Slander'st no laws, prophan'st no holy page, Our poets frequently boast of this chastity of language themselves. See the prologue to The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Lovelace, a poet of no small eminence, speaks of the great delicacy of expression even in the Custom of the Country. "View here a loose thought said with such a grace, Yet of this play Dryden asserts that it contains more bawdry than all his plays together. What must we say of these different accounts? Why it is clear as day, that the stile of the age was so changed, that what was formerly not esteemed in the least degree indecent, was now become very much so; just as in Chaucer, the very filthiest words are used without disguise, and says Beaumont in excuse for him, he gave those expressions to low characters, with whom they were then in common use, and whom he could not therefore draw naturally without them. The same plea is now necessary for Beaumont himself and all his contemporary dramatic poets; but there is this grand and essential difference between the gross expressions of our old poets, and the more delicate lewdness of modern plays. In the former, gross expressions are generally the language of low life, and are given to characters which are set in despicable lights: in the latter, lewdness is frequently the characteristic of the hero of the comedy, and so intended to inflame the passions and corrupt the heart. Thus much is necessary in defence, not only of our authors, but of Mr. Sympson and myself, for engaging in the publication of works which contain a great many indecencies, which we could have wished to have been omitted; and which, when I began to prepare my part of the work for the press, I had actually struck off, as far as I could do it without injuring the connexion of the context; but the booksellers pressed, and indeed insisted upon their restoration: they very sensibly urged the last-mentioned plea, and thought that the bare notion of a curtailed edition would greatly prejudice the sale of it. We hope therefore that the reader will not be too severe on the editors of works which have great excellencies, and which in general tend to promote virtue and chastity, though the custom of the age made the authors not entirely abstain from expressions not then esteemed gross, but which now must offend every modest ear. Hitherto we have treated of our authors and their merit, something must be added of the attempt of the present editors to clear them from that mass of confusion and obscurity flung upon them by the inaccuracy of former editors, or what was worse, by the wilfulness and ignorance of our old players, who kept most of their plays many years in manuscript as mere play-house properties, to be changed and mangled by every new actor's humour and fancy. As this was the case of most of our old plays, the learned Mr. Upton seems strangely mistaken in asserting that no more liberty ought to be taken in the correction of the old [mangled] text of Shakespeare, than with the two first [accurate] editions of Paradise Lost. 13 Fletcher, bishop of London. Upon Upon this groundless assertion are built those very undeserved reflections upon the eminent editors of Shakespeare who are compared to the vice of the old comedy beating their author's original text with their daggers of lath. Surely something very different from such sarcasm is due from every true lover of Shakespeare to those editors whose emendations have cleared so many obscurities, and made so many readers study and perceive innumerable excellencies which had otherwise been passed over unnoted and perhaps despised. For verbal criticism, when it means the restoring the true reading to the mangled text, very justly holds the palm from every other species of criticism, as it cannot be performed with success without comprehending all the rest; it must clearly perceive the stile, manner, characters, beauties and defects: and to this must be added some sparks of that original fire that animated the poet's own invention. No sooner therefore were criticisms wrote on our English poets, but each deepred scholar whose severer studies had made him frown with contempt on poems and plays, was taken in to read, to study, to be enamoured: he rejoiced to try his strength with the editor, and to become a critic himself: nay, even Dr. Bentley's strange absurdities in his notes on Milton, had this good effect, that they engaged a Pearce* to answer, and perhaps were the first motives to induce the greatest poet, the most universal genius,+ one of the greatest orators, and one of the most industrious scholars in the kingdom each to become editors of Shakespeare. A Pope, a Warburton, and a Hanmer did honour to the science by engaging in criticism; but the worth of that science is most apparent from the distinction Mr. Theobald gained in the learned world, who had no other claim to honour but as a critic on Shakespeare. In this light his fame remains fresh and unblasted, though the lightning of Mr. Pope and the thunder of Mr. Warburton have been both launched at his head. Mr. Pope being far too great an original himself to submit his own taste to that of Shakespeare's was fairly driven out of the field of criticism by the plain force of reason and argument; but he soon retired to his poetic citadel, and from thence played such a