vantage of having previously gone through the press. This is a most remarkable circumstance with reference to any posthumous publication; and when we consider the essential difficulties which belong to the correct printing of a play -the mistaking of one character for another, the confusion which must arise from the intermingling of prose and verse, the varieties of the versification itself, and the possibility of receiving the stage directions as the text, it is perfectly astonishing that these productions have come down to us with so few vital errors and deformities. To form a correct

estimate of the value of the folio copy, with reference to the plays there first printed, we should compare them with any other play, or plays, printed either after the death of an author, or without an adequate revision during his life. We have a remarkable instance in a play attributed to Shakspere- Pericles,' and which, there can be little doubt, belongs, wholly or in part, to him. There are four quarto editions of this play, besides that of the third folio. Each of these is manifestly most corrupt; infinitely more so, beyond all comparison, than the most incorrect of the plays printed from Shakspere's posthumous manuscripts.

The order in which the thirty-six plays contained in the folio of 1623 are presented to the reader is contained in the following list, which forms a leaf of that edition :

66 A CATALOGUE OF THE SEVERAL COMEDIES, HISTORIES, AND

TRAGEDIES CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.

We have thus, at the risk, perhaps, of being somewhat too precise, set forth the authorities upon which the text of this edition is founded. These views are not newly formed; -they remain unaltered. This Introduction would have rested here, but for important considerations which arise out of a recent publication entitled 'Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays, from Early Manuscript Corrections in a copy of the Folio, 1632, in the possession of J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A., forming a supplemental volume to the Works of Shakespeare by the same Editor.'

If the "Corrections" had been embodied in a printed shape, had they appeared in an edition bearing date after the Restoration of Charles IL,—we should have been free to have dealt with them, as we should deal with the substitutions of the later folio editions. For we should have borne in mind that not only were there great changes in language in the seventh and eighth decades of the seventeenth century, but that Shakspere was not then regarded, as we now regard him, as the great English classic; and that correctors, especially for the theatre, had unbounded licence. We might have felt that his text had not been approached, as we now must approach it, with a sense that the phraseology and metre of the great poet of the Elizabethan age, being something different from the phraseology and metre of the drama as it existed when D'Avenant made a new 'Measure for Measure,' and Dryden a new 'Tempest,' ought to be scrupulously preserved. We should have compared the later edition with the earlier, having a confiding belief that the nearer we were to Shakspere's own day, the better chance we had of finding a nobler English, and a purer versification, than in the days when the higher poetry was dying out.

Are we to pursue a different mode of criticism because the new text is written on the margin of the folio, 1632 ?

But the "Corrections having been given to the world upon the authority of a Manuscript, are we to reject undeniable "Emendations" because they are not those of a printed text? Certainly not. Whatever is a REAL 66 Emendation" must find its way into future editions of Shakspere. Whatever is a capricious alteration, or a misconception of a recondite meaning, or a lowering of a figurative expression to the popular understanding, or an accommodation of a rhythmical freedom to unmusical ears,-all these mistakes will die out of themselves, in spite of any authority which may awhile uphold them.

It must, however, be borne in mind that a real "Emendation" must not be confounded with a substitution, even though the substitution be an improvement. An “Emendation must rest upon a principle. A manifest correction of a typographical error is an "Emendation;" the substitution of a plain word for an obscure word is not necessarily an "Emendation." The altered language of Shakspere cannot be implicitly received as the restored language. The alteration may be better, or it may be worse, but it inust be supported by authority of no apocryphal character. We believe that this is the principle which now determines the value of all "Readings" of ancient authors; although there was a time when it was held good service to remove difficulties from Greek and Roman writers by a summary process of substitution. It would be easy to make the thirtyseven dramas, which are the glory of English literature, more popular and intelligible; but this is not to "restore" Shakspere, even if he needed restoration, which we take leave to doubt.

From whatever point of view we regard this question, we are of necessity compelled to examine these "Emendations," not merely upon their merits-which is the easy mode to urge them upon popular acceptation—but upon their autho rity. In the contrariety of opinion which will unquestionably prevail amongst all intelligent readers of Shaksperewhat safety is there but to cleave to the great principles of criticism, which have redeemed the ancient authors from

;

the innumerable glosses which were once held to improve their meaning or their metre? In the determination so to cling, we shall indulge in no idle controversies. We shall abide by the original texts, which we still do consider the best authorities, as far as we have already abided by them except we find something so clearly wrong that has received an undeniable correction, that we are bound to admit it. Upon a most careful examination of Mr. Collier's volume of "Notes and Emendations," we deliberately express our belief that these instances will be very few indeed, because (and we must be forgiven if we call attention again and again to the principle upon which we have worked), because we hold that a substitution, even if it be an apparent improvement of an author who wrote two centuries and a half ago, is not necessarily to be admitted into his text; and further, that if such substitution rests upon the authority of a corrector, who lived at a time when the language which that author used was changing, and changed-if there be no authority to support those corrections beyond their merits -those corrections are no more to be received as evidence against the text, than if they had proceeded from any one of the host of commentators in the last century, or from J. Payne Collier, or from his humble fellow-labourer, Charles Knight.