to suppose, I should rather read weep: but then the construction of the sentence will not do. Instead of saying, I will laugh like a hyen, and that when you are inclined to weep; the and should be transposed, and the word that omitted. He should have said, AND I will LAUGH like a hyen, when you are inclined to WEEP. Supposing the text uncorrupted in no other particular, I must give my voice, with the editor, for sleep. But I cannot help suspecting that this passage is corrupted in a part where none of the commentators seem to think it. It is justly to be presumed, at least, that Dr. Johnson does not think it so, as he passes it over, notwithstanding he assures us, in his preface, that he hath left not one passage, that he thought obscure, without attempting to elucidate it.

But what shall we say to Rosalind's laughing like a HYEN? If by a hyen is meant an hyaena, I do not know what authority we have for its laughing, nor can discover the propriety of the allusion. It is reported, indeed, of that furious animal, that it will counterfeit a man's voice; nay, call him by his name, to entice him out of doors, in order to devour him; after which he may be said, metaphorically, to laugh in his sleeve at the success of his contrivance. But the laughing here alluded to, must be necessarily so loud as to prevent a drowsy man's going to sleep; and I do not know that any animal in nature is possessed of the streperous part of risibility, except man. ‘ Homo est animal risibile, ’ and I believe exclusively so. Shakespeare then can never mean to say, like an hyaena.

"What then could he mean?"—True, reader, that is the question.—Have but a little patience and I will endeavour to tell you.—Shakespeare, with all his diversity of action and character, is generally very uniform and constant in his train of thinking. He does not chop his metaphors into fritters; nor skip giddily and alternately from the allusions of art to those of nature, or vicê versâ. The reader will please to observe, that, in the preceding line, and in this very sentence, he mentions Diana. Now, it is not at all like Shakespeare to fly off immediately from this classical allusion, to so distant a one as any afforded by natural history; even supposing there were not that impropriety in it as I have above noticed.

I would venture, after the modish way of deciding arguments, to lay a good bet, if it could be determined, that Shakespeare wrote thus;

—I will WEEP for nothing like DIANA in the fountain; and I will do that, when you are disposed to be MERRY: I will LAUGH like a HYAD, and that when you are inclined to SLEEP.

The word laugh in the last part of the sentence being used, by way of irony, for CRY; thus we ironically say, to laugh like Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher [*]: so that to laugh like a hyad, is to sob and blubber like one of the hyads. Now hyads, or hyades, is an appellation given to the constellation, otherwise called the seven stars, and suposed to be a watery sign; whence their denomination from 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, i. e. to rain. The poets feign these hyads to have been the daughters of Atlas and Aethra; and pretend that Hyas, their brother, having been torn to pieces by a lioness, they wept so vehemently for his death, that the gods, in compassion to them, translated them to heaven, and placed them in the forehead of the bull, where they still continue to weep: whence the constellation is supposed by some to presage rain.

I am well aware, that some of my readers will think this comment written rather too much in the Warburtonian strain [*]. But, if it be just and pertinent, I think this should be no objection to it; for, though Dr. Warburton's comments on Shakespeare are seldom to the purpose, and therefore do not always deserve our approbation, they are generally learned, and never fail to excite our admiration, either on account of their actual ingenuity or most palpable absurdity.

Vol. II. Page 107.

EPILOGUE. If it be true, that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true, that a good play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor can insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play?

‘Here, says Dr. Johnson, seems to be a chasm or some other depravation, which destroys the sentiment here intended. The reasoning probably stood thus, Good wine needs no bush, good plays need no epilogue, but bad wine requires a good bush, and a bad play a good epilogue. What case am I in then? To restore the words is impossible; all that can be done without copies is, to note the fault.’ —Happy is it for the memory of Shakespeare, and as happy for his discerning readers, that the veneration paid to his name sometimes prevents the hand of the commentator from executing those designs which his temerity conceives. What work would not a critic, of less modesty than our editor, make of this passage, should he take it in his head to supply what is thus supposed wanting? Yet how easily is the whole set right! It can hardly be called a supposition that Shakespeare wrote tho' instead of then [*]. It is obvious he must, as he plays on the word good all through the passage, not once introducing the epithet bad, made use of by Dr. Johnson, nor hinting at the antithesis, which the editor conceives so necessary to the sense. Tho', at the end of a sentence, is commonly used in discourse for however, and has the same meaning as but at the beginning of it. Thus it is the same thing as if the speaker had said, BUT what a case am I in, &c. Let the reader substitute these words for what a case am I in THEN, and I dare say he will conceive with me there is no chasm in the passage; but that it stands as Shakespeare wrote it. Be this, however, as it may, what is substituted by Dr. Johnson is entirely foreign to the purpose. It does by no means follow that, because good wine needs no bush, bad wine requires a good one. Good wine will recommend itself, and sell without a bush; but we do not thence infer, that the goodness of any bush can recommend or sell bad wine.—The Bermudans, I am told, when they go fishing, never trouble themselves to carry any oil or butter for sauce; for if they catch a fat fish it requires none, and if they catch a lean one it deserves none.—Shakespeare, I fancy, by saying nothing about either bad wine or bad plays, reasoned about them both as the Bermudans do about their fish.

Notes

*
See Preface to Dr. Johnson's Shakespeare.
↵

*
See Preface to Dr. Johnson's Shakespeare.
↵

*
This ingenious writer does not intimate what he thinks might be the right word; but if he be right in his suspicion, I conceive that, instead of the conjunction copulative because, Shakespeare must use the adverb or preposition disjunctive beside.
↵

*
No, Dr. Johnson, it is his cousin Amiens sings it.
↵

*
Shakespeare uses breath for voice also in the Twelfth-Night; SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK. I had rather than forty shillings, I had so sweet a breath to sing, as the fool has.
↵

*
Thus Adam to his ingrateful Eve, in Milton's Paradise Lost, Out of my SIGHT, thou serpent!
↵

†

Agreeable to this, when the rivers break down or run over their banks, laying the country under water, we say the waters are out. When the river is returned again to its channel also, the pools remaining behind in the adjacent fields or meadows, are called the waters.

↵

*

Or, according to the vulgar phrase, to laugh on the wrong side of the mouth. But if any of my readers should make objections to the supposed use of the figure above-mentioned, and be willing to look over the defect of construction in the text, in favour of Dr. Warburton's proposed alteration, they may take the word in its natural sense; in which case, to laugh like a HYAD, would mean, as another vulgar phrase has it, to laugh till she cries. In either case, however, it must be hyad, and not hyen: this latter reading being entirely excluded for the reasons above given. By substituting the former also we make both the allusions classical, and preserve that conformity of thinking, which is perfectly agreeable to the genius of Shakespeare; who, it is very possible, came from reading Ovid, to compose many scenes in this play. It is certain his head was so full of him, that he mentions his very name in one of the scenes, where neither the occasion, nor the turn of the dialogue, gave the least room for it. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

↵

*

It is not impossible also, that some superficial critics may think, that a man could not be kept awake by a woman's weeping. But certainly, if she blubbered and roared heartily, and out of spite, as is here supposed, he might as well be kept awake by her crying as her laughing. Besides, if we reflect on the shrewd veracity of the old proverb, that says, ‘Women laugh when they can, and weep when they will;’ I conceive that Rosalind, in mentioning the several acts of her wilfulness, speaks only of her weeping.

↵

*
That a transcriber might make such a mistake, is also as likely, as that he should write tho' for then, as, Dr. Johnson supposes, is done in King John, page 410.
↵

LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

Vol. II. Page 114.

BIRON TO THE KING.

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be search'd with sawcy looks;

Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books.

These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights

That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights,

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Too much to know, is to know nought: but fame;

And every godfather can give a name.

KING.

How well he's read to reason against reading!

Dr. Warburton and Dr. Johnson, having both exerted their critical abilities on this passage, and, as I think, left it worse than they found it, I shall insert the annotations of both, as I find them printed in the pages before me.

Too much to know is to know nought but FAME;

And every god-father can give a name.

The first line in this reading is absurd and impertinent. There are two ways of setting it right. The first is to read thus, ‘Too much to know is to know nought but SHAME. ’ This makes a fine sense, and alludes to Adam's fall, which came from the inordinate passion of knowing too much. The other way is to read, and point it thus, ‘Too much to know, is to know nought: but FEIGN, i. e. to feign.’ As much as to say, the affecting to know too much is the way to know nothing. The sense in both these readings is equally good: but with this difference; if we read the first way, the following line is impertinent, and, to save the correction, we must judge it spurious. If we read it the second way, then the following line compleats the sense. Consequently the correction of feign is to be preferred. To know too much (says the speaker) is to know nothing; it is only FEIGNING to know what we do not; giving NAMES for things without knowing their NATURES; which is FALSE knowledge: and this was the peculiar defect of the peripatetic philosophy then in vogue. These philosophers, the poet, with the highest humour and good sense, calls the god-fathers of nature, who could only give things a name, but had no manner of acquaintance with their essences.

On the above annotation, Dr. Johnson observes,
that there being two ways of setting a passage right, gives reason to suspect that there may be a third way better than either. The first of these emendations makes a fine sense, but will not unite with the next line; the other makes a sense less fine, and yet will not rhyme to the correspondent word. I cannot see why the passage may not stand without disturbance. The consequence, says Biron, of too much knowledge, is not any real solution of doubts, but mere empty reputation [*].

The author of the Revisal hath a very long note on this passage; rejecting the emendations proposed by Dr. Warburton, and seeming to coincide with the opinion of Dr. Johnson. His explanation of the passage is this. ‘Too eager a pursuit of knowledge is rewarded, not with the real possession of its object, but only with the reputation of having attained it.’

It is really surprizing to me, that these several critics should be so much at a loss to comprehend, what I conceive the context renders very plain; without making any alteration in the text, as it stood before Dr. Warburton meddled with it, viz.

Too much to know, is to know nought but fame;

And every god-father can give a name.

I cannot imagine what put it into the head of Dr. Johnson, or of the author of the Revisal, that fame here means reputation. And, supposing it does, what can Dr. Johnson mean by saying, that too much knowledge gives only fame, a name which every god-father can give likewise? What, because every god-father can call a child N or M, is he able therefore to give him a literary reputation [*]? or is Dr. Johnson so careless of his pointing, as to mean to say that reputation is a mere name? Or, farther, how can to know nought but fame mean to acquire nothing but reputation? Be all this, however, as it may, fame means here nothing more than report, rumour or relation. Biron is declaiming against reading, or the mere study of books. Little, says he,

—have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books:

the authors of which books he calls

—earthly god-fathers of heaven's lights,

That give a name to every fixed star.

Now, continues he,

Too much to know, is to know nought but fame;

And every god-father can give a name.

To all which the king replies, by observing to another nobleman, how well Biron is read, ‘—to reason against READING.’ Hence, I think it is plain that Biron means, through the whole passage, to inculcate a maxim, which is undoubtedly a very true one, viz. that the greatest readers are not the most scientific; the knowledge of things and of words being as different, as the study of nature and the plodding over books. From the latter, people may acquire a heap of indigested literature, without having any real knowledge at all: indeed, their too great attention to philological pursuits, or to words, often prevents their knowing any thing of philosophy or of things. Add to this, that the knowledge acquired from books, is, for the most part, founded on the authority of the writer, and what is thus known, is known only by report or relation. So that those, whose whole stock of knowledge consists in what they have read, merely in the learned lumber of their memory, may, with great propriety, be said to know nothing but what is told them; that is, to be entirely ignorant of facts, and to know nothing but FAME It would be absurd also, to the last degree, to say, that to know TOO MUCH would be to know NOTHING, if no difference in the kind of knowledge was intended. Again, the last line of Biron's speech evidently refers to what he had just before said, concerning the base authority of books. The authors can give names, says he, to things; instancing those, ‘That give a name to every fixed star,’ though they profit no more by them, and know nothing farther about them, than those who are ignorant of those names. And this being all they can do, he may well call their writings base authority, and say that any body can do as much, for ‘—Every god-father can give a name, ’ which is as much at least as astronomers do by the stars.

The author of the Revisal seems to think the word fame, in this place, hath some reference to the king's speech at the commencement of the play; when he proposes reputation as the principal aim and motive of their studies.

Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live register'd upon our brazen tombs;

And then grace us in the disgrace of death:

When, spight of cormorant devouring time,

Th' endeavour of this present breath may buy

That honour which shall 'bate his scythe's keen edge;

And make us heirs of all eternity.