volley of wit and humour on his antagonist, as gave him a very grotesque profile on his left; but he never drove him from his hold on Shakespeare, and his countenance on that side is still clear and unspotted. Mr. Warburton's attack was more dangerous, but though he was angry from the apprehension of personal injuries, yet his justice has still left Mr. Theobald in possession of great numbers of excellent emendations, which will always render his name respectable. The mention of the merit of criticism in establishing the taste of the age, in raising respect in the contemptuous, and attention in the careless readers of our old poets, naturally leads us to an enquiry, Whence it comes to pass, that whilst almost every one buys and reads the works of our late critical editors, nay almost every man of learning aims at imitating them and making emendations himself, yet it is still the fashion to flirt at the names of critic and commentator, and almost Dr. Zachary Pearce, late Bishop of Rochester. R.] + Mr. Seward here ascribes to Bentley's notes on Milton consequences which they did not produce: Mr. Pope's Edition of Shakespeare appeared several years before Bentley published his edition of Milton; and, from the date and contents of the celebrated Letter of bishop Warburton to Concannen (which, although it has not yet found its way to the press, Dr. Akenside says, "will probably be remembered as long as any of this prelate's writings,") it manifestly appears, that the notes of that learned editor were, what he asserts them in his Preface to have been, " among his younger amusements," and consequently prior to the publication of Bentley's Milton. R.] to to treat the very science with derision. The enquiry has been often made by critics themselves, and all have said, that it was owing to the strange mistakes and blunders of former critics, to mens engaging in a science which they had neither learning nor talents to manage and adorn. Each thinking himself exempt from the censure, and each having it retorted upon him in his turn. If this is the case, I am afraid all remedy is hopeless; if the great names above-mentioned did really want abilities for the province they undertook, who shall dare to hope that he possesses them? If frequent mistakes in an editor are totally to sink his merit, who can escape the common wreck?-But I am far from thinking this to be the sole or even the principal cause; and the two, which I shall assign as much greater inlets to this disgrace on the art of criticism, are such as to admit of the easiest remedy in the world, a remedy in the power of critics themselves, and which their own interest loudly calls on them all to apply. The first cause is; that in a science the most fallible of all others, depending in a great measure on the tottering bottom of mere conjecture, almost every critic assumes the air of certainty, positiveness and infallibility; he seems sure never to miss his way, though in a wilderness of confusion, never to stumble in a path always gloomy and sometimes as dark as midnight. Hence he dogmatizes, when he should only propose, and dictates his guesses in the despotic stile. The reader, and every rival editor, catches the same spirit, all his faults become unpardonable, and the demerit of a few mistakes shall overwhelm the merit of all his just emendations: He deems himself perfect, and perfection is demanded at his hands; and this being no where else found but by each writer in his own works, every putter-forth of two or three emendations swells as big, and flings his spittle as liberally on a Warburton, a Hanmer, or a Theobald, as if he were the giant and they the dwarfs of criticism; and he has, upon the supposition of perfection being necessary, this evident advantage of them, that an editor of three or four emendations has a much better chance to avoid mistakes than the editor of three or four thousand; though it has generally happened, that they who were very obscure in merit have had their demerits as glaring as the most voluminous editors. From the same source arises the second still more remarkable cause of critical disgrace, it is the ill language and ungentleman-like treatment which critics have so frequently given their rivals. If the professors of the same science are continually cuffing and buffeting each other, the world will set them on, laugh at, and enjoy the ridiculous scuffle. Is it not amazing, that ignorant, absurd, blundering dunces and blockheads should be the common epithets and titles, that gentlemen of learning and liberal education bestow on each other, for such mistakes as they know that all their brother critics have been constantly guilty of, and which nothing but the vainest self-sufficiency can make them suppose themselves exempt from? "eheu Quam temere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam !” If we ourselves are guilty of the very same sort of mistakes for which we stigmatize others as blunderers and blockheads, we brand our own foreheads by our own verdict, obliquy upon us is bare justice, and we become blunderers and blockheads upon record. The first remarkable introducer* * of critical editions of our English poets thought his superior learning gave him a right to tyrannise and trample upon all his rival editors; but having none to exercise his fury upon, in his edition of Paradise