purity; but he too, notwithstanding the plodding patience of his nature, could not escape the rage for emendation; and the innovations and arbitrary alterations which he introduced into the pages of his author, "amount," says Mr. Malone, who took the pains, by a rigorous examination, to ascertain the fact, "to no less a number than nine hundred and seventy-two."

If however, as an editor, he failed in one important part of his duty, he had the merit of first carrying another into execution, that of explaining and illustrating Shakspeare through the medium of his contemporaries; for, in the "Introduction" to his edition of the poet, he not only announced his being engaged in drawing up a large body of notes critical and explanatory but that he had prepared and had gotten in great forwardness another work, on which he had been employed for more than twenty years, to be entitled "The School of Shakspeare," consisting wholly of extracts from books familiar to the poet, and unfolding the sources whence he had drawn a large portion of his various knowledge, classical, historical, and romantic. This announcement, which was made fifteen years before the work appeared, had a result which could scarcely have been contemplated by the laborious compiler; for he had been so full and explicit in detailing what he had

Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare, apud Reed, 1803. Vol. 16, p. 384.

done, and what he was about to do, that, as a lively memorialist remarks, "while he was diving into the classics of Caxton, and working his way underground, like the river Mole, in order to emerge with all his glories; while he was looking forward to his triumphs; certain other active spirits went to work upon his plan, and digging out the promised treasures, laid them prematurely before the public, defeating the effect of our critic's discoveries by anticipation. Farmer, Steevens, Malone, and a whole host of literary ferrets, burrowed into every hole and corner of the warren of modern antiquity, and overran all the country, whose map had been delineated by Edward Capell."

As Capell, however, was the first efficient explorer of the mine, and led the way to others in a mode of illustration which, when judiciously pursued, has certainly contributed more than any other species of commentary to render the poet better understood, it may not be uninteresting in this place, and before I touch upon the efforts of those who followed in the same track, to give a slight glance at what criticism had been previously doing in the field of annotation. Rowe's edition being without notes, Pope stands foremost in the list of those who accompanied the text with a commentary of any kind: this, however, is nearly limited to conjectural criticism, which he appears to

Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, vol. viii, p. 200.

have employed without fear or controul, expunging whatever he disliked, and altering whatever he did not understand; and as he was miserably deficient in a knowledge of the language and literature, the manners and customs of the age of Shakspeare, he had, of course, abundant opportunities for the exercise of a fanciful and unrestrained ingenuity. His preface, however, is beautifully written, and in many parts with a just feeling and conception of the character and genius of his great author; but by no means entitled to the lavish encomium of Dr. Johnson, who terms it, as a piece of general criticism," so extensive that little can be added, and so exact that little can be disputed," praise which the warmest admirer of Pope must now condemn as hyperbolical.

With Theobald, whose sole merit as a commentator turns upon minute verbal criticism and a few occasional illustrations from writers contemporary with the poet, commenced that system of ostentation, petty triumph and scurrility, which has so much disgraced the annotators on Shakspeare, and on which, I am sorry to say, it will be necessary very shortly to make some farther strictures.

It is scarcely worth while to mention the notes of Hanmer otherwise than to remark, that they too often betray an equal degree of confidence and want of judgment; his efforts, indeed, appear to have been chiefly directed towards giving the venerable bard a more modern aspect by the most

unauthorised innovations on his language and his

metre.

Nor can we estimate the commentary of Warburton at a higher value; it is, in fact, little better than a tissue of the wildest and most licentious conjecture, in which his primary object seems to have been rather the exhibition of his own ingenuity than the elucidation of his author. It excited a transient admiration from the wit and learning which it displayed, though these were misplaced, and then dropped into irretrievable obli

vion.

When the mighty mind of Johnson addressed itself to the task of annotation, the expectations of the public were justly raised; much was hoped for, and much certainly was effected, but yet much of what had been anticipated remained undone. One of his greatest deficiencies sprang from his very partial acquaintance with the manners, customs, and superstitions of the age of Elizabeth; nor, indeed, were the predominating features of his intellect, powerful and extraordinary though they were, well associated with those of the poet he had to illustrate; they were too rugged, stern, and inflexible, wanting that plasticity, that comprehensive and imaginative play, which so wonderfully characterized the genius of Shakspeare. This dissimilarity of mental construction is no where more apparent than in the short summaries which he has annexed to the close of each drama, and which are nearly, if not altogether, void of that enthusiasm,

that tasteful yet discriminative warmth of approbation, which it is but natural to suppose the study of such splendid efforts of genius would have generated in any ardent mind. Many of his notes, however, display much acumen in the developement and explanation of intricate and verbally obscure passages; and his preface, though somewhat too elaborate in its diction, and rather too methodically distributive of its praise and blame, is certainly, both as to its style and tone of criticism, one of the noblest compositions in our language.

Perhaps there is not in the annals of literature a more striking contrast than that which obtains between the prefaces of Johnson and Capell, brought into immediate comparison as they were by being published so nearly together; for, whilst the former is remarkable as one of the most splendid and majestic efforts of an author distinguished for the dignity of his composition, the latter is written in a style peculiarly obsolete and almost beyond precedent, bald, disjointed, and uncouth. Capell, however, as I have already observed, had not only the merit of opening, but of entering upon the best mode of illustrating his author; and the frank avowal of his plan led Steevens, who had reprinted, as early as 1766, twenty of the old quarto copies of Shakspeare's plays, to cultivate with equal assiduity and more dispatch the same curious and neglected field. The first fruits of his research into the literature and costume of the age of Shakspeare appeared in his coadjutorship with