But admitting this, I cannot see any reason to think that fame, in the passage disputed, hath precisely the same meaning as in that just quoted, unless both speeches had been spoken by the king.—It is not unlikely that this passage refers to the fame recommended by the king; but it is very unlikely that the speaker should affect to set a greater value on knowledge than on that fame, which was at first proposed as the ultimate end to be attained by it.—It is, in my opinion, more than probable that Biron the speaker, who is evidently a wit, and rails at book-learning, takes the advantage here of the equivocal use of the word fame; to sneer at the king's proposing celebrity as the end of his studies: in which case the contested line might be paraphrased thus; To spend all your time in getting to know only the names of things, and what others report about them, is the way to get nothing else but fame sure enough! Indeed, Biron seems to be a man of such a kidney, as to reason about literary fame as Falstaff does about military honour, and could easily resolve it in like manner by a trim reckoning, into a very word, air, a mere empty report.

Vol. II. Page 121.

COST.

The manner of it is, I was taken in the manner.

BIRON.

In what manner?

COST.

In manner and form following.

Dr. Johnson tells us in his preface, that, when he inserts any of Dr. Warburton's proposed emendations in the text, he means to give them his highest approbation. Now, this he hath done in the present instance; giving that scholiast's note likewise at the bottom of the page. The note is as follows:

‘—Taken WITH the manner.] The following question arising from these words, shews we should read—taken IN the manner. And this was the phrase in use to signify taken in the fact. So Dr. Donne, in his letters, But if I melt into melancholy while I write, I shall be taken IN the manner; and I sit by one too tender to these impressions. ’

The author of the Canons of Criticism, however, hath invalidated what Dr. Warburton advances in this place, by another of his own notes on a passage in the first part of Henry the Fourth, where the same expression occurs; and on which the same reverend commentator says: ‘The quarto and folio read with the manner, which is right. Taken with the manner is a law phrase, and then in use to signify taken in the fact. ’ —Mr. Edwards observed, on remarking this inconsistency, that "Great wits have short memories." But I am at some loss to know to what I should impute Dr. Johnson's giving the highest approbation to this blunder of Dr. Warburton's. That his memory is at least as bad, and his attention full as little, is evident from his quoting both these contradictory notes in their respective places, and his giving the highest approbation to both the contradictory emendations, by inserting them in the text; one in the play before us, and the other in that of Henry IV. Notwithstanding the inconsistency had been pointed out in a book, that hath run through at least six editions. To what can we impute such servile transcription? Shall we set it down among Dr. Johnson's other concessions to the respect due to high place, and his veneration for genius and learning? Or shall we rather impute it to his indolence in not consulting the Canons of Criticism?—Or perhaps he would neither chuse to depend on the authority of that writer, nor even on Dr. Warburton's himself, against the united suffrage of Dr. Warburton and Dr. Donne. He might have depended, however, on the farther authority of Shakespeare; which he might have had by turning over a few pages more of the volume before us; the Clown in the Winter's Tale using the same phrase, thus, Your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not taken yourself WITH the manner.

My readers will hardly doubt, on this representation of the case, that the common phrase was taken WITH the manner. As to the certainty of its being adopted here, however, it may possibly be still disputed. Dr. Warburton says, Biron's question, immediately succeeding, shews that Costard should say IN the manner. For my part I cannot see the force of this reason, though I can very well see why Biron should not repeat WITH the manner, because of another law phrase, with which Costard answers him, viz. IN manner and form following. Now this could not be, with any propriety, WITH manner and form following. But I think there is no impropriety in supposing that Biron, not attending to the quaintness of Costard's expression, asks him simply and naturally IN what manner? notwithstanding Costard had used the phrase WITH what manner. Be all this, however, as it may, we have here a very flagrant instance, IN what manner Dr. Johnson hath commented on Shakespeare, and WITH what manners he hath treated the public, who encouraged him in this undertaking.

Vol. II. Page 142.

MOTH.

A wonder, master, here's a costard broken in a shin.

ARM.

Some enigma, some riddle; come,—thy l'envoy—begin

COST.

No egma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the male, Sir.

Dr. Johnson boggles here at the word male, which he conjectures may stand for mail, a packet or bag, and thence the mountebank's budget [*]. The matter, indeed, he owns is not great; but one would wish, he says, for some meaning or other. I wonder, when he was in the humour to descend to such trifles, he should pass over the word l'envoy, which is so often repeated in this and the next page. I dare say not one reader of Shakespeare in a hundred, and perhaps not all his commentators, know very well what to make of it. Armado, indeed, is very explicit on the subject.
It is, says he,

—an epilogue or discourse, to make plain

Some obscure precedence that hath to fore been sain.

I will example it. Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l'envoy.

The fox, the ape, and the humble bee,

Were still at odds, being but three.

There's the moral now the l'envoy.

All this is plain and intelligible enough; every English reader also might learn from Boyer, that envoy meant the conclusion of a ballad or sonnet; from which he might be led to mistake it for the mere burthen of a song.—But why should the couplets of a song, or the explanation of an enigma, be called the envoy? The case was this—during the institution of the Jeux Floraux, or poetical contests, which formerly existed in France, the sonnets or verses of the several candidates for the prize, always closed with an address to the prince, or umpire, who determined their merit, and to whom each was accordingly sent [envoiè] whence the name; and hence this part of the composition was usually the most studied and highly finished, in order to induce the arbiter to bestow the prize on the author.

Vol. II. Page 149.

THE PRINCESS TO A FORESTER.

Nay, never paint me more;

Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.

Here—good MY GLASS—take this for telling true.

Looking at her glass, and giving the Forester money.

‘To understand, says our editor, how the princess has her glass so ready at hand in a casual conversation, it must be remembered, that in those days it was the fashion among the French ladies to wear a looking-glass, as Mr. BAYLE coarsely represents it, ON THEIR BELLIES; that is, to have a small mirrour, set in gold, hanging at the girdle, by which they occasionally viewed their faces, or adjusted their hair.’ —As Mr. Johnson is almost always above referring particularly to his authorities, I cannot readily turn to the passage in Bayle where he makes this coarse representation. I am greatly apt to suspect, however, from the opinion I have of Mons. Bayle's usual propriety and elegance, that our editor hath mistaken his meaning. It appears to me that, if these mirrors were hanging at the girdle, they would have been rather represented as worn at the side, than on the belly, as the watch and etui are at present. Add to this, that if the ribbon or chain, by which they were hung, was so long as to permit the wearer to adjust her hair, without taking it quite off (as is reasonable to suppose) it could hardly be suspended at the girdle; for in that case such glasses would hang down to the knee, and could not, with any propriety, be said to be worn on the belly. I imagine, therefore, these mirrors were suspended from the neck, or somehow fastened to the drapery covering the stomach and breast; in which case, Mr. Bayle might say, without the least inelegance, they were worn sur le ventre. For I will venture to say it is, from his using the word ventre on this occasion, that Dr. Johnson charges him with coarseness; but ventre doth not always signify the belly.

The French distinguish between the stomach and belly, by calling the former the petit-ventre, or VENTRE SUPERIEUR; and the latter the bas-ventre. The general term is also frequently used instead of POITRINE, and as often means the stomach and breast, as it doth the belly.—Vaugelas will tell him also, that the word ventre is used with great elegance in metaphorical writing. Thus, passer sur le ventre à son ennemi, is an approved phrase for giving an enemy a total defeat. The French, in like manner, use the word entrailles, in such phrases as, literally translated, would be very coarse and disgusting to an English ear. To instance only one or two. Seigneur, votre loi est gravéee dans le fond de mes entrailles.—Les entrailles de la misericorde de Dieu. One of the most elegant French writers, now living, also calls the natural affection of a parent for his child, l'amour des entrailles. But what should we think of an English critic, who should translate such passages thus: Thy law, O Lord, is engraven in our guts—The entrails of the mercy of God—The affection of the bowels—and thence take occasion to censure the writer for coarseness and inelegance?

We are informed, by some letters lately published [*], that when Dr. Johnson came to town, about the year 1730, he had a design of engaging in some translation from the French. Whether he ever did or no, I cannot say; but, from this and some other specimens of his acquaintance with that language, I cannot help thinking the author would have been extremely unlucky that had fallen into his hands.

Vol. II. Page 165.

KING.

So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not

To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,

As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote

The night of dew, that on my cheeks down flows.

On this passage Dr. Johnson hath the following note.

‘ The night of dew, that on my cheeks down flows.] I cannot think the night of dew the true reading, but know not what to offer.’

That is very strange! Dr. Johnson.—Why, thou must have no more invention in thee than there is in a leaden plummet: thy pegasus must be confined and hoodwinked like a horse in a mill; or surely something would have suggested itself to a writer who declares, that ‘not a single passage, in this whole work, has appeared to him corrupt, which he has not attempted to restore!’ [*]—I would be far from seeking to depreciate the success of our editor's modest industry [*]: but I am afraid the purchasers of his book will be apt to think, from many such slovenly notes as this, that both his industry and modesty are pretty well matched. It is evident, from the context, that the king, being over head and ears in love, employs himself, as people usually do in that situation,

Wasting the live-long hours away,

In tears by night, and sighs by day.

What objection then could our editor have to substituting nightly dew, instead of night of dew. If we are not absolutely certain the poet wrote so, there is a moral presumption, a great probability, of it: but whether he did or not, the alteration is certainly an amendment, and a very harmless one. It would also have served a little to save the credit of the editor; who, whatever might be his intentions before he begun his work, sufficiently shews, by the work itself, that he regarded not what he had promised when he did it; and, by his Preface, that he knew as little what he had done when it was finished.

Vol. II. Page 170.

BIRON.

O me, with what strict patience have I sat

To see a king transformed to a knot!

Here, indeed! we see our editor attempting to restore a passage, which appears to him corrupt.—Mark the success!—

‘ To see a king transformed to a knot!] Knot has no sense that can suit this place. We may read sot. The rhymes in this play are such as that sat and sot may be well enough admitted.’

What! have you lost your hearing and judgment too, Mr. Editor, as well as your memory and invention?—Do you not know that even sot and sot cannot be admitted into any verse as English rhymes; and do you think the matter mended with sot and sat?

Besides, do you see no impropriety in Biron's calling the King, to his face, a blockhood or fool, because truly he was in love; especially when he is conscious he is himself in the same situation? Add to this, that so gross an expression is totally inconsistent with the fine strain of raillery that runs through the whole of his speech. This attempt, therefore, of our editor at restoration, is evidently a very unlucky one, and is excusable only as the unsucessful endeavour of modest industry.

But why doth Dr. Johnson conclude this passage to be corrupted? If he thinks the rhymes sot and sat admissible, surely he can have no objection to our pronouncing sat after the broad orthoëpy of the vulgar; in which case it would be a much less exceptionable rhyme to knot than what he is willing to admit.—But he says, ‘ knot hath no sense that can suit this place.’ He might have found, however, by turning to almost any dictionary, excepting his own, that a knot is a small bird, well known in many parts of England, and is called avis Canuti by the naturalists; as it is said, because king Canutus was very fond of such birds. It is, indeed, a delicious kind of water-fowl. Now, as Biron hath said but just before, speaking of the King, ‘Shot, by heav'n! proceed, sweet Cupid; thou hast thumpt him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap;’ I cannot, for my part, see any objection to his comparing him in this passage to a wounded knot. If my readers do, I have done. They will do me the justice, however, to own, that, if I am not possessed of Dr. Johnson's ingenuity and modesty, I shew at least as much industry in defending the text of Shakespeare, as he does in pulling it to pieces.

Vol. II. Page 222.

SONG.

When daizies pied and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver white;

And cuckow-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight.

Dr. Warburton says, we should read much-bedight, which is very proper and elegant.—The present editor quotes Dr. Warburton's note; to which he adds the following short animadversion.

Much less elegant than the present reading.

Undoubtedly it is: and I have here only to ask Dr. Johnson, why he excludes the notes of Theobald, when they have been sufficiently exploded by other writers; and yet pesters his readers with those of Dr. Warburton, which stand exactly in the same predicament?

The ingenious author of the Canons of Criticism objected, long ago, to this proposed emendation of Dr. Warburton's; judiciously observing, that if bedight means bedecked or adorned, the meadows being bedight already, they little need painting.—But Dr. Johnson seems to be so much influenced by the respect due to high place, that he seems determined to avoid the name of Edwards, as much as possible, for fear of offending the bishop.

