GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. AUGUST, 1844. BY SYLVANUS URBAN, GENT. CONTENTS. .... ...... ...... PAGE 114 115 136 137 MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.-Mr. Blaauw's History of the Barons' War.- LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. .... ..... 145 .. 147 151 153 New Publications, 178; University of Oxford-University of CambridgeRoxburghe Club-The Percy Society, 182; The Ray Society--Northern Church of England School, 183; Jews' Literary and Scientific InstitutionBritish and Foreign Institute ... .... FINE ARTS.-Royal Commission of the Fine Arts, 184; Panorama of Baalbec Promotions and Preferments, 199; Births, 200; Marriages..... DEATHS, arranged in Counties.. 203-216 Registrar-General's Returns of Mortality in the Metropolis-Markets—Prices MINOR CORRESPONDENCE. In our review of Mr. Blaauw's History of the Barons' War we obiected to his referring continually to the Political Songs published in Mr. Wright's volume edited for the Camden Society, in such manner as to lead the reader to suppose that he had derived his knowledge from the MSS. instead of from Mr. Wright's book, especially as we stated that Mr. Wright's name never appears in Mr. Blaauw's book. Mr. Blauw has pointed out to us in reference to this passage that Mr. Wright's name does once appear in his book with commendation, namely in a table of references appended to his preface. We willingly admit that we overlooked that mention of Mr. Wright when writing the passage alluded to, but we cannot think that such a mention is sufficient, or that it at all affects the question we raised. Mr. Blauuw derived his knowledge from Mr. Wright's book, but, instead of saying so and referring to the book in the usual way, he referred to the Originals thus, " Polit. Song from Harl. MS." "from MS, of the 13th cent." and so forth. This description of reference claimed for Mr. Blaauw the use of the originals, and negatived the use of the book, which nevertheless Mr. Blaauw did use. With a multitude of these references before him the Quarterly Reviewer praised Mr. Blauuw's research, and expressed surprise that he had not seen and used Mr. Wright's book, a clear proof that Mr. Blaauw's solitary mention of Mr. Wright was insufficient, and that the references were calculated to mislead. We are ready and pleased to believe Mr. Blaauw's assurance that he had no in. tention to mislead any one, but we should not have satisfied our critical conscience if we had not pointed out that he had misled the Quarterly Reviewer, and had adopted a mode of reference calculated to mislead generally. "Honour to whom honour;" let Mr. Blaauw have the honour of having written a very useful volume, and Mr. Wright the honour of having brought to light by his research a valuable portion of Mr. Blaauw's materials. MR. W. T. P. SHORTT, in answer to the inquiry in p. 2 into the origin of the name of Tooke, submits that it is not Danish or Saxon, but British in all probability. The root of it, in his opinion, is the old British or Celtic Tog, a leader or commander, (root of the Latin Dux,) and the verb togüis, or in modern diction tyuys, to lead, from which is tyüysaüc, a leader. Toguis Maël (modernized Tywys Vael,) is the Prince of Leading. Of the same came the brother of Caractacus in Tacitus, among the chiefs of the Silures, named Togodumnus Toga Dain r In answer to T. W. (p. 2, who is quired where West's original sketches to the stained glass that was begun for the west window of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, are to be found, MB. RESTON states that the finished study that was made for the painter on glass to work from, which is a painting by West in oil colours, the subject the Crucifixion, with all the attendant circumstances mentioned by the different evangelists, is in the possession of George Loddiges, esq. Hackney. We may add that the reason for the inquiry was that, the Dean and Canons of Windsor having presented the unfinished glass to the Lord Bishop of Calcutta for his new cathedral church, Mr. Willement, in whose hands the glass has been placed for completion, was desirous of knowing whether a complete sketch or the full-size drawings were in existence, and if so where they could be referred to, as a considerable part of the glass yet remains untouched. Mr. Renton's information very kindly removes a great difficulty. MR. MALLESON states, that by an inadvertency on his part his reading of the inscription on the second quarry, pre. sumed to have been inscribed by Evelyn, was incorrectly given in our June Magazine. He reads it, "Thou that betrayst mee to this flame, MR. GEORGE B. RICHARDSON, of Newcastle upon Tyne, requests any information respecting the family of Elstob of Foxden, eo. Durh, and particularly of Elizabeth and William Elstob, the famous Saxonists, who were born in Newcastle. He has already referred to the more popular P. 103. The Hon. Charles Stuart Wortley was the second, and not the