The Press. — London, England, 1856-05-03 00:00:00

The Martins of Cro' Martin is very good this month, with some pictures of genuine Irish life. The Idler, which we see has changed hands, con tains a good article on Messinger, some well-written reviews, and ether articles which show that it has not degenerated under the new management. The Train contains some capital writing. The best article is a wild sort of rhapsody by Mr. Sala, called " The Paper on the Wall." Mr. Yates, in an article styled "Humbug," is hard upon writers of neglected clucation. Had not his sarcasm against Latin quo tttions frightened us hom doing so, we should have been tempted to give one entire—" Quern temere in nosmet," Selections front the Writings of Dr. Whately, Arch bishop of Dublin. London : Bentley. MERE is one great objection to the abridgment of philosophical works which does not apply to selec tions from poetry or history. In poetry the piece placed before us, if judiciously selected, is usually sufficient for itself ; and in history a compendious statement of facts has a use and value completely separate from the original reflec tions of the writer. But in philosophy, regarded as a discipline of the mind, the gradual development is everything. Briefly, we might say that to the general reader a history is valuable more for the conclusions than for the process, but philosophy more for the process than the conclusions. To derive any sub stantial or lasting benefit from a writer like Whately, the student must carefully go through some of his works in their integrity, observing their method, and noting the deviations from established principles. At the same time, the volume before us is of cour,te m( ri or less valuable as a channel for diffusing much of that practical wi:eloin which his Grace pos messes in no small degree; and to minds fairly acquainted with the ordinary systems of metaphysics and morals it is naturally highly suggestive. The misfortune is, that the majority of readers for these cheap issues are not of a class who have received even this much education. We would cheapen intel lectual nourishment as much as we would corporeal, but this kind of knowledge is not to be got cheap ; and the full force of many of the apophthegms and illustrations of which the volume consists will hardly be appreciated by those who have not been accus tomed to the same grooves of thought in which the Archbishop's mind has travelled so long. Muse Etonenses. Series Nova. Tome I. Fasci culus I. Edit Richardus Okes, S.T.P. Londini: Bell et Daldy. Iv is sixty years since the second publication of the " Muse Etonenses " appeared, and exactly one hundred since the first. Within these periods what a complete revolution has classical scholarship un dergone! In the year of Grace 1795 there was hardly a man of any eminence in any of the proles sions,who did not know something about " longs and shorts," and in whose ears a false quantity was not at o nce the mark of a literary Yahoo. With the break u p of old traditions at the French Revolution all this k ind of feeling began to decay. And it is curious to observe that since the first establishment of a prize for Latin verse in the University of Oxford, in 1772, d uring the first twenty year: three were gained by eminent statesmen, Wellesley, Grenville, and Can ning; and during the sixty succeeding years only one—namely, by the present Lord Derby, in 1819. The present collection embraces only poems written between 1796 and 1800, and numbers among its contributors two Archbishops of Canterbury— namely, Manners Sutton and the present Primate. All the verses, as might be expected, are good, but none of the highest order of modern composition. Perhaps, on the whole, Mr. Hornby's description of a Brobdignagian belle displays the most