Lost, he raised a phantom editor, in the person of whom he flung dirt upon Milton himself. But the present worthy bishop of Bangor not only cleared his beloved poet from such unjust aspersions, but shewed that he could answer slander, sneer and obliquy, with decency, candour, and good manners. Happy had it been for the learned world, had those excellent notes been at first joined to Milton's text; that his candour, and not the other's coarseness, might have been the standard of critical language; but as great part of those notes are now engrafted into Dr. Newton's elegant edition, it is to be hoped that they will henceforth become so. Happy for us had it been too, if Sir Thomas Hanmer had carried on that candour and good manners which appear in his Preface into a body of notes upon his author; he had not only placed his emendations in a much fairer and more conspicuous light; he had not only avoided the objection which some have made of an arbitrary insertion of his alterations into the text; but he would have set us an example of elegance and politeness of stile, which we must perhaps in vain hope for from any man, that has not been long exercised in one of the great schools of rhetoric, the houses of parliament; unless some other eminent orator or another speaker should become an editor, as well as a patron of criticisms. Mr. Theobald, who was a much better critic on Shakespeare than Dr. Bentley had been on Milton, yet followed the doctor's stile and manner, and in some measure deserved the lash he smarted under in the Dunciad; for though he had a right to correct Mr. Pope's errors upon Shakespeare, he had none to use so exalted a character with the least disrespect, much less with derision and contempt. Mr. Upton, a gentleman of very distinguished literature, has in his Remarks on Shakespeare followed this stile of triumph and insult over his rival critics, and as this gentleman will, I hope, long continue his services to the learned world, I will endeavour to convince him of the injustice and ill policy of such treatment of them. The best canon to judge of an editor's merits, seems to be a computation of the good and bad alterations which he has made in the text; if the latter are predominant he leaves his author worse than he found him, and demerits only appear at the bottom of the account: If the good are most numerous, put the bad ones on the side of debtor, balance the whole, and we shall easily see what praises are due to him. Now if some hundred good ones remain upon balance to each of the three last editors of Shakespeare, how unjust is it for a publisher of only thirty or forty alterations (supposing them all to be perfectly just) to speak with contempt of those, whose merits are so much more conspicu-ous than his own? But to do this, without an assurance of being himself exempt from the like mistakes, is as impolitic as it is unjust. I have not now time for an examination of this gentleman's criticisms on Shakespeare; but I will choose a very particular specimen of his mistakes, for it shall be the very same which a real friend of this gentleman published as a specimen of his excellencies, in Mr. Dodsley's Museum, a monthly pamphlet then in great repute. This specimen consisted of two alterations which the letter-writer thought very happy ones. The first was in Antony and Cleopatra, act ii. scene iv. The Soothsayer thus advises Antony to shun the society of Cæsar. [Afterwards bishop of Rochester. R.] "O Antony, "O Antony, stay not by his side. Thy dæmon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is Where Cæsar's is not. But near him thy angel i.e. becomes not only fearful but even fear itself. The image is extremely Το saucy doubts and fears." Thus God himself personises fear, and sends it among the Canaanites as the harbinger of Israel. Exodus xxiii. and xxvii. And again in Ezekiel xxx. 13. He says, I will put a fear in the land of Egypt. Thus the companions of Mars in Homer are Aiuos de Pobos, A. 440. Terror and fear. But the instance the most apposite, is in The Maid's Tragedy, where the forlorn Aspatia sees her servant working the story of Theseus and Ariadne, and thus advises her to punish the perfidy of the former. Here though fear could only in painting be expressed on their countenances, yet poetry goes farther, "and gives to airy nothings A local habitation and a name.' These are those great strokes which a man must be born with a soul to perceive as well as write, otherwise not all the reading of an Upton or a Bentley can give the least idea of them. These are those inimitable graces of poetry which a critic's pencil should no more dare to retouch than a modern painter should the cheek or eye of a Raphael's Madona. For see how flat and dim it will appear in this gentleman's celebrated alteration: he reads, "but near him thy angel Becomes afear'd.” * How [* Mr. Seward here introduces a note containing a very prolix commentary on some pas sages in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra—In the lines, he "If we draw lots, he speeds; His cocks do win the battle still of mine, But mine in-hoop'd at odds," says there is "evidently a sad anti-climax: His cocks win the battle of mine when it is all to nought on my side, and his quails, fighting in a hoop, beat mine when the odds are on my side;" and would therefore read, "Beat |