youngest, son of Lord Wharncliffe, THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. Conjectural Emendations on the Text of Shakspere, with Observations on the Notes of the Commentators. WHEN the original fertility of nature begins to be exhausted, the science of agriculture commences and when the age of original genius has passed, that of criticism begins, by which another source of pleasure is opened to the mind; whether seen in its higher province as in the pages of Aristotle and Longinus, where it appears as the guide of taste and the handmaid of genius, pointing out the latent sources of beauty, and forming laws for the future regulation of authors, after the models of established excellence; or whether it undertakes, like the later critics of the Alexandrian school, the humbler yet honourable province of purifying and amending the text in those works on which time has stamped the seal of approbation; whether by removing the errors and correcting the blemishes of transcribers, or by explaining the language that has become antiquated or obsolete, and throwing light on customs and manners which have long been changed and forgotten. Since the days of the revival of literature, the most illustrious names have appeared among the critics and commentators. Politian esteemed it to be the highest glory to explain the language and expatiate on the beauties of the Homeric poems; and we remember hearing Professor Porson say, with that modesty which always accompanies real learning," Why should I think of writing, when such an author as Euripides still wants assistance and emendation?" Influenced by such reasons as these, many very ingenious persons, and some even of the highest fame themselves, have devoted much time and labour to the study and improvement of the text of Shakspere, being willing rather to sail with their little barks attendant on his illustrious progress, than to venture out in bolder excursions of their own. Certainly there is room even in these later days for the application of various learning and conjectural ingenuity to the injured pages of our great dramatist. Steevens says,— "Every reimpression of our great dramatic master's works must be considered in some degree as experimental, for their corruptions and obscurities are still so numerous, and the progress of fortunate conjecture so tardy and uncertain, that our remote descendants may be perplexed by passages that have perplexed us, and the readings which have hitherto disunited the opinions of the learned may continue to disunite them as long as England and Shakspere have a name." The same critic mentions, as the chief cause of these errors," that the vitiations of a careless theatre were seconded by those of as ignorant a press." Yet in the attempt at the removal of mistakes, and the restoration of a purer and better text, there is danger lying on either side from timidity or rashness; he who avoids Scylla may fall into Charybdis. On the one hand may be seen the error of reviving obsolete and barbarous expressions, of defending anomalous constructions, and supporting typographical blunders or histrionie interpolations on the other lies the equal danger of indulging too widely in conjectural emendation; of interpreting ancient expressions by moderu ideas; of attempting to improve the author instead of explaining him,* and of using the poet's text only as a pedestal on which to raise the fame and perpetuate the talents of the commentator. Each of these errors has for a time prevailed. The earlier editors, as Rowe and Pope and others, most indulged in wide deviation from the established text. "Hoc vero non est criticam, sed poeticen exercere." The succeeding critics, among whom the name of Theobald is to be found, learned to touch it with a more timid hand, and supplied the place of rash conjecture by a more careful collation of the oldeditions, and by bringing illustrations in language and construction from those contemporary with the poet: but we are afraid when we look into the latest editions that the stream of critical industry is again changing its channel; instead of the patient and sure mode of improvement in a diligent study of the language of the time, we sometimes meet with a boldness of conjecture which would have astonished Warburton himself; and sometimes, when other means of illustration have been applied in vain, such a laborious attempt to extract sense and meaning from language as it never could convey to common apprehension, or be reconciled with grammatical construction, "inanibus hariolationibus aërem verberantes." The two former editors, whose names their respective editions bear, and who might be called the rival chairmen of the Shakspere committee, Steevens and Malone, together with their mutual auxiliaries and followers, differed as to the very principle and foundation on which their critical ingenuity should be applied. Steevens says, "Shakspere has suffered more certain injury from interpolation than omission." Malone's opinion is, "that it is safer to add than to omit." Steevens expunges when the measure is redundant, and corrects when it is deranged, and when no idea is lost by the omission that is meant to be expressed. Malone adopts another plan in cases of difficulty, and inserts lines of his own to supply fancied deficiencies or improve imperfect constructions, so that the language of the two editors somewhat resembles that of the drama, LEAR.