"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 poetical; for as Antony's dæinon was according to the heathen theology personised and made something different from Antony, so the passion of fear is not only personised, but even pluralised: The imagination beholds many fears, and Antony's spirit, becomes one of them. Thus doubts and fears are personised in Macbeth, and become his vexatious companions. 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 Δείμος τ' ἠδέ Φόβος, Δ. 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 passages in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra-In the lines, -" If we draw lots, he speeds; His cocks do win the battle still of mine, But mine in-hoop'd at odds," he 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 How should we have flatned our authors if we had, as the Rehearsal calls it, transprosed them in the like manner? "In this place work a quicksand, And over it a shallow smiling water, And his ship ploughing it, and them afear'd; The second instance quoted in the Museum as a proof of Mr. Upton's excellency, is his alteration of another of Shakespeare's peculiar graces in the following celebrated passage. "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot: In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice." The epithet delighted in the fourth line is extremely beautiful, as it carries on the fine antithesis between the joys of life and the horrors of death., This sensible warm motion must become a kneaded clod, and this spirit, delighted as it has hitherto been with the soothing delicacies of sense and the pleasing ecstacies of youthful fancy, must bathe in fiery floods. 'This is peculiarly proper from a youth just snatched from revelry and wantonness, to suffer the anguish and horror of a shameful death. But this beautiful sense not being seen, Mr. Upton makes the first editor surprisingly blind indeed, for he says that he did not see the absurdity of a spirit's being delighted to bathe in fiery floods. Upon supposition therefore of this absurdity being chargeable on the old text, he alters delighted spirit to delinquent spirit: A change which totally loses the whole spirit of the poet's original sentiment. These are such mistakes that neither the most extensive literature nor the accuracy of a Locke's judgment can secure a man from; nor indeed any thing but a poetic taste, a soul that "Is of imagination all compact," "Beat mine in whoop'd-at odds." Dr. Johnson mentions and rejects this variation; Dr. Farmer denies the necessity of change. "The editions (says Seward) which distinguish Antony's speech (as conjectured by Cleopatra, act i. sc. v.) either by Italics or commas, make him only say, Where's my serpent of old Nile?' the rest is Cleopatra's own.-Antony's speech should be continued as the metaphor is, -Where's my serpent of old Nile? With most delicious poison?' "Both parts belong to him." No editor of Shakespeare mentions this. For BROAD-fronted Cæsar he would substitute BALD-fronted. This Steevens notices. Mr. Seward also reprobates Hanmer's alteration of arm-gaunt to arm-girt; "I suppose (says he) he meant with arms or shoulders bound round with trappings. The expression is very stiff in this sense, and justly rejected by Mr. Warburton, who restores arm-gaunt, and explains it of a war-horse grown gaunt or lean by long marches and frequent fights. But why must Antony, after a profound peace and a long revel in the arms of Cleopatra, upon his return to Rome, have nothing to ride but an old battered lean war-horse? Besides, lean horses are seldom remarkable like this for neighing loud and vigorously. By arm we all understand the shoulder. in Latin, Armus; gaunt is lean or thin. It is common for poets to mention the most distinguished beauty of any thing to express beauty in general, by synecdoche a part is put for the whole: Arm-gaunt therefore signifies thin-shouldered, which we know to be one of the principal beauties of a horse, and the epithet has, from the uncommon use of either part of the compound word in this sense, an antique dignity and grandeur in sound that poets much delight in." Edwards sneers at this; but surely Mr. Seward's argument is judicious] VOL. I. h That That can follow Shakespeare in his stupendous flights, "And shoot from earth to Heav'n, from Heav'n to earth." But should such a genius contemn and deride men of cooler reason and superior knowledge? No; nor should the deep-read scholar despise him. Great learning and quickness of parts very rarely meet in one breast: When they do, they are excellent indeed; but separately they are extremely valuable. Far therefore from contempt or variance, they should, like sister-sciences, love and accord, and each in honour prefer the other to itself. Mr. Upton possesses the first of these characters in a very eminent degree, and the* learned world have only to complain of his imposing mere conjectures upon them for absolute certainties, and of his rough treatment of his brother critics, and then to acknowledge its obligations to him for many judicious criticisms and emendations on Shakespeare and other authors. Shakespeare alone is a vast garden of criticism, where though the editors have pulled up great numbers of weeds, and the view is much improved, yet many are still left, and each of the editors have mistakingly pulled up some flowers which want to be replaced. And this will be the fate of every critic who knows not every single word, history, custom, trade, &c. that Shakespeare himself knew, which at this distance of time is next to an impossibility. What room therefore for quarrels and insults upon each other? Veniam petimusque damusque, should be our general rule and motto. Without this we in this edition stand self-condemned. Beaumont and Fletcher are another field of criticism next in beauty to Shakespeare, and like him over-run with weeds, many of which are, we hope, now rooted out; and some real flowers, we fear, mistakingly pluckt up with them. Far therefore from the least pretence to perfection, from the least right to impose our conjectures as infallible; we have only inserted those in the text which for the reasons assigned in the notes appeared more probable than the former readings. We have endeavoured to give fair play to the old text, by turning it on every side, and allowing it all the interpretations we could possibly affix to the words, and where it appeared corrupt, we never inserted our own reading without giving what we thought a probable account of the method how such a change had been before made. At least, as I can properly speak for myself only, these were the rules I always wish to have followed, and endeavoured to follow, as soon as I became a principal in the work. But the share which I had in it, gives not the least room for any thing like completion