lack of earnestness of purpose, combine to confirm the impression that he is an editor not to be relied

upon.

But in Malone he found an adversary who, in spite of a defective ear and a somewhat sluggish apprehension, was entirely too powerful for him. Malone published in 1780 two volumes, containing notes and comments upon the text as it was left by Johnson and Steevens, and other miscellaneous Shakespearian matter; and in 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare," collated verbatim with the most authentic copies, and revised; with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators; to which are added, an essay on the chronological order of his plays; an essay relative to Shakespeare and Jonson; a dissertation on the three parts of King Henry VI.; an historical account of the English stage; and notes."* This title gives a just idea of the wide field of Shakespearian inquiry, covered by the labors of Malone. Though not highly accomplished, he was a fair scholar, a man of good judgment, and, for his day, of good poetical taste. He was patient, indefatigably laborious, and honestly devoted to his task; he sought the glory of his author, not his own except in so far as the latter was involved in the former. We of to-day can see that he committed many and great blunders; but he saved the text of Shakespeare from

* This edition was eight years in passing through the press. See its fourth volume, p. 112.

But Malone, as above mentioned, had a poor ear, and an Irish one. He having remarked on a passage in Titus Andromicus, Act IV. Sc. 2, "Arm, my lords," &c., that "arm is here used as a dissyllable," Steevens replied that he had seen correct and harmonious verses of Malone's, and therefore wondered if he (Malone) had written a tale of persecuted love he would have ended it with a couplet like this,

"Escaping thus Aunt Tabby's larums,

They triumphed in each other's arums."

wide and ruthless outrage, and by painful and welldirected investigation into the literature and manners contemporary with his author, cast new light upon his pages. To Edmund Malone the readers of Shakespeare, during the last decade of the last century and the first quarter of this, were indebted for the presentation of his works in a condition more nearly approaching their integrity than any other in which they had yet been exhibited.

The next important edition to Malone's was published in twenty-one octavo volumes, in 1803, and afterward in 1813. It was based chiefly upon that of Johnson and Steevens, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators, all revised and augmented by Isaac Reed, an editor qualified for his task by patience, accuracy, and much reading of our early dramatic literature. This edition effected little for the text of Shakespeare, and was rather remarkable for the copiousness and variety of its prolegomena, notes, and illustrative essays. It is one of the two most important of the Variorum editions.

Malone had planned and nearly completed a second edition of his work when he died in 1812. The materials which he left were prepared and superintended through the press by James Boswell Jr., — the son of Johnson's biographer, who, taking the Variorum of 1813 as his model, produced an edition, also in twenty-one octavo volumes, which was published in 1821, and which is a monument to the industry, research, and good judgment of its principal editor, whose labors appear to best advantage when placed beside those of his immediate predecessors and his contemporaries. This edition is usually spoken of as eminently the Variorum. It is a rich storehouse of Shakespearian literature, and, in addition to Malone's

latest notes and comments, contains most of those which appeared in its immediate predecessor. But it is purged of heaps of smutty matter which befoul the pages of the elder book, labelled with the names Amner and Collins pseudonymes of Steevens and Ritson. Boswell also played dustman to a mass of not indecent nonsense scraped up by Reed, although he left so much untouched.

To the editions which have now been mentioned must be added those of Alexander Chalmers, published in 1805, and several times reprinted, of the Reverend William Harness, in 1825, and of Samuel Weller Singer, at Chiswick, in 1826; though the text of neither of these was formed upon a collation of the early editions, but upon an eclectic use of the labors of preceding editors. The text of Chalmers's edition, a great favorite, does not differ materially from that of Reed's Variorum of 1803; and Singer went for his text to the editions of Steevens and Malone, with an occasional reference to an old folio. or quarto. Singer's edition was highly prized, and, until within a few years past, was the favorite for general reading among cultivated people. The causes of this favor were its convenient size, the excellence of its typography, and its frugal selection from the notes of all the commentators. It was, in fact, an

abridged variorum. Its editor belonged essentially to the old eighteenth century school, and though laborious, and a great reader of old books, showed neither real scholarship, critical acumen, nor power of generalization. His text was formed with more care than judgment; but it presented a few plausible emendations. As nearly twenty years elapsed after the publication of Mr. Singer's work without an attempt to rival or surpass it, we have now followed the for

VOL. I. r

tunes of Shakespeare's text down to the editions which are properly of the present day.

Among the commentators on Shakespeare who did not become his editors, the most noteworthy for the of this sketch are purposes John Upton, who in 1746 published his "Critical Observations on Shakespeare; Thomas Edwards, whose " Canons of Criticism" first appeared in 1748; Benjamin Heath, who published in 1765 "A Revisal of Shakespear's Text, wherein the alterations introduced into it by the more modern editors and critics are particularly considered; Thomas Tyrwhitt, the learned editor of Chaucer, whose " Observations and Conjectures upon some passages of Shakespeare" were put forth in 1766; Joseph Ritson, the eccentric and censorious literary antiquary, whose "Remarks Critical and Illustrative on the Text and Notes of the last [Steevens's] Edition of Shakespeare" appeared in 1783; John Monck Mason, who published Comments on the same edition in 1785; Walter Whiter, who in 1794 gave to this department of letters A Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare;" E. H. Seymour, whose two volumes of "Remarks, critical, conjectural, and explanatory, [including also the notes of Lord Chedworth,] upon the plays of Shakspeare," appeared in 1805; Henry James Pye, who came forward in 1807 with his Commentaries on the Commentators of Shakespeare;" Francis Douce, who issued his "Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners, &c." in 1809; Andrew Becket, who published in 1815 two volumes entitled "Shakspeare's himself again, or the Language of the Poet asserted ;" and Zachary Jackson, whose "Shakespeare's Genius Jus

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tified, being Restorations and Illustrations of Seven Hundred Passages in Shakspeare," was given to the world in 1819.

Upton's scholarly and systematic labors have interest and value as critical discussions and illustrations of Shakespeare's text. They are instructive, and even suggestive, but over subtle and often pedantic. They did little or nothing towards restoration, but something for the prevention of wanton and ignorant alteration of the readings of the old copies. Edwards's book, written in an ironical vein, was directed chiefly against Warburton, whose conceit, arrogance, and ignorance of his author's language it thoroughly and most serviceably exposed. But Edwards did more than demolish Warburton. His critical acumen, his good taste and good sense, and his quick and sure apprehension of Shakespeare's thought, give him a conspicuous place among those who have been of real service in the preservation and elucidation of Shakespeare's text. His Canons remain, e converso, undisputed to this day; and the volume in which they are embodied will long retain its interest and its value. Heath, Tyrwhitt, Ritson, and Mason, each produced a minute but appreciable and beneficial effect upon the text - an effect which in the aggregate is considerable, and which promises to be permanent, although most of their suggestions have been rejected by the verdict of their successors.

Whiter's labors did little for the text; but his book has a permanent value in critical literature from its promulgation and continued application of a new principle of criticism, based upon Locke's doctrine of the association of ideas. Whiter maintained, what no close observer of his own mental action can deny, that the processes of thought are not always logical,