-NO. By this we see that the two great beacon lights can never be brought to bear together on the dangerous passages, sufficiently to enable our inexperienced barks to keep with safety in the proper channel of criticism. Each person is therefore left to his own taste and knowledge; and, should. *Paulus Manutius, in his restoration of an author's text, seems to have proceeded on the principle of the oculist, who considered that an eye which he had brushed was much more brilliant than any that had only been touched by the hand of Nature. "Sed ut medici, non eos solum qui ægrotant, sed eos etiam qui satis commode habent, quandoque curant, ut ad naturæ beneficium addito artis adjunculo, quam optimam valitudinem et speciem consequantur; sic nos, non ea modo quæ, errorum tenebris involuta, minus perspicua sunt, sed siquid ejusmodi est, quod lectori omnino non lateat, quanto magis possumus, correctione illustramus." (In Cic.) he be successful in his pursuit, it must be by the union of patient thought, assisted by well-directed reading, and heightened by that poetical feeling and taste, without which the best and clearest understanding can be no judge of poetry. It was said by a very witty person,* in allusion to the frontispiece in Warburton's edition of Pope, "that the poet looked one way and the commentator another;" and so it must be if they are not of kindred minds; and the defect will be most apparent when the sentiments to be judged of are of the finest texture, and when a deep poetic sensibility can alone feel where the line of truth extends. Milton says "that to derive instruction from a book the reader must bring a mind superior to it ;" but that cannot well be, and it would be safer to say, a mind of the same class and endowed by nature with similar powers; otherwise it is to be feared that an increase of learning may tend to lead us further astray, and our massive piles of erudition will only be a weight to extinguish the poet's flame, instead of being fuel to support it. Yet the task of improvement must be attempted, for no one would now dispute the assertion of a former editor, "that a blind fidelity to the oldest printed copies is on some occasions a confirmed treason against the sense, spirit, aud versification of Shakspere." Pope had previously observed, "that the folio as well as the quartos were printed from no better copies than the prompter's-book or piecemeal parts, written out for the use of the actors; for in some places their very names are set down instead of the persona dramatis; and in others the notes of direction to the property men for their moveables, and to the players for their entries, are inserted into the text through the ignorance of the transcribers; in short, by his account, the havoc they committed on the beautiful body of Shakespeare's poetry was as extensive as fatal; by arbitrary division of acts, by transposition of scenes, by omission and transposition of verses, by confounding and mixing characters, by putting speeches into the mouths of wrong characters, and lastly, from inability to distinguish prose from verse; to these must be added, the typographical errors of an ignorant and uncorrected press, till we perhaps may wonder that the injuries have not been more frequent and more fatal. Theobald says justly, "We may consider Shakspere as a writer of whom no authentic manuscript was left extant, as a writer whose pieces were dispersedly performed on several stages then in being; that many pieces were taken down in shorthand, and imperfectly copied by ear from a representation; others were printed from piecemeal parts surreptitiously obtained from the theatres ; and, when the players took on them to publish Shakspere's works entire, every theatre was ransacked to supply the copy, and parts collected which had gone through as many changes as performers, either from mutilations or additions made to them." Johnson sums up the whole amount of mischief in the following words: "The faults are more than could have occurred without the concurrence of many causes. The style of Shakspere was in itself ungrammatical, perplexed, and obscure; his works were transcribed for the players by those who may be supposed to have seldom understood them they were transmitted by copiers equally unskilful, who still multiplied errors; they were perhaps sometimes mutilated by the actors for the sake of shortening the speeches; and were at last printed without cor John Wilkes. This saying has been wrongly given to another man of wit,George Steevens. |