unauthorised innovations on his language and his

metre.

Nor can we estimate the commentary of Warburton at a higher value; it is, in fact, little better than a tissue of the wildest and most licentious conjecture, in which his primary object seems to have been rather the exhibition of his own ingenuity than the elucidation of his author. It excited a transient admiration from the wit and learning which it displayed, though these were misplaced, and then dropped into irretrievable obli

vion.

When the mighty mind of Johnson addressed itself to the task of annotation, the expectations of the public were justly raised; much was hoped for, and much certainly was effected, but yet much of what had been anticipated remained undone. One of his greatest deficiencies sprang from his very partial aequaintance with the manners, customs, and superstitions of the age of Elizabeth; nor, indeed, were the predominating features of his intellect, powerful and extraordinary though they were, well associated with those of the poet he had to illustrate; they were too rugged, stern, and inflexible, wanting that plasticity, that comprehensive and imaginative play, which so wonderfully characterized the genius of Shakspeare. This dissimilarity of mental construction is no where more apparent than in the short summaries which he has annexed to the close of each drama, and which are nearly, if not altogether, void of that enthusiasm,

that tasteful yet discriminative warmth of approbation, which it is but natural to suppose the study of such splendid efforts of genius would have generated in any ardent mind. Many of his notes, however, display much acumen in the developement and explanation of intricate and verbally obscure passages; and his preface, though somewhat too elaborate in its diction, and rather too methodically distributive of its praise and blame, is certainly, both as to its style and tone of criticism, one of the noblest compositions in our language.

Perhaps there is not in the annals of literature a more striking contrast than that which obtains between the prefaces of Johnson and Capell, brought into immediate comparison as they were by being published so nearly together; for, whilst the former is remarkable as one of the most splendid and majestic efforts of an author distinguished for the dignity of his composition, the latter is written in a style peculiarly obsolete and almost beyond precedent, bald, disjointed, and uncouth. Capell, however, as I have already observed, had not only the merit of opening, but of entering upon the best mode of illustrating his author; and the frank avowal of his plan led Steevens, who had reprinted, as early as 1766, twenty of the old quarto copies of Shakspeare's plays, to cultivate with equal assiduity and more dispatch the same curious and neglected field. The first fruits of his research into the literature and costume of the age of Shakspeare appeared in his coadjutorship with

Johnson in a new edition of the poet in 1773, in ten volumes octavo. From this period, until his death in 1800, Steevens was incessantly and enthusiastically employed upon his favourite author: a second edition, almost entirely under his revision, appeared in 1778; a third, superintended by Mr. Reed, in 1785; and a fourth, of which, though in the title-page he retained the name of Johnson, he might justly be considered as the independent editor, in 1793. On this last edition, occupying fifteen volumes octavo, and which was subsequently enlarged, by materials which he left behind him, to twenty-one volumes of the same size, and printed under the care of Mr. Reed in 1803, the reputation of Steevens, as an editor and commentator, must entirely rest.

That in the first of these capacities he possessed an uncommon share of industry and perseverance, cannot be denied; for it is recorded that, whilst preparing the edition of 1793, he devoted to it "solely, and exclusively of all other attentions, a period of eighteen months; and during that time. he left his house every morning at one o'clock with the Hampstead patrole, and proceeding without any consideration of the weather or the season, called up the compositor, and woke all his devils."

Vide Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 70, p. 178. This article, which appears to have been written by Mr. Burke, closes with the following very impressive and momentous truth; commenting on the acknowledged talents and erudition of Mr. Steevens, he adds: "When Death, by one stroke, and in one moment,

B

But unfortunately this editorial assiduity, accom panied as it was by great attention to the collation of the oldest copies of his author, was broken in upon and vitiated by his frequent attempts to restore what he conceived wanting to the metrical harmony of the text. He had, in fact, neither heart nor ear for many of the sweetest and most fanciful strains of Shakspeare; and poetry with him being synonymous with accuracy of versification, he hesitated not to adopt many unauthorised readings for the sole purpose of rendering a line mechanically exact; a practice which has, as may well be imagined, very greatly diminished the value of his labours.h

As a commentator, Mr. Steevens possessed many of the first requisites for the due execution of his task. He was a man of great learning and eloquence, and, in many instances, of great sagacity.

makes such a dispersion of knowledge and intellect—when such a man is carried to his grave-the mind can feel but one emotion we consider the vanity of every thing beneath the sun,WE PERCEIVE WHAT SHADOWS WE ARE, AND WHAT SHADOWS WE PURSUE."

"Mr. Steevens," observes Mr. Kemble," had no ear for the colloquial metre of our old dramatists: it is not possible, on any other supposition, to account for his whimsical desire, and the pains he takes, to fetter the enchanting freedom of Shakspeare's numbers, and compel them into the heroic march and measured cadence of epic versification. The 'native woodnotes wild,' that could delight the cultivated ear of Milton, must not be modulated anew, to indulge the fastidiousness of those who read verses by their fingers." Macbeth and Richard the Third: An Essay, by J. P. Kemble, p. 101.

and acumen; and, above all, he was most intimately conversant with the language and literature, the manners, customs, and superstitions of the age of Shakspeare. But he had with these and other mental endowments, many counteracting qualities and defects, and such, indeed, as have thrown no little odium on his memory. He had, for instance, both wit and humour in no very measured degree, but neither temper nor mercy to controul them; and he had vivacity of imagination, and great point in expression, without a particle of poetic taste and feeling. From a mind thus constituted, much of illustration, and much also of what is revolting and disgusting, might be expected; and these are, in fact, the characteristics of the commentary of George Steevens, in which, whilst a stream of light is often thrown upon the writings of the poet through the editor's intimacy with the obsolete literature of a former age, there runs through a great part of his annotations a vein of the most unsparing though witty ridicule, often indulged at the expense of those whom he had himself entrapped into error, and of which a principal object seems to have been that of irritating the feelings, and exulting over the supposed sufferings of contemporary candidates for critical fame. Nor was this sportive malignancy the worst feature in the literary conduct of Steevens; there was a pruriency in his imagination which led him to dwell with revolting minuteness on any allusion of his