Notes

*

In our editor's appendix, speaking of this passage, he points, reads, and explains thus;

Too much to know is to know nought, but fame;

And every god-father can give a name.

‘That is, too much knowledge gives only fame, a name which every god-father can give likewise.’

↵

*

This puts me in mind of a certain French bookseller; who, speaking of the profession to which he intended to bring up an ignorant booby of a son; By-gar, says he, Monsieur, I will make him one author; he shall be the first writer of the age. Morbleu, he shall be une philosophe; une Voltaire!

↵

*

The author of the Revisal also supposes, that we should read mail; but he says that means No salve within the BANDAGE. He is equally silent, however, about the l'envoy; the explanation of which though it be no great matter, the English reader has been probably desirous of some little illustration or other.

↵

*
In the St. James's Chronicle, and other news-papers; as also the monthly magazines.
↵

*
See Dr. Johnson's Preface.
↵

*
See Dr. Johnson's Preface.
↵

THE WINTER'S TALE.

Vol. II. Page 242.

LEONTES.

You will!—why, happy man be's dole!— ‘That is, says our editor, may his dole or share in life be to be a happy man.’

It is doubtless true, that dole means a share or part; but if this be all the difficulty, how is the sense, elicited by Dr. Johnson, reconcileable to the literal construction of the sentence?—The editor should have told his readers, that happy man be his dole was a common proverbial phrase, for wishing good luck either to one's self or others. Thus Falstaff, in the first part of Henry the Fourth. ‘Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.’

Vol. II. Page 295.

AUT.

Oh, that ever I was born!

CLEON.

I'th' name of me—

I believe me should be blotted out.

Here we have another article of Dr. Johnson's critical creed. It is certain that, whether me be in or out, is, in this place, of very little consequence; but I so much revere the text of Shakespeare, that, without I see an absolute necessity for it, I will never defile it with a blot. It seems as if the very name of Johnson was fated to cast invidious reflections on that of Shakespeare; as if it was malignantly formed to absorb tho rays diffused by superior lustre, and enviously to fully, with a reflected gloom, the fountain of its own light.—This scheme of blotting-out was originally suggested by a Johnson; who, when the players made their boast, in honour of Shakespeare, that he never blotted out a line, replied, ‘Would he had blotted out a thousand.’ This was BEN Johnson, who only expressed his wish that Shakespeare had done, what SAM Johnson boldly determined to do for him. For it is to be observed, that here was no tenderness due to living reputation to stop his hand; and he might think to indulge himself SAFELY in the innocent discussion of a dead poet's pretensions to renown [*].

If it be not owing to some such antipathy or inviduous influence subsisting between the names of Johnson and Shakespeare, to what else can we impute Dr. Johnson's objection to the harmless me in the above passage! He very possibly cannot find any use for it. But if we consider that the whole line is a mere exclamation; testifying the clown's surprize at hearing Autolicus cry out, and seeing him lie groveling on the earth. Had he said In the name of HEAVEN—or, In the name of MERCY—the line, however bordering on profanity, would have past: but nothing is more common than for conscientious people to check themselves in the middle of such exclamations, or to substitute some innocent word in the place of the exceptionable one. Again, if any objection be made to the supposition of the Clown's stopping in the middle of the word mercy; let us take another view of the exclamation, and admit the word me to stand as a personal pronoun. It is notorious that persons, who, as Hotspur says, ‘swear like comfit-maker's wives, and give such sarcenet security for their oaths, as, in good sooth—as true as I live—as God shall mend me—and as sure as I live. ’ I say it is very common for these uncommon swearers, who cannot gulp down or digest a good mouth-filling oath, to protest upon their WORD. Now I cannot see why a person, who, to avoid a profane oath, should protest upon his WORD, might not, with equal propriety, in order to avoid a profane exclamation, cry out in his NAME. Admitting this, the Clown, instead of crying out in the name of heav'n, exclaimed in the name of himself; viz. l' th' NAME of me.—And this expression may surely pass among expletives of this kind, as well as for the SOUL of me—for the LIFE of me—for the HEART of me, &c.—After all, whether I have convinced the reader or not, of the propriety of letting me stand in the text, I must have some better reason given ME for expunging it, than the ipse-credidit of a JOHNSON.

Vol. II. Page 298.

PERDITA.

—even now I tremble

To think your father, by some accident,

Should pass this way, as you did: Oh, the fates!

How would he look, to see his work, so noble,

Vilely bound up!

Here Dr. Johnson hath found Shakespeare tripping again.—Hear what he says.

‘ His work so noble, &c.] It is impossible for any man to rid his mind of his profession. The authorship of Shakespeare has supplied him with a metaphor, which, rather than he would lose it, he has put, with no great propriety, into the mouth of a country maid. Thinking of his own works, his mind passed naturally to the binder. I am glad he has no hint at an editor.’

We have here also, another aukward attempt of our editor at wit and pleasantry. But, why wilt thou, Dr. Johnson, persist thus in playing at bob-cherry, when the prize hangeth so high above thine head, and such a weight of lead is incumbent on thy heels? I have already advised thee, in the fullness of my heart, and, as Cicero says, non otii abundantiâ, sed amoris erga te, not to be so forward to display thy wit. I told thee before, and I tell thee again, thou hast it not in thee, being as unable to divert the reader with thy pleasantry, as to convince him of Shakespeare's impropriety.—Again, why, Dr. Johnson, art thou glad that Shakespeare hath no hint at an editor? Dost thou think he would have thrown out any censures that might reach thee?—No—that incomparable bard was, as thou sayest, the poet of nature, and drew his characters from, the life: and nature had not produced in that age so arrogant, and at the same time so dull an animal, as the present commentator on Shakespeare. There were pedants and pedagogues, it is true, in his day; he has depicted an Holofernes and a Sir Hugh Evans. But these were slight excrescences, mushrooms, champignons, that perished as the smoke of the dunghil evaporated, which reared them. A modern editor of Shakespeare is, on the contrary, a fungus attached to an oak; a male agaric of the most astringent kind, that, while it disfigures its form, may last for ages to disgrace the parent of its being.

But, to lay aside metaphor; not Burgerdischius, Gronovius, nor any one of the whole tribe of Dutch commentators, from the first of them to the last, hath proceeded through his author with more phlegm and frigidity, than Dr. Johnson hath gone through Shakespeare [*]. It is hard to say, indeed, who is the dullest scholiast of the dullest writer of antiquity. But Dr. Johnson has the singular honour of being the dullest annotator on the brightest of all those who have succeeded the revival of letters.

To return to Dr. Johnson's annotation, and the more particular defence of Shakespeare's text.

The editor hath here charged the poet with being guilty of an impropriety in making a country maid talk like an author. But how doth Dr. Johnson know that this is really the case? How doth it appear, from the words of the text, that the allusion he charges on Shakespeare is at all intended?—That Perdita could know nothing about book-binding, is taken for granted; this being the very circumstance, on which the charge of impropriety is founded. But it does not appear, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson imputes this impropriety to Shakespeare's profession, that the poet himself was much versed in the matter. It is very little likely that a writer, who confessedly took so little care about the printing of his works, and has no hint at an editor, should yet have his head so full of a book-binder. Dr. Johnson is pleased, for the honour I suppose of our profession, to rank Shakespeare among the livery-men of our company. But, though I honour my profession as being the most liberal of all others, though I honour the immortal memory of Shakespeare still more, yet I respect the truth most of all. It does not appear that the term authorship can be applied with any propriety to Shakespeare; for, though he wrote for the stage, I find no good authority for supposing he sold his copies, or transferred his right in them, to booksellers; and he only is an author by profession who writes for the TRADE.—No—To the honour of the gentlemen of the stage, Shakespeare was by profession a PLAYER; and I have no better reason, than his knowing every thing, to suppose he knew that a book-binder existed.

To come now to verbal criticism. A piece of work vilely bound up, must, according to Dr. Johnson, necessarily mean a book meanly bound. But why so? Neither the words work nor bound up are idiomatical, when applied to book-binding. In the first place, we do not call the writings of an author his work, but his works. And, though sometimes, in speaking of the several sheets of a book, or the different volumes of an author's works, we may talk of binding them up; yet, speaking of a book in the singular number, we talk always of its being bound merely; not of its being bound up.

On the other hand, the term bind up is applicable to various works of husbandry, and such kinds of employment as a country maid might well be supposed acquainted with. Add to this, that the term bound up has a peculiar propriety in the passage before us, as it is opposed to prank'd up, a few lines above. The reader will remember, that Perdita, the country maid, is dressed like a princess; or, as she says, most goddesslike prank'd up; and Florizel, the real prince, is disguised in the habit of a clown. Now it is observable that, as the superb dresses of the rich and gay were fastened together by ornamental brooches, ouches, knots of ribbons, &c. so the coarser garments of the poor and simple were fastened together, and tied with strings or leathern thongs. And hence Perdita might very properly say, that the prince, in his swain's wearing, was vilely bound up; without having any more allusion to the binding of a book than to the binding up of a wheatsheaf. But, because she has called the son the father's work, without any impropriety in the line before, she must in this truly allude to book-binding: though, were it so, she must be guilty of as great an impropriety in the application of her allusion. For why an author should be so terribly angry, as she supposes, at accidentally seeing his works meanly bound, I cannot possibly devise; as I conceive neither his interest nor his reputation can be at all affected by the difference between calve's skin and sheep's leather.

Vol. II. Page 323.

AUT.

Tho' I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.—Let me pocket up my pedler's excrement *.—How now, rusticks, whither are you bound?

On this passage our editor gives the following laconic note:

‘* What he means by his pedler's excrement I know not?’ No!—Then, give me leave to tell you, Dr. Johnson, you know too little, or are much too indolent and inattentive to undertake a commentary on Shakespeare.—Doth not Armado, in Love's Labour Lost, page 185, of this very volume, call his beard an excrement? and do not you tell us in a note on that passage, that 'the author has before called the beard valeur's excrement in the Merchant of Venice?' And should not the recollection of these passages (not to mention others which an able commentator might have recollected) have excited you to turn over this play a little, in order to see whether some reason might not be found for supposing the word excrement to have here the same meaning?—You may think, indeed, the futility of such a research evident on the face of the text; as a man cannot easily put his beard in his pocket.—Very true; but he does not call it his own beard, but his pedler's beard, for that character was assumed, as was also the false beard he wore on that occasion, in order the more to disguise himself, lest he should be known again by the clown he had just before robbed, act IV. scene 3. It would have required no very acute or profound observation also, to have remarked that, though Florizel, in scene 10. stripped him of his pedler's clothes, he had either no occasion for his beard, or did not think it a false one: this, therefore, Autolycus had still on, notwithstanding his change of habit, till he found it necessary to speak to the clowns; when, prudently to appear in character, he whip'd it off, and clap'd it in his pocket; saying, Let me pocket up my pedler's excrement.—Do you know now, Dr. Johnson? Or, will you prudentially chuse to remain still in ignorance; shake your wise head; and say, as usual, 'Sir, Sir, the man who tells me this, is a blackhead [*]!'

Vol. II. Page 324.

SHEP.

My business, Sir, is with the King.

AUT.

What advocate hast thou to him?

SHEP.

I know not, an't like you.

CLO.

Advocate's the court-word for a pheasant: say, you have none.

SHEP.

None, Sir; I have no pheasant cock, nor hen.

Advocate's the court word for a pheasant.] This satire, on the bribery of courts, not unpleasant. WARBURTON.

‘This satire, or this pleasantry, says Dr. Johnson, I confess myself not well to understand!’ For my part I suspect, but I will not be positive, that the Clown, who seems to be the shrewdest of the two countrymen, should say to the other, Advocate's the court-word for a PRESENT, meaning a gift or fee of some kind: to which interpretation of the word he might possibly be led by some significant action of the pretended courtier, whose design it evidently was to profit as much as possible by their ignorance. On this supposition we see the shepherd is naturally led into the blunder of the pheasant, which is otherwise not easily accounted for.

Notes

*
See Dr. Johnson's Preface.
↵

*

And here lies the difference between Dr. Warburton and Dr. Johnson, whose commentaries I place both on a footing with regard to their utility, as they are themselves pretty equal with respect to that arrogance with which they have treated the public, the living patrons of Shakespeare. In the commentary of Dr. Warburton, however, we have all the fire and spirit of a restif imagination, bridled in by as perverse an understanding: whereas, in that of Dr. Johnson, we see but too plainly the waywardness of senescence struggling with the weakness of puerility.