on my part. The assistance which I gave Mr. Theobald and Mr. Sympson, who published about two thirds of the work, was by necessary avocations intermitted through several plays, and the others more or less attended to, as business or company would permit, or as the plays seemed more or less to deserve attention. To what I printed myself, I only dedicated some few of the many leisure hours which I had in a country village, hoping for pardon for the idleness rather than merit from the usefulness of the work. If these notes should ever go through a second edition, I shall gratefully acknowledge any emendations either of them or the text of our Authors, which any reader will favour me with; and must say to each, -“Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.” [* Seward here introduces a very long note, to refute sundry opinions of Upton on scriptural topics: As nothing can be more distant from our subject, we have omitted it.] COMMENDATORY COMMENDATORY POEMS. I. To my I KNOW too well, that, no more than the man, Half-smother'd with the dust, have power to run Scarce two of which can understand the laws Which they should judge by, nor the party's cause? These few, ill-spoken lines into the world; Whose very reading makes verse senseless prose; 3 Such When Nature and his full thoughts bid him write.] Here, says the judicious writer of Beaumont's life in the General Dictionary, Beaumont evidently shews that he was fired with that violent passion for writing, which the poets very justly call inspiration; and he makes this one proof of Beaumont's not being a mere corrector of Fletcher's works, but a joint author. As I think I have collected some stronger proofs of this, both external and internal, than have been yet produced, and as I have already built the former part of my preface upon these proofs, I shall place them before the reader in the next note just as they occurred SEWARD. to me. 3 Both to be read, and censur'd of, by those Whose very reading makes verse senseless prose.] Here we see a consciousness of the poet's own merit, and an indignation at the stupidity of the age he lived in, which seem to have been the characteristics of Beaumont and Jonson. This will appear stronger in the process of this note, in which I shall endeavour to prove what share Beaumont had in the composition of the following plays. I have already mentioned that Mr. Earl's testimony, wrote immediately after Beaumont's death, is decisive as to Beaumont's having the largest share Such as must spend above an hour, to spell But share in the composition of the Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, and the King and no King, and that Bessus in particular was drawn by him. [Sce Mr. Earl's poem below.] This was undoubtedly the reason why Beaumont's name is put first in the old quarto's of these plays, published by the players after Beaumont's death, but before Fletcher's. For would the players have complimented the dead at the expence of their living friend, patron, and supporter? After two such proofs as these, general expressions or even traditional opinions of the panegyric-writers thirty years after are lighter than vanity itself. From these plays no distinction of hands between Beaumont and Fletcher was discerned, nor any suspicion of such a distinction occurred 'till I came to the Woman-Hater, vol. 3, which appeared visibly to have more of Jenson's manner than any play I had before met with, which I mentioned at note 32 on that play, when deceived as Langbane had been by the first quarto (published several years after the death of both the authors) I verily thought that it had been Fletcher's only. I had not then attended to the poem of Beaumont's to Jonson, published at the end of the Nice Valour, and Woman-Hater, by the second folio. If the reader will consult that poem, he will find that it was sent from the country to Jonson with two of the precedent comedies not then finished, but which Beaumont claims as his own. Ben, when these scenes are perfect, we'll taste wine, I'll drink thy muse's health, thou shalt quaff mine. It is plain that they had been his amusement during a summer vacation in the country, when he had no companion but his muse to entertain him; for all the former part of the poem is a description of the execrable wine, and the more execrable company which he was forced to endure. Fletcher therefore could not be with him. So that there are certainly two comedies which properly belong to Beaumont only, which therefore we must endeavour to find out. The verses tell us that he acknowledged all he had to be owing to Jonson, there is no doubt therefore of his imitating Jonson's manner in these comedies. Shirley in the first folio, and the publisher of the second folio, both agree in making the Nice Valour one of these plays: now this play is extremely in Jonson's manner, as is observed in the beginning of the preface and at note 8 on the verses to Jonson, The prologue of this play has no weight, being wrote several years after it, but the epilogue was evidently wrote in the author's lifetime, probably either by the author himself, or else by his friend Jonson: for 'tis extremely like Jonson in his prologues and epilogues, who generally lets his audience know, that if they did not admire him it was their faults, not his. So this epilogue makes the author declare the play is good, He says, *he knows it, if well understood. [*The Author. How unlike is this to Fletcher and Shakespeare's manner, who, when they join together in the Two Noble Kinsmen, are even Modesty itself? See the prologue and epilogue to that play, vol. 3. the latter has these lines; I hope the reader will now see sufficient grounds to believe that the Nice Valour was Beaumont's play: it is not demonstration, but it is a high degree of probability. But still the distinction of manner from Fletcher, in personizing the passions and not drawing from real life spoke of above, will not follow if Fletcher wrote the Woman-Hater, as the first edition in quarto of that play asserts, but the second contradicts it, and puts Beaumont's name first in the title-page, and claims its changes from the author's manuscript. The publisher of the second folio follows t! e second quarto, and makes it one of the plays referred to in Beaumont's The prologue appears to be wrote by the author himself, speaks of himself in the singular number, and shews great confidence in the goodness of the play, and an utter contempt of twopenny gallery judges. Here Beaumont's hand therefore seemed visible. I therefore began to recollect which of the foregoing plays most resembled this, to see what light might be gained from them; the first that occurred was the Knight of the Burning Pestle, which is all burlesque sublime, as Lazarillo's character in the Woman-Hater is throughout. verses. Hele |