It may be thought strange that I should treat Dr. Johnson's pretensions to wit so contemptuously, when it is notorious that his bons-mots have been constantly repeated for these ten years past in taverns and in coffeehouses, at dinners, and over tea-tables, to the great gratification of his admirers, and the edification of their hearers. Nay, it is well known, that a certain literary projector, excited by the success of BEN Johnson's jests, had schemed the publication of the Johnsoniana, under the name of our editor, intending to insert on his title page, instead of O rare BEN! O brave SAM!—But I know not how, yet so it happened, that, upon enquiry, the projector could not muster up above a dozen genuine jokes worth printing. It was found that most of the wise sayings, smart repartees, pregnant puns, and cramp conundrums, imputed to him, had been forged or invented for him by his friends and acquaintance. The few following indeed were, if I remember right, admitted to be genuine:

JOHNSONIANA, or the witty sayings of Sam. Johnson, M. A.

Mr. Johnson, being sent for, by order of the king, to write the History of the House of Brunswick; replied, with great humour and loyalty, to the gentleman who proposed it, by saying, What! Sir, is there no scoundrel author in England but myself?

Mr. Johnson, being offered a pension by his present majesty, in return for the above instance of his loyalty, he, notwithstanding his former railing at placemen and pensioners, very wittily and wisely said—nothing; but growled and TOOK IT.

Mr. Johnson having, on a necessary occasion, turned himself toward the wall, in one of the streets of Oxford, was reminded by his companion, that he had indecently placed himself just opposite a window where some young ladies were drinking tea: on which Mr. Johnson, p—f—g on, wittily and delicately replied, Sir, it is the OFFICE of Nature, and I shall DISCHARGE it.

At another time, Mr. Johnson, being in company where some persons were disputing about the doctrine of the Trinity, he rose up from his chair, and ingeniously decided the dispute at once, by clenching his fist, and threatening to knock the first person down, who, in his presence, should cast infidel reflections on his friend Athanasius.

In the same company, he was also heard most divertingly to affirm, that The man must be an ATHEIST of the deepest dye, who did not believe in the COCK-LANE GHOST.

At various times and places, he hath been heard also to drop the following exquisite strokes of wit and humour.—Sir, Sir, the fellow is a fool.—Sir, the man is a blockhead.—The rascal is an Atheist.—There are but three good lines in all CHURCHILL's satires, and two of them he stole from my LONDON.—Shakespeare a poet! Sir, he never wrote a line of poetry in his life. An ostler! Sir, a VARLET, that used to hold gentlemen's horses at the play-house!

These, and a few other strokes, equally pointed and humorous, being all the undertaker of the above project could pick up; and as the humour even of these depended greatly on a certain motion of the head peculiar to Dr. Johnson, which cannot be committed to paper, it was judged adviseable to drop the scheme: so that I hope I stand excused, if I do not place Dr. Johnson's witticisms among the anas, or think him upon a sooting even with Joe Miller, or his own name-sake Ben.

↵

*
Having written the above remarks on the pedler's excrement, without turning to the editor's increment, the appendix to his eighth volume; I was inclined to throw them aside, on finding that the editor had found out, or that somebody had told him, the meaning of the word; for he there says, very laconically too, page 323.
Pedler's excrement is pedler's beard.
But, as he has not any where thought proper to let the reader into the secret of its being a fictitious beard, or how otherwise Autolicus could put it in his pocket, I conceived some of my readers might profit by the above illustration, and therefore determined to insert it: and this the rather, when I reflected that Dr. Johnson could by no means lay a just claim to the merit of such information as he might acquire, by publickly advertising for, after his book was finished.

↵

TWELFTH NIGHT.

Vol. II. Page 360.

SIR ANDREW.

—Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand?

MARIAN.

Sir, I have not you by the hand.

SIR AND.

Marry, but you shall have, and here's my hand.

MAR.

Now, Sir, thought is free: I pray you, bring your hand to th' buttery bar, and let it drink.

SIR AND.

Wherefore, sweetheart? What's your metaphor?

MAR.

It's dry, Sir.

SIR AND.

Why, I think so: I am not such an ass, but I can keep my hand dry. But what's your jest?

It's dry, Sir.] What is the jest of a dry hand, I know not any better than Sir Andrew. It may possibly mean a hand with no money in it; or, according to the rules of physiognomy, she may intend to insinuate, that it is not a lover's hand, a moist hand being vulgarly accounted a sign of an amorous constitution.

It must be confessed, indeed, that our editor's sagacity is frequently at fault when a jest is in the wind. The bringing the hand to the buttery-bar, and letting it drink, is a proverbial phrase among forward Abigails, to ask at once for a kiss and a present. Sir Andrew's slowness of comprehension in this particular, gave her a just suspicion, at once, of his frigidity and avarice.—She therefore calls his hand dry: the moistness of the hand being a sign of liberality, as well in matters of love as money. Thus Othello to Desdemona,

Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady.

—

This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart.

Hot, hot and moist—

—

—'Tis a good hand:

A frank one.

DES.

You may, indeed, say so;

For 'twas hand that gave away my heart.

OTH.

A liberal hand.—

Old Foresight, in Love for Love, describes his wife also as having a mole upon her lip, with a moist palm, and an open liberality on the mount of Venus.—Dr. Johnson need not, therefore, have expressed so much caution of suspecting this to be the truth of the matter. There is one thing, however, he should have attended to; and this is, that the whole of this insinuation is founded rather on the rules of palmistry than physiognomy: for, though the etymology of the latter word be known to the learned, who may admit of such latitude of expression, I do not remember ever to have seen physiognomy made use of before by an English writer to signify any information of this kind, but that which is acquired from the features of the face. So that Marian's finding out any thing from St. Andrew's palm, by the rules of physiognomy, must appear to an unlearned reader, as absurd as if she had read his folly in his phyz by the rules of palmistry.

To check the smile, however, of the unlearned reader, and to preserve the veneration due to cramp words and crooked letters, he is to know that phyz doth not come from 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 but from a less ancient and honourable stock, the French visage, or the Italian viso.

Vol. II. Page 362.

SIR TOBY.

Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them? Are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jigg! I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think, by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was formed under the star of a galliard.

I know not how many, or if all, the editions authorize this reading of sink-a-pace. Our editor adopts it, and passes it over in silence, like the rest of the commentators. I have ever looked upon it, however, as so vile a blot in this admirable piece of raillery of Sir Toby's, that I cannot help imputing it to the interpolation of some transcriber, who imagined there was an excellent joke in making water into a SINK-A-PACE. The conceit, however, is so low and vile, that I cannot give into the notion that Shakespeare, fond as he seems of punning and playing upon words, was the author of it. I am confirmed in this opinion also by reflecting, that the attention of the reader is diverted from the real humour of the passage, by this horrid conundrum. Sir Toby, in carrying his ridicule of poor Ague-cheek's dancing-accomplishments to the highest pitch, proceeds so far as to tell him, he would not stand still on the most necessary occasion, even to make water; but that he might not betray himself, even to this fool, by talking of absolute impossibilities, he fixes on a grave, flow, and even hobbling kind of dance, the cinquepace, for this suspicious occasion [*].

I could wish, therefore, the authority of the copies would bear me out in discarding this miserable pun, and restoring the words to its genuine and original spelling.

Vol. II. Page 368.

Enter Sir Toby.
OLIVIA.

By mine honour, half drunk. What is he at the gate, uncle?

SIR TOBY.

A gentleman.

OLIVIA.

A gentleman! What gentleman?

SIR TOBY.

'Tis a gentleman here—A plague o'these pickle herring! &c.

Dr. Warburton hath a note on this passage, which our editor hath inserted without any animadversion, notwithstanding it hath been sufficiently exposed and confuted by Mr. Edwards, as Dr. Johnson appears to think by the pointing he hath adopted in the text, which is different both from that of Warburton and Theobald. Theobald points and reads thus,

SIR TOBY.

'Tis a gentleman. Here— [belches] A plague o'these pickle herring!

Dr. Warburton's note runs thus.

‘ 'Tis a gentleman. HERE—] He had before said it was a gentleman. He was asked what gentleman? and he makes this reply; which, it is plain, is corrupt, and should be read thus, ‘'Tis a gentleman-HEIR;’ i. e. some lady's eldest son just come out of the nursery; for this was the appearance Viola made in men's cloaths.’

On this note Mr. Edwards observes, that gentleman-heir is a new and unnecessary phrase for a lady's eldest son: concluding that ‘Shakespeare hath no need of it; as any body will own, who considers that Sir Toby was drunk, and interrupted in his speech by his pickled herrings.’ That is, by the pickled herrings he had been eating; and which, rising in his stomach, occasioned him to belch, as Theobald has it.

Is it possible, after all this, to guess what induced our editor to trouble his readers with Dr. Warburton's frivolous note, and to adopt Mr. Edwards's pointing, against that of Theobald, without mentioning a word of either of the two latter?

Notes

*

The gravity and interruptions of this dance are, indeed, particularly pointed out by Shakespeare on another occasion. ‘Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is a Scotch jigg, a measure, and a cinque-pace. The first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jigg, and full as fantastical; the wedding mannerly and modest, as a measure full of state and gravity; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace.’

↵

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

Vol. II. Page 467.

NYM.

For the revolt of mien is dangerous.

The revolt of mien, says Dr. Johnson, I suppose we may read the revolt of men. Sir T. Hanmer reads this revolt of mine. Either may serve, for the present text I can find no meaning.

Why then did you adopt it? The author of the Revisal affirms, that THIS revolt of MINE is the common reading, as appears from Mr. Pope's edition, and is plainly alluded to in Pistol's reply. Thou art the Mars of male-contents. The Reviser charges both Dr. Warburton and Mr. Theobald also with having taken here an unwarrantable liberty with the text, without giving the least hint to the reader of what they had done.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, our editor hath admitted a futile note on this passage, by Mr. Steevens, into his appendix; in which that gentleman unsuccessfully endeavours, as Dr. Johnson says on another occasion, to elicit sense by strong agitation out of the text as it now stands.

Vol. II. Page 476.

MRS. PAGE.

I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank-space for different names; nay, more, and the•e are of the second edition: he will print them out of doubt, for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two.

Having charged Dr. Johnson, among the other editors of Shakespeare, with passing over difficult passages, and displaying their sagacity on those which are obvious, I cannot pass over an instance of the latter kind, on the passage before me. Our editor makes the following note, referred to from the word press.

‘Press is used ambiguously for a press to print, and a press to squeeze.’

The reader would certainly stand in need of a ghost to to come from the dead to tell him this. And yet Dr. Johnson, when it was necessary to apologize for having done less than he ought, could plead that ‘the reader is seldom pleased to find his opinion anticipated; and that it is natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we receive.’

Vol. II. Page 478.

NYM.

—I have a sword, and it shall bite upon my necessity.

Dr. Warburton hath a mighty whimsical note on this passage, which our editor hath printed, though he condemns it, and hath silently adopted the reading of Mr. Edwards, who had sufficiently exposed the absurdity of the Warburtonian emendation. See Canons of Criticism, page 115.

Vol. II. Page 482.

HOST.

—Will you go an-heirs?

Dr. Warburton's note on this passage, printed without any animadversion of our editor, runs thus;

‘ Will you go AN HEIRS?] This nonsense is spoken to Shallow. We should read, Will you go ON, HERIS? i. e. Will you go on, Master? Heris, an old Scotch word for master.’

What the present editor understands by this word, or whether he understands any thing by it, is not easily determined, as he hath thought proper to leave it in this situation, doubtless for the reason given above; viz. its being natural for the reader to delight more in what he may find out of himself, than what the scholiast may tell him. For my part, however, I apprehend the mere English reader would be glad of some little assistance here, especially as Dr. Johnson does not seem to be satisfied with Dr. Warburton's note.—The author of the Revisal appears also to be of the same opinion, and therefore hath given his readers the following remarks on this controverted passage. ‘ Will you go on, Heris? The nonsense of the former editions was, 'Will you go an heirs?' Mr. Warburton assures us, 'heris is an old Scotch word for master.' It may be so for ought I know. But as my experience hath taught me some distrust of this gentleman's positive assertions in matters of this nature, I must beg leave to doubt of it. Besides, this word, according to this interpetation of it, is of the singular number, and yet is addressed, not to Ford, but to Page and Shallow, as is evident from what immediately follows. I see no reason neither why either Shakespeare, or mine host of the Garter, should chuse to talk old Scotch, and therefore I should rather suppose our poet might have written, 'Will you go on, hearts?' An expression suited to the jovial character of mine host, and not very different in appearance from the common reading, especially when spelled as it anciently was, herts. Mr. Theobald's conjectures, 'Will you go on here?' or Will you go, mynheirs?' carry with them, in my opinion, very little probability.’

It is very justly observed by the Reviser, that there is no obvious reason for mine host of the Garter to speak old Scotch; but if we consider that he is a German, I do not see why the scholiast should suppose Theobald's last emendation improbable. Nothing is more likely, I think, than for him now and then to drop a word of high or low Dutch. It is true that the word mynheirs is properly neither one nor the other: for neither the Dutch nor the German make the plural of heer or herr end in s. Add to this, that they seldom use the personal pronoun singular with the noun plural. When they accost a single person with the title of my Lord or Sir, it is Mynheer or Mein herr; but when they address more than one with the title of Lords or Gentlemen, the pronoun is generally dropped, and they say Heeren or Herren.

But I see no manner of impropriety in supposing our host to be either above or below such idiomatical and grammatical niceties: in which case he might not only join the singular pronoun with the plural noun (as the English say my Lords, as well as my Lord) but also give the plural noun their common ending in English; so that if Theobald had substituted mynheers, it might have pasted. But if it be insisted on, that our host of the Garter shall speak properly and elegantly, the passage must stand thus. "Will you go on, heeren, or herren." The reader may take which he likes best, both meaning simply, Will you go on, gentlemen?—

I cannot help referring, on this occasion, to a passage in our editor's preface; where, among other excuses for doing so little, after having promised so much, he hath the following curious passage:

If my readings are of little value, they have not been ostentatiously displayed, or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer notes; for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment. The work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence, ignorance, and asinine tastelessness of the former editors, and shewing, from all that goes before, and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing something, which, to superficial readers, would seem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the true reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding with loud [*] acclamations on the discovery, and a sober with for the advancement and prosperity of genuine criticism.

We see here that Dr. Johnson knew very well what was to be done, if he had but had abilities, industry, or goodwill will enough to do it. Indeed, he hath sometimes succeeded pretty well in doing all that he hath here described, except in one little particular, and that is producing the true reading; this he hath done so very seldom, that we could very readily have excused him, if he had displayed even more ostentation, had he given us but a proportionate quantity more of truth.

Vol. II. Page 482.

FORD.

Tho' Page be a secure fool, and stand so firmly on his wife's fealty, yet I cannot put off my opinion so easily.

All the copies, says Dr. Warburton, read stand so firmly on his wife's FRAILTY: but to this reading, Mr. Theobald objected. ‘No, surely; Page stood tightly to the opinion of her honesty, and would not entertain a thought of her being frail. I have therefore ventured to substitute a word correspondent to the sense required, and one which our poet frequently uses to signify conjugal fidelity.’ —In reply to this note, Dr. Warburton says, ‘Mr. Theobald has no conception how any man could stand firmly on his wife's frailty. And why? Because he had no conception how he could stand upon it, without knowing what it was. But if I tell a stranger that the bridge he is about to cross is rotten, and he believes it not, but will go on, may I not say, when I see him upon it, that he stands firmly on a rotten plank? yet he has changed frailty for fealty, and the Oxford editor has followed him. But they took the phrase, to stand firmly on, to signify to insist upon; whereas it signifies to rest upon; which the character of a secure fool, given to him, shews. So that the common reading has an elegance that would be lost in the alteration.’

Notwithstanding this fine reasoning, however, of Dr. Warburton, the present editor hath judiciously stuck by Theobald's emendation in the text, though he is perfectly silent about it in his notes. It happens, nevertheless, very unluckily for Dr. Johnson, that he hath quoted this very passage in his dictionary, under the word frailty, as an authority for the use and meaning of that word. But of this I shall take proper notice in my Table of Errata [*] to that admired and truly wonderful Lexicon; the blunders of which I hope, God willing, to get through some time or other; although it is such an Augean stable as requires, to cleanse it properly, the application and abilities of an Hercules.

Vol. II. Page 540.

FAL.

—they would melt me out of my sat, drop by drop, and liquor fishermen's boats with me.

For boats we should read boots. This may probably be an error in the printer; but editors, as I have observed before, whose task professedly lies in regulating points and adjusting true readings, are answerable for every slip of this kind, whereby the meaning of their author is obscured or misrepresented.

Vol. II. Page 493.

FORD.

Heav'n be praised for my jealousy!—Eleven o'clock the hour—I will prevent this, detect my wife, be revenged on Falstaff, and laugh at Page. I will about it—Better three hours too soon, than a minute too late.—

In a note on this passage, our editor hath displayed his critical acumen most egregiously; as indeed most of Shakespeare's editors do, when they venture an inch beyond the servile bounds of verbal criticism. Our poet is universally allowed to be one of the greatest masters in describing the effects, as well as the greatest judge of the operation, of the passions, that ever existed. And yet is he here arraigned for an error, which affects him as an accurate observer of human nature, and a just delineator of the actions of mankind, his most distinguishing characteristics. The note here follows:

‘ Eleven o'clock.] Ford should rather have said ten o'clock; the time was between ten and eleven; and his impatient suspicion was not likely to stay beyond the time.’

No; Dr. Johnson.—Ford should neither be made to say ten nor eleven o'clock: he is not speaking of the time, at which Falstaff is to meet his wife; but of the time then present, which is seven o'clock, just three hours, as he expresly observes, from the earliest time of the appointment. So that, so far is his impatient suspicion from staying beyond the time of their intended meeting, that it seems to urge him instantly to go about to defeat the supposed purposes of it.—I will about it—better THREE HOURS too soon than a minute too late.—Why should he particularly mention three hours rather than any indefinite time, unless for the reason given? I know not how far the copies may authorize this reading; but the mistake might easily be made by the first transcribers, and be successively transmitted through the press uncorrected, as the sense was not very palpably affected by it. By reading seven for eleven, however, we deliver Shakespeare from the persecution of his annotator, and give a beauty and propriety to the passage, which at present is doubtless exceptionable. I would advise the actor also, who may perform this part for the future, to look at his watch, when he repeats this sentence; for that was evidently the author's intention, as appears by the intimation of his having still three hours good, in which to take proper measures to surprise the parties. He did not mean, as is plain by the sequel, to prevent or hinder their meeting, but to be before-hand [*] with them in the means of detection. Add to all this, that although, in his rage, he says, just before, the hour is fixt, yet no one particular hour was precisely named for the intended rendezvous; it was not at ten, nor at eleven, but between ten and eleven; so that the reason Dr. Johnson gives, why he should not say eleven, is in itself sufficient to prove he should say neither.

Notes

*

Dr. Johnson is here expresly describing the method of writing annotations. Pray, Doctor, is your pen any thing like a speaking trumpet, a stentorophontick instrument, as your dictionary more explicitly calls it? If it be not, I cannot, for the soul of me conceive how you do to write LOUD. As to my goose-quill, it runs over the paper as still as a mouse; but then, it is true, I cannot boast that my writings have made so much noise in the world as those of Dr. Johnson.

↵

*

A work in great forwardness for the press, designed for the use of the purchasers of that celebrated performance, and intended shortly to be published, under the title of A RAMBLE through the IDLER's Dictionary.

↵

*

The word prevent being here used, perhaps nearly, though not altogether in the same sense •s in our liturgy: when we say, O Lord prevent us in all our doings. It may indeed be conceived to carry a double meaning; viz. Ford's simply getting the start of the parties, in order to detect and expose them; or, as is above hinted, to prevent or hinder his being made a cuckold. But I think he seems to so be well assured of his having been cuckolded by somebody or other, that a single prevention of this kind could be of little consideration with him. It were indeed to little purpose, if his opinion of his wife were justly founded, and his sarcasm on the sex in general were true; i. e. that ‘what they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break their hearts but they will effect.’

↵

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

Vol. III. Page 20.

TRANIO.

If love hath touch'd you, nought remains but so,

Redime te captum quàm queas minimô.

Dr. Warburton tells us, that the line, here quoted from Terence, shews that we should read, in the preceding, ‘If love hath TOYL'D you,—’ i. e. taken you in his toils, his nets. Alluding to the capius est, habet, of the same author.

Dr. Johnson, however, without even deigning to adopt [†] any thing that might do the least honour to Shakespeare's learning, takes upon him boldly to assure us, that ‘our author had this line from Lilly, which I mention,’ says he, 'that it may not be brought as an argument of his learning.'

But pray, Dr. Johnson, how can you take upon you to say that Shakespeare had this line from Lilly, and not from Terence? Is it because the line is to be found in Lilly? And is this your whole authority?—You can have no other. It appears by the application, however, that Shakespeare knew the meaning of this line; and, if he knew it in Lilly, why might he not know it in the original author from whom it was taken? Is it because you have so often quoted words and passages, in languages you do not understand, that you suspect Shakespeare of a similar practice? You should never measure others' corn by your own bushel. You have been already reprehended in public, for misrepresenting in your preface the testimony of your predecessor Ben Johnson; who tells us, that Shakespeare had small LATIN and less GREEK. This you converted into small Latin and NO Greek. The ingenious critic, who reminded you of this error, was candid enough to impute it to your quoting from memory only [*]; but, supposing that, in this case, such a method of quotation was excusable, it appears, I think, too plainly, from your constant and repeated endeavours to depreciate both the natural and acquired abilities of Shakespeare, that this was not the case. Your perseverance in these endeavours, at least, give great reason to suspect the mistake was wilful; as the supposition of his having any Greek at all, would not have suited with your darling project, or answered your end, of invidiously representing him as a varlet, one of the illiterate vulgar.

Vol. III. Page 25.

PET.

Such wind as scatters young men through the world,

To seek their fortunes farther than at home,

Where small experience grows. But, in a few,

Signior Hortensio, thus it stands with me.

Dr. Warburton says, ‘this nonsense should be read thus: ‘Where small experience grows but in a mew,’ i. e. a confinement at home. And the meaning is, that no improvement is to be expected of those who never look out of doors.’

To this note, quoted from Dr. Warburton, the present editor adds the following:

‘Why this should seem nonsense, I cannot perceive. In a few means the same as in short, in few words.’

This piece of information, however, and the method of pointing adopted by Dr. Johnson, might have been had long ago from Mr. Edward's Canons of Criticism; who, in exposing the absurdity of Dr. Warburton's emendation, quotes other passages from Shakespeare, where the same expression is made use of.

In few; his death, whose spirit lent a fire

Even to the dullest peasant in his camp, &c.

SECOND PART OF HENRY IV.

Again, in HENRY V.

Thus then in few.

Vol. III. Page 45.

GREMIO.

Two thousand ducats by the year of land!

My land amounts but to so much in all.

All the copies, it seems, concurred in reading ‘My land amounts not to so much in all:’ But, because Dr. Warburton blunderingly conceived something must be wrong in it, and wrote a plausible note in justification of BUT, Dr. Johnson hath not only inserted the said tedious note, but hath given his highest approbation to the proposed emendation, by adopting it in the text.—The sensible author of the Revisal, however, having exposed the futility of the alteration, and sufficiently explained the text, agreeable to the old reading, Dr. Johnson hath thought proper, in his appendix, to recant his former opinion. A glaring instance this, among many others, of the little pains our editor took to examine into these matters himself!

Notes

†
Not that Dr. Warburton's emendation is defensible, but is sufficiently refuted by Mr. Edwards. See Canons of Criticism, page 124.
↵

*
In the St. James's Chronicle.
↵

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Vol. III. Page 176.

MESS.

I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

‘—The gentleman is not in your books.] This is a phrase used, I believe, by more than understand it.’ —Good lack! what a sad thing it is to want Dr. Johnson's understanding! You understand it, no doubt, Doctor!—Oh, yes, I see you tell us what it is.— ‘To be in one's books is to be in one's codiciis or will, to be among friends set down for legacies.’

But, among friends, now, Doctor, how do you know this? I know that, in your dictionary, by way of proving that to be in books, (as you vaguely term it) means to be held in kind remembrance, you quote the following passage from Addison. ‘I was so much in his books, that, at his decease, he left me the lamp, by which he used to write his lucubrations.’ —But do you, merely because the phrase is illustrated by this passage, insist upon the phrase being literally applicable to the illustration. Or, have you a better reason? 'faith, I am apt to suspect not; for surely, uncommunicative as you are, you would have told it us either in your dictionary, or in your edition of Shakespeare.—Shall I tell you, then, what I conceive to be the origin of this phrase? not that I pertinaciously insist upon being in the right, because I think Dr. Johnson is in the wrong. I have a mind to indulge myself, however, in a conjecture, if it so prove, on this occasion.

It was an ancient custom among the literati all over Europe, and is still kept up abroad, particularly in Holland and Germany, for men of letters to keep a book, which they call an album, so denominated from a similar application of that word, among the ancient Romans, to a matricular register or muster-roll of names. This book, or books, contained in like manner a list of the names of the owner's friends, admirers or acquaintance; who, in subscribing their names in his album, generally used to preface them with some compliment or device, in prose or verse, each after his own manner. It was very natural, therefore, for them to say, in speaking of their favourites or friends, that they were in their books; and of their enemies, that they were not in their books, or out of their books. Nay, I know not if it would be at all unnatural for resentful persons to strike out the names of those who might afterwards offend them, in order to shew their spleen, and at the same time that they would not be obliged to such people for a compliment. I cannot help thinking also, that I discover a propriety in the messenger's using this phrase to Beatrice, as he might intend sarcastically to insinuate that, he imagined, by the severity of her raillery against Benedict, that he was one who had paid no compliment to her beauty. But whether this propriety be imaginary or not, there is not the least room for supposing that he meant to say Beatrice had not, according to Dr. Johnson's explication, remembered Benedict in the codicil of her will. It is, indeed, a thousand to one if the last will and testament of the buxom Beatrice was written; and a much greater chance if it had codicils annexed to it.

Vol. III. Page 199.

BEAT.

Good lord, for alliance!—Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd; I may sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband.

Dr. Johnson's note. ‘What is it to go to the world? perhaps to enter, by marriage, into a settled state: but why is the unmarried lady sun-burnt? I believe we should read, thus goes every one to the wood but I, and I am sun-burnt. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and sun. The nearest way to the wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the wood, and at last taken a crooked stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Shakespeare, in All's well that ends well, uses the phrase, to go to the world, for marriage. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of wood to sun-burnt. ’

A very slight dependance, indeed, and by no means worthy so prolix an illustration! Our editor, surely, had lost himself in a wood, or his wits were gone wool-gathering about the hedges while he penned it.—To go to the world, is to go into, to settle in, the world, which is usually supposed to be done in marriage. Thus the clown, in All's well that ends well, asks the Countess leave to marry Isabel.—If I have your ladyship's good will to go to the world, Isabel the woman and I will do as we may.—That a wood was necessary to give meaning to the word sun-burnt, I cannot admit. It is evident that Beatrice here speaks ironically, and, perhaps, a little sarcastically and peerishly, on the occasion of Hero's getting a husband before her. For it seems that Hero was a brunette, and, in all probability, not so fair nor so fine a woman as Beatrice. At least so it is, if we may take Signior Benedict's word for it, who, speaking of Hero, says, ‘She is too low for an high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise:’ whereas of her cousin Beatrice he speaks in a different manner, and this even before he is tricked into falling in love with her, and while he boasts that ‘he can see without spectacles.’ Of her he says, after turning up his nose, as it were, at the commendations given to the person of Hero, ‘There's her cousin, if she were not possessed with such a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of December.’ Now, though we should suppose Benedict to be a little partial, as having a sneaking kindness, though he will not own it, for this amiable fury; yet it seems clear that she was fairer than Hero. It was very natural for her, therefore, to say ironically on this occasion, ‘Thus every one gets married but I.—Poor I am sunburn'd; i. e. not fair enough to attract the notice of the men, but must sit in a corner and cry heigh-ho for a husband.’

Vol. III. Page 234.

BENE.

How now! Interjections? Why then, some be of laughing, as ha! ha! he!

This passage, says our editor, ‘is a quotation from the Accidence;’ doubtless to remind us that Shakespeare's learning did not reach higher than Lilly's Grammar, of which he had before taken notice; or perhaps to sink the same of his erudition, if possible, still lower, and to level it with that of Taylor, the water-poet, who

Having read from possum to posset,

There made a stop, and could not farther get.

Vol. III. Page 237.

CLAUDIO.

O hero! what a Hero hadst thou been,

If half thy outward graces had been placed

About the thoughts and counsels of thy heart.

I am afraid, says our editor, here is intended a poor conceit upon the word Hero.

Didst thou really express thy fears or thy hopes, Dr. Johnson, on this occasion? Did you not mean to express by this suggestion rather what you would have the reader believe, than what you yourself actually believed to be true?—You will ask me, in your turn, probably, what right I have to catechise you?—It is very true, I am too young a catechiser to question, in general, such a veteran of a catechumen. But I have undertaken the cause of Shakespeare, and must tell you it carries with it a very invidious appearance, and is by no means candid, to insinuate any charge against him, couched in whatever terms you please, that you cannot prove to be true. For my part, I shall think Shakespeare always innocent, till I can prove him guilty; and it had better become you, as his editor, to have done so too; and not to have cloathed thus your injurious suspicions in the specious garb of tenderness and friendship.—Out with such half-faced fellowship!

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

Vol III. Page 319.

PAR.

—Here comes the King.

LAF.

Lustick, as the Dutchman says.

It is whimsical enough that our editor, who thinks it necessary, even in this very volume, to inform his readers, that ‘ Ostentation means shew, appearance, &c. that port signifies look, demeanour, carriage, &c. that to broke with, is to deal like brokers;’ with many other curious and learned pieces of information, of equal difficulty and importance, should be as totally silent as the rest of the commentators about the meaning of the word lustick. Supposing he had not understood the meaning of it himself, could he have turned to none of the old Nederduitschen Woorden-boeken that furnished him with etymologies for his dictionary? Some of them, I warrant him, would have told him that lustig signifies hearty, chearful, &c. and is aptly spoken by Lafeu, at seeing the King so well restored to his health, and able, as he expresses it, to lead his female doctress a corranto.

Our commentators here put me in mind of the Scotch pedler, who, turning pedagogue, was now and then puzzled at his pupil's boggling at a hard word: on which occasion he would always peevishly cry out, the deel tak thir laytin and grik; skip it, bearn, skip it.

Vol. III. Page 323.

KING.

Where great addition swells, and virtue none,

It is a dropsied honour; good alone

Is good, without a name vileness is so:

The property by what it is should go,

Not by the title.

Dr. Warburton condemns the text here, and says it is corrupted into nonsense; he then gives us, as usual, some worse nonsense of his own; and Dr. Johnson, as usual, inserts his annotation, confessing that he hath himself nothing, or very little better than nothing, to offer.—The former scholiast proceeds thus,

—good alone,

Is good without a name. Vileness is so.

The text is here
corrupted into nonsense. We should read,

—good alone

Is good; and, with a name, vileness is so.

i. e. good is good, though there be no addition of title; and vileness is vileness, though there be. The Oxford editor, understanding nothing of this, strikes out vileness, and puts in its place in'tself.

Dr. Johnson says,
The present reading is certainly wrong; and, to confess the truth, I do not think Dr. Warburton's emendation right; yet I have nothing that I can propose with much confidence. Of all the conjectures that I can make, that which least displeases me is this:

—virtue alone,

Is good without a name; Helen is so;

the rest follows easily by this change.

The author of the Revisal seems to understand the passage better than either of the doctorial critics just mentioned. He tells us the common reading is,

—good alone

Is good without a name; vileness is so:

the meaning of which, says he, one would imagine should be pretty plain. Good singly by itself, without the addition of title, is good still; it is the same thing with vileness. It takes its nature from itself, and not from external circumstances, as title and the like. And this interpretation is given by the poet himself, in the lines immediately following,

The property by what it is should go,

Not by the title.

Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Warburton mistook the meaning, and then murdered the text.

As to Dr. Johnson's conjectural emendation, it serves to no other purpose than to betray how barren he is at conjectures. I conceive, nevertheless, that our editor hath restored the true pointing, though it differs from that of his rival scholiast. But whether this be due to cunning or good luck, I cannot pretend to say, unless I knew to whom to attribute the honour of correcting the press, the editor or the printer. The meaning I think is obvious, and the passage may be paraphrased thus: good by itself is good, and even so, if unadorned by titles, vileness were vileness.

I do not propose this improvement of the Reviser's explanation with any great confidence, nor merely for the sake of differing from that very sensible writer; but because I think there is some little tautology in saying good by itself is good, and then to add without a name; for certainly if it was by itself, alone, it was without any thing else.

Vol. III. Page 330.

BERTRAM.

—war is no strife,

To the dark house, and the detested wife.

To the dark house,—] The dark house is a house made gloomy by discontent. Milton says of Death and the King of hell preparing to combat,

So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell

Grew darker at their frown.

JOHNSON.

I know not how this quotation from Milton illustrates the text, unless we are to suppose that Bertram, or Shakespeare, had read Milton: or unless our editor meant to justify the poetry of Shakespeare, by the authority of Milton. But not to insist on Shakespeare's standing in no need of such suffrage, the allusion of darkness to the gloom of discontent would be unexceptionable, even in the meanest of our minor poets. The whole line, however, hath, in my opinion, only a general allusion to the common saying of a smoky house and a scolding wife; which, with a little alteration, and still preserving an alliteration, Bertram converted to use on the present occasion.

Vol. III. Page 339.

HELENA.

Look on this letter, Madam; here's my passport.

When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which never shall come off; and shew me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband: but in such a Then I write a Never.

The commentators seem to be sadly puzzled to explain this letter; the meaning of which could not possibly be mistaken by any one who should read the play quite through. Dr. Warburton's note runs thus:

‘ When thou canst get the ring upon my finger.] i. e. When thou canst get the ring, which is on my finger, into thy possession. The Oxford editor, who took it the other way, to signify, when thou canst get it on upon my finger, very sagaciously alters it to, When thou canst get the ring from my finger. ’

Dr. Warburton's explanation is undoubtedly as well founded as the Oxford editor's is strange and inconsistent. Dr. Johnson, indeed, says, that he thinks ‘Dr. Warburton's explanation sufficient; but, continues he, I once read it thus, When thou canst get the ring upon THY finger, which never shall come off MINE.’

Will the reader believe me, when I tell him, after this, that the meaning of the passage in dispute is not only ascertained by the plot of the play, as above hinted; but is also expressed in the last act by words that admit of no equivocation? Yet so it is; Helena, in the last scene, producing the letter, and addressing Bertram in these words,

—there is your ring,

And look you, here's your letter: this it says,

When from my finger you can get this ring,

And are by me with child, &c. This is done.

Will you be mine, now you are doubly won?

If scholiasts would but make themselves masters of the text, before they sit down to write comments on it, they would be saved a world of trouble in puzzle and conjecture. It is true, they would not have such frequent opportunities of displaying their ingenuity; but then they would frequently avoid falling into absurdity; so that, as our editor observes on another occasion, they would gain on one side what they lose on the other; for, as Merry Andrew critically remarks of his dancing pigs, what they now get by footing and casting off, they lose by setting corners and turning round.

Vol. III. Page 341.

HELENA.

—O you leaden messengers,

That ride upon the violent speed of fire,

Fly with false aim; move the still-piercing air,

That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord.

Dr. Warburton, to whom Dr. Johnson sticks, like one of the conjuror's familiars, to the skirts of Trappolin, says, ‘the words are here oddly shuffled into nonsense. We should read,’ says he,

—pierce the still-moving air,

That sings with piercing,—

‘i. e. pierce the air, which is in perpetual motion, and suffers no injury by piercing.’

To this Dr. Johnson adds nothing on the page before us; but tells us, in his appendix, that ‘for piercing air we should read piecing air.’

This piecing air, it is true, is very much of a piece with the rest of our editor's annotations; but what he means by it, I cannot conceive; any more than I can find out what Dr. Warburton means by the perpetual motion of the air, which prevents it from being injured by piercing. In my opinion, however, the meaning of Shakespeare in this passage is obvious. It is notorious that the epithet still-piercing, or silently-piercing, is applicable to the air on more occasions than one. A cold air is a piercing air; and indeed, whether the air be cold or hot, it silently pierces or penetrates into the inmost recesses of place, and even the pores of many apparently solid bodies. It is likewise notorious, that a cannon or musketball whizzes or whistles as it passes through or pierces the air; which being converted, poetica licentia, from the patient to the agent, and vice versa, may, with great propriety, be said to sing with piercing, i. e. with being pierced, though it pierces silently itself. And thus we see evidently the antithesis intended by the poet, which hath escaped the penetrating looks and piercing eyes of his commentators.

Vol. III. Page 358.

BER.

I was compell'd to her, but I love thee

By love's own sweet constraint, and will for ever

Do thee all rights of service.

DIA.

Ay, so you serve us,

'Till we serve you: but when you have our roses,

You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves,

And mock us with our bareness.

BER.

How have I sworn!

DIA.

'Tis not the many oaths, that make the truth;

But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true;

What is not holy, that we swear not 'bides,

But take the High'st to witness: then pray tell me

If I should swear by Jove's great attributes

I lov'd you dearly, would you believe my oaths,

When I did love you ill? this has no holding

To swear by him whom I protest to love,

That I will work against him. Therefore your oaths

Are words, and poor conditions but unseal'd

At least in my opinion.

BER.

Change it, change it:

Be not so holy-cruel. Love is holy, &c.

I judged it expedient to make so large a quotation from the text, in order that the reader might form some judgment of his own, before he entered on the perplexing annotations; to which two or three of the above lines have given rise.

Dr. Warburton's note, as quoted by Dr. Johnson, is as follows:

What is not holy that we swear not BY.] Yes, nothing is more common than such kind of oaths. But Diana is not here accusing Bertram for swearing by a being not holy, but for swearing to an unholy purpose; as is evident from the preceding lines.

'Tis not the many oaths, that make the truth;

But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true.

The line in question, therefore, is evidently corrupt, and should be read thus; ‘What is not holy, that we swear, not 'BIDES: ’ i. e. If we swear to an unholy purpose, the oath abides not, but is dissolved in the making. This is an answer to the purpose. She subjoins the reason two or three lines after;

—this has no holding,

To swear by him, whom I protest to love;

That I will work against him.

i. e. That oath can never hold, whose subject is to offend and displease that being, whom I profess, in the act of swearing by him, to love and reverence.—What may have misled the editors into the common reading was, perhaps, mistaking Bertram's words above, ‘By love's own sweet constraint,’ to be an oath; whereas it only signifies, being constrained by love.

This note of Dr. Warburton's, the argument of which is as false as the emendation proposed is constrained and uncouth, is highly commended by the present editor. His annotation is as follows:

This is an acute and excellent conjecture, and I have done it the due honour of exalting it to the text; yet, methinks, there is something yet wanting. The following words, but take the High'st to witness, even though it be understood as an anticipation or assumption in this sense,—but now suppose that you take the High'st to witness,—has not sufficient relation to the antecedent sentence, I will propose a reading nearer to the surface, and let it take its chance.

BER.

How have I sworn!

DIA.

'Tis not the many oaths that make the truth:

But the plain single vow that is vow'd true.

BER.

What is not holy, that we swear not by,

But take the High'st to witness.

DIA.

Then pray tell me

If I should swear, &c.

Bertram means to enfore his suit, by telling her, that he has bound himself to her, not by the petty protestations usual among lovers, but by vows of greater solemnity. She then makes a proper and rational reply.

Again, Dr. Johnson conceives another part of the above quotation to be corrupt; which, as it may something affect the sense of the whole, I chuse to take notice of here, altho' the editor considers it in a distinct note.

To swear by him whom I protest to love,

That I will work against him:

This passage likewise ‘appears to me corrupt. She swears not by him whom she loves, but by Jupiter. I believe we may read to swear to him. There is, says she, no holding, no consistency, in swearing to one that I love him, when I swear it only to injure him.’

But farther, Dr. Johnson, on reconsidering this passage, tells us, in his appendix, that ‘in the print of the old folio, it is doubtful whether it is Jove's or Love's, the characters being not distinguishable. If it is read Love's, perhaps it may be something less difficult. I am still at a loss.’ —And so, by this time, I presume, is the reader. But, as the poet says, ‘Who shall decide when doctors disagree?’ Doubtless nobody less than he that has been dubb'd or capt twice; and he may authoritatively plead the same right of pre-eminence over a single graduate, as two marrow-puddings have prerogatively over one [*].

How far the author of the Revisal may be qualified to determine this matter, I cannot pretend to say; being, to my regret, utterly unacquainted with the name and quality of that writer. But, as I think he hath explained this passage better than either of the graduated gentlemen above quoted, I shall not follow Dr. Johnson's example, by cloathing his sentiments in different words, and passing them off as my own.

The Reviser's remarks on the passage in question, are as follow:

What is not holy, that we swear, not 'bides,—

But take the High'st to witness.

Mr. Warburton
hath so strangely puzzled himself about this passage, that he hath at last quite lost sight of its drift and purpose, and given us one of the most elaborate pieces of nonsense to be found in his whole performance. The common reading, however,

What is not holy, that we swear not by,

But take the High'st to witness,

is, if he could have been content with it, extremely plain and clear. The sense is, We never swear by what is not holy, but swear by, or take to witness the highest, the divinity. The tenor of the reasoning contained in the following lines perfectly corresponds with this; if I should swear by Jove's great attributes, that I loved you dearly, would you believe my oaths, when you found by experience that I loved you ill, and was endeavouring to gain credit with you, in order to reduce you to your ruin! No, surely, but you would conclude that I had no faith either in Jove or his attributes, and that my oaths were mere words of course. For that oath can certainly have no tie upon us, which we swear by him we profess to love and honour, when at the same time we give the strongest proof of our disbelief in him, by pursuing a course, which we know will offend and dishonour him.
—

The Reviser is here very near the truth, but hath neither fully confuted Dr. Warburton, nor prevented the difficulties suggested by Dr. Johnson. He is also mistaken in supposing the words this has no holding to mean such an oath is not binding; since, be other matters as they may, nothing I think is plainer than that she means, as Dr. Johnson says, There is no consistency. And this explanation of those words, though it be our editor's own, is what militates against the alteration of by into to, as he proposes; which alteration, however, is otherwise very plausible, if the sense of the passage had absolutely required it.

Let us see what we can make of it, without alteration.

Bertram tells Diana that he loves her, and he swears to it By love's own sweet constraint. No, says Dr. Warburton, this is no oath; he only says he loves her by love's own sweet constraint; having said in the preceding line, speaking of Helena,

I was compell'd to her, but I love thee

By love's own constraint.—

But what is this but saying, ‘ I was compelled to love Helena by my father, but I was compelled to love thee by Love himself.’ Thus we see, it is still as Falstaff says, upon compulsion; and if readings were as plenty as black-berries, I would adopt none of them upon compulsion. Besides, it does not appear that Bertram loves Helena at all. It is very presumable that Bertram swore, from Diana's taking him so roundly to task for the profanity of his oath. He said thus;

I was COMPELL'D to her, but I LOVE thee—

By LOVE's OWN sweet constraint—

i. e. I was forced to wed Helena, but thou art the woman I love.—She was my father's choice, thou art mine.—Yes, by all the powers of love, i. e. by that power which influenced my choice, thou art.—To which power, compared with the tyrannical authority of his father, he was very aptly and naturally induced to give the name of Love's own sweet constraint.

But, supposing he did not mean to swear by the powers or power of love at this particular conjuncture, it appears, I think, pretty evident, that this was his usual oath, or mode of vowing. Else, why should he answer, after being so severely schooled about his not swearing by the Highest, as the only holy object to swear by,

—Love is holy.

And my integrity ne'er knew the crafts,

That you do charge men with.

What then becomes of Dr. Warburton's acute and excellent conjecture, to which Dr. Johnson hath done the due honour of exalting it to the text? Dr. Warburton says, that Diana is not accusing Bertram for swearing by a Being not holy, but for swearing to an unholy purpose. Indeed, she is accusing him of both, and pleads the former as a proof of the latter. You cannot swear, says she, with any good design, or to any good purpose, when you swear by such profane objects. For, it is to be observed, that the words truth and true are not here confined to the mere veracity of the terms of the oath [*]. Diana did not doubt that Bertram had a love or a passion for her, according to the common acceptation of the term. It was to the other part of his vow that she alludes; for he not only tells her he loves her; but

—will for ever

Do her all rights of service.

To which she answers,

Ay, so you serve us,

'Till we serve you: but when you have our roses,

You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves,

And mock us with our bareness.

To this Bertram eagerly replies, ‘How have I sworn!’ To which Diana as shrewdly answers— ‘'Tis not the many oaths, &c.’ As much as if she had said, Ay, how indeed!—by a multiplicity of vague and profane oaths: but what are these, when there is neither a moral possibility of your performing your promise, nor would there be any moral rectitude in it if you did? For you cannot, in such case, take a single formal oath, and call the HIGHEST to witness the truth of your promise, without making a mock of his great attributes; viz. goodness and truth.

What then becomes of Dr. Johnson's first alteration; his supposed necessity of dividing this speech between Bertram and Diana; an alteration that would totally pervert the meaning of the passage?

As to his latter alteration, though it be less exceptionable, it is equally unnecessary. For, taking the meaning of the words in the sense above-mentioned, the whole is perfectly intelligible and consistent. If we take the High'st to witness, says Diana, (which, it is already observed, is done only when the intent of the oath is morally good) THEN, i. e. in that ease, pray tell me, ‘If I should swear by Jove's great attributes,’ i. e. goodness and truth,

I LOV'D YOU dearly, would YOU believe MY oaths

When I did love you ILL?—

i. e. wickedly, immorally.

—This has no holding,

To swear by HIM, whom I protest to LOVE,

That I will work against him.

i. e. This is inconsistent to swear by the God of truth and holiness, whom I protest to love, that I will act dishonestly and wickedly. Nay, should we even admit with Dr. Warburton and the Reviser, that ‘—This has no holding ’ means that the oath can never hold or is not binding; this will make no difference with regard to the alteration proposed; the meaning of the lines, in that case, being only similar to those of Pandulph to King John:

It is religion that doth make vows kept,

But thou hast sworn against religion:

By what thou swear'st against the thing thou swear'st.

But it may be asked, why doth Diana protest that she loves the supreme Being by whom she supposes herself to swear?—If we reflect, however, that this protestation is nothing more than that of her love to virtue, it is by no means improperly introduced to check Bertram's illicit passion, by depriving him of all hopes of success. For it is to be remarked, that though she barely mention the ill consequences to herself of being afterwards abandoned by Bertram, the point on which she dwells upon most, and seems to lay the greatest stress, is the immorality of the act. It may be added also, that, as Bertram hath not here made use of that very expression, in his vows to Diana, it is not impossible that she refers to some other conversation, in which he had not only sworn by love's own sweet constraint, but also by her own sweet self, in which case it is, with great propriety, she introduces, by way of antithesis, the protestation of her love to the God of truth and goodness, being opposed to any love she can possibly entertain for him.—And this supposition is not ill-founded, if we reflect on his calling her TITLED GODDESS, and his confessedly making use only of the oaths common to lovers.

My mother told me just how he would woo,

As if she sate in's heart; she says all men

Have the like oaths.—

As to the alteration, suggested in our editor's appendix, and founded on the bad print of the old folio, I am of a different opinion to Dr. Johnson, and think that, instead of making the difficulty less, it would make it much greater. I give my vote, therefore, for having the text stand as it did, before either Dr. Warburton or Dr. Johnson meddled with it;—except that the reader may, if he pleases, add a comma after HIM; ‘To swear by HIM, whom I protest to love.’

Vol. III. Page 372.

BERTRAM.

A pox on him, he's a cat still.

That is, says Dr. Johnson, throw him how you will, he lights on his legs.

But why Parolles is like a cat, in respect to lighting upon his legs, I cannot, for the life of me, discover. Bertram had said, on the discovery of Parolles to be a scoundrel, I could endure any thing before but a cat, and now he's a cat to me. On the exposition of his farther baseness, he says—he is more and more a cat; and at last, Pox on him, he's a cat still. But, as Bertram gives no hint that he hates a cat for lighting upon her legs, I cannot conceive where Dr. Johnson met with authority for his explanation.

It appears also, that one of our editor's friends was as much at a loss as I am; I mean Mr. Steevens, whose objection to this illustration is inserted in the appendix. ‘Bertram, says Mr. Steevens, means no such thing. In a speech or two before, he declares his aversion to a cat, and now only continues of the same opinion, and says, he hates Parolles as much as a cat. The other meaning will not do, as Parolles could not be meant by the cat, which lights always on its legs, for he is now in a fair way to be totally disconcerted.’

To this, however, Dr. Johnson thinks proper to give no other answer than this; ‘I am still of my former opinion.’

Well said Doctor Johnsonius Obstinatus! Let not loose thy opinion. Thou hast formed it; it is truly thy own conceit, and not a college of wit-crackers should flout me out of my humour.—Thou hast said it.—It is enough.—Thou art too exalted to condescend so low as to explain thyself. What are paltry readers, and contemptible critics?—I would give no man satisfaction! I!—

Vol. III. Page 386.

KING.

—Well—call him hither;

We're reconciled, and the first view shall kill

All repetition: let him not ask our pardon.

The nature of his great offence is dead,

And deeper than oblivion we do bury

Th' incensing relics of it.

Dr. Johnson is highly offended at the poet, for making the King so ready to forgive his son Bertram. ‘Shakespeare, says he, is now hastening to the end of the play, finds his matter sufficient to fill up his remaining scenes, and therefore, as on other such occasions, contracts his dialogue, and precipitates his action. Decency required that Bertram's double crime of cruelty and disobedience, joined likewise with some hypocrisy, should raise more resentment; and that, though his mother might easily forgive him, his king should more pertinaciously vindicate his own authority, and Helen's merit: of all this Shakespeare could not be ignonorant; but Shakespeare wanted to conclude his play.’

I shall not here undertake the defence of Shakespeare, as to the propriety of the King's readiness to forgive Bertram, though I think it might easily be done, if we reflect that the match proposed to the young prince was, in itself, very absurd and preposterous. The King laid the foundation for, and provoked, the act of disobedience in his son, which was therefore the more excusable; for it will hardly be admitted, by any person in his right senses, that the paternal authority of the King ought to have carried him so far as to degrade the heir apparent to his crown, by marrying him to the daughter of a quack, merely because she had had the good luck, by one of her father's nostrums, to cure his majesty of a fistula in ano.

This circumstance considered also, I think it should have obtained some little favour for the character of Bertram in general, as well from our editor, as from the very ingenious authoress of Shakespeare Illustrated; for though he be on the whole a loose, unprincipled fellow, yet I think the absurdity and cruelty of this forced marriage affords a great palliation of his crimes.

But my reason for stopping at this passage, is to remark another instance of our editor's readiness to censure Shakespeare. Here, truly, Shakespeare hath done wrong in contracting his dialogue, because he was in a hurry to finish his play: whereas, before the end of the play, Dr. Johnson finds fault with him again for making his dialogue too long [*]. Our editor's reasons for these inconsistent censures, however, are sufficiently evident. In the one case he had an opportunity of displaying the poet's precipitancy; and, in the other, of depreciating both his application and abilities.

Notes

*

I hope none of the learned doctors of Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, nor even those of Edinburgh, Glascow, or Lambeth, will be offended at the vulgarity of this comparison. Had they been invested, however, with their doctorial dignities at Rheims, Louvain, or Harderwyk, they would readily see into the propriety of comparing a diploma to a marrow-pudding. It is, indeed, a choice simile, but I cannot now tarry to illustrate it.

↵

*

But, as in Pandulph's speech, in the play of King John, page 449, where truth, applied also, in like manner, to an oath, relates, as our editor himself observes, to rectitude of conduct. Thus, when Diana says

'Tis not the many oaths that make the truth;

But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true;

she does not mean simply that a multiplicity of oaths will not make that true which is otherwise false; for this is not to be done at any rate; yet, what she means to say is confessely to be effected by ‘—the plain single vow that is vow'd true.’ What she means, therefore, is this; a multiplicity of vague and profane oaths will not justify any immoral conduct or design; but that any questionable design is to be justified only by the plain single vow, that is vowed true; i. e. sworn in a regular and sacred manner. And hence she proceeds to say, ‘What is not holy that we swear not by, &c.’

↵

*

Page 397.
He knows himself, &c.—]
This dialogue is too long, since the audience already knew the whole transaction; nor is there any reason for puzzling the King, and playing with his passions; but it was much easier than to make a pathetical interview between Helen and her husband, her mother, and the King.
JOHNSON.

—When was Shakespeare ever accused before of wilfully avoiding a proper opportunity of introducing pathetic scenes, on account of the difficulty of the task?

↵

KING JOHN.

Vol. III. Page 415.

PHILIP.

Knight, Knight, good mother—Basilisco like.

On this passage Mr. Theobald hath a long, and, I think, satisfactory note: he supposes the word Basilisco, and the repetition of Knight, Knight, to refer to an old stupid play called Soliman and Perseda.—

Dr. Warburton tells us the beauty of the passage consists in an allusion to a fixed star of the first magnitude in the constellation Leo. Having inserted the notes of both these commentators at length, the present editor makes very short work with his part of the business, by adding the following sagacious animadversion to the latter, ‘Could one have thought it!’

Could one have thought it, indeed! A mighty pretty way this, of writing annotations on Shakespeare! To copy two long notes from Theobald and Warburton, and then to exclaim, concerning some conundrum of the latter, Could one have thought it!—Neither your subscribers, nor your booksellers, I believe, Dr. Johnson, thought you would have fobbed them off so shabbily. For, indeed, when a man promised so fair, Could one have thought it?—But, perhaps, this is another stroke of our editor's WIT.—It is.—ha!—like enough—but, could one have thought it?

We have in this play several other notes of similar importance. Thus page 421, after a long note from Theobald, our editor adds, ‘Mr. Theobald had the art of making the most of his discoveries.’ But this remark, however true it ma• be in one sense, is far from being so in another: for though Dr. Johnson hath made very few discoveries of his own, he hath discovered the method of making more of Theobald's at second hand, than ever the author could do, when they were spick and span new.

Vol. III. Page 447.

CONSTANCE.

Lewis, stand fast; the devil tempts thee here

In likeness of a new and trimmed bride.

In this passage our editor hath two notes from Theobald and Warburton; after which ne adopts the opinion of Mr. Edwards, who had exposed the absurdity of the latter, but without mentioning him, as usual.—But I must not pass over a word or two, which Dr. Johnson hath dropt on this occasion. A commentator, he says, should be grave. But why, now, Doctor, should a commentator be grave? You seem very angry, in your Preface, with Mr. Pope, for supposing that the task of an editor must necessarily be dull. Now, though there is some distinction of blood between dullness and gravity, they are near a-kin; and so nearly alike in the face, that you might take them for sisters; ay, twins, with but half-an-hour's difference in their age. I dare say now that many of your mistaken readers have frequently thought even you dull, when I warrant you the Doctor was only grave. I do not think, therefore, a commentator should wear so much gravity. It is good to guard against mistakes, as they are frequently better prevented than amended. Not that I hold it decent for a scholiast to be always upon the broad grin; but if the author himself be chearful, or the absurdities of a brother commentator set him a laughing, where is the crime of indulging himself in it?—After this, let us hear no more of the gravity of a commentator [*].

Vol. III. Page 455.

—If the midnight bell

Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth

Sound ONE unto the drowsy race of night.

The folio edition has it sound ON; but our editor hath altered it either on the authority of Dr. Warburton, or his own, without giving any reason for such alteration. His friend Mr. Steevens, however, thinks the old reading right, and conceives the meaning to be this; ‘ if the midnight bell, by repeated strokes, was to hasten away the race of beings that are busy at that hour, or quicken night in its progress, the morning bell (that is the bell that strikes one) could never properly be made the agent, for the bell has ceased to be in the service of night when it proclaims the arrival of day. Sound ON has a particular propriety, because, by the repetition of the strokes at twelve, it gives a much more forcible warning than when it only strikes one. ’ —This criticism is admitted by Dr. Johnson into his appendix; but as he does not there retract his former judgment, we may suppose he still coincides with Dr. Warburton: or perhaps his own opinion is suspended between both. Mr. Steevens's note is ingenious enough indeed (as our editor expresses himself on another occasion) to deserve to be true; but if the single authority of the folio edition may be set aside, I am afraid the double authority of two such learned and tremendous critics as Dr. Johnson and the Bishop of Gloucester, will go likely to involve Shakespeare in the absurdity of supposing the clock strikes but one to acquaint us of midnight. For that the last right reverend critic doth not think midnight merely a point of time, dividing night from morning, is evident from his comment on another passage of Shakespeare's, in the Mid-summer Night's Dream, where, instead of the third part of a minute, he would have us read the third part of the midnight. Now points of time, as well as points of space, are unextended and indivisible; and yet the present editor makes no other objection to this proposed amendment, than that of silently rejecting it: but as this rejection is founded on other reasons than the impropriety here mentioned, we may very reasonably suppose that Dr. Johnson, as well as Dr. Warburton, hath found out that midnight is a determinate quantity of duration, comprehending at least all that space of time which elapses between twelve at night and one in the morning! This admitted, it is no wonder that Mr. Steevens's note should appear exceptionable; for if he, on the supposition that when night is past it must be morning, can with propriety call the bell which strikes twelve a midnight bell, they might with still more propriety, on their supposition, call that a midnight bell which strikes one.

My readers will probably think I have here set the commentators together by the ears, only to perplex and confound both them and the poet.—Not at all.—The commentators were at odds before I meddled with them; and I have only brought them together, to shew my own critical dexterity in reconciling them to each other, and extricating Shakespeare out of the hands of both.—For instance, now—To you, Mr. Steevens, I attribute the honour or having illustrated the poet's meaning, on the supposition that he wrote strike ON: but, Sir, I shall prove to your teeth, in savour of your opponents, that their reading of the text may be right; and this even from your own argument. You suppose that the bell, which strikes one, is a morning bell—granted—it hath been so a full hour; ever since the hand came to the point, and the clapper struck the first stroke of twelve. For you must not conceive that Time stands stock-still till the clock hath done striking the whole dozen: and if it does not, the bell must, according to you, be called a morning bell after the first stroke; so that we see there is even a physical impossibility of a midnight bell's striking more than ONE. What then becomes of your repeated strokes, and your midnight bell's striking ON? Silence that dreadful bell, then, it disturbs the text from its propriety.—EUGE, MAGNE.—Here was I going to congratulate myself on having topt all the commentators, even in their own way, and on the wonderful acuteness displayed in adjusting this nice dispute; but recollecting the fate of poor Theobald, and how severely he hath been handled for boasting and making the most of his discoveries, I will wrap myself up in the buff doublet of my own sufficiency, and leave the world to do justice to merit, or let it alone, as it thinks proper.

Notes

*
See Preface to Johnson's Shakespeare.
↵

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE impatience of the Author's acquaintance, to whom he had communicated the design of this Review, having induced him to publish the foregoing sheets, before he could have time to compleat the whole; the remainder of this work, containing similar remarks on the other five volumes of Dr. Johnson's Commentary, together with a Review of his Preface, will be published with all convenient speed.

The expedition with which these sheets have been written and hurried through the press, having occasioned the following errors, the reader is desired to correct them with his pen; as also such others of less consequence as may possibly have escaped the eye of the corrector.

ERRORS.

PAGE

LINE

INSTEAD OF

READ

4

4

and his heir

and his only heir.

19

20

and intent

an intent.

27

31

fear

fear'st.

35

2

reign

rain.

56

15

effects

affects.

59

26

spiritedly

insipidly.

64

ult.

he imputes

imputed.

86

14

if we consider

we are to consider.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Some Time after Christmas will be published, In one Volume, Octavo, Printed in the manner of the foregoing Sheets▪

A RAMBLE THROUGH THE IDLER'S DICTIONARY: IN WHICH ARE PICKED UP SEVERAL THOUSAND Etymological, Orthographical, and Lexicographical BLUNDERS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS REVIEW.

His Work demands a Volume, and it shall ••ve it.

Information about this book

Title statement

A review of Doctor Johnson's new edition of Shakespeare: in which the ignorance, or inattention, of that editor is exposed, ... By W. Kenrick.

Kenrick, W. (William), 1725?-1779.

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http://ota.ox.ac.uk/id/4127

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1106011260

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9781106011268

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K042903.000

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CW3309498898

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0047702200

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— A review of Doctor Johnson's new edition of Shakespeare: in which the ignorance, or inattention, of that editor is exposed, ... By W. Kenrick., Kenrick, W. (William), 1725?-1779.. xvi,133,[3]p. ; 8⁰. London :: printed for J. Payne,. 1765.. [With a final leaf of advertisement and errata.] [Reproduction of original from the British Library.] [English Short Title Catalog, ESTCT44884.] [Electronic data. Farmington Hills, Mich. : Thomson Gale, 2003. Page image (PNG). Digitized image of the microfilm version produced in Woodbridge, CT by Research Publications, 1982-2002 (later known as Primary Source Microfilm, an imprint of the Gale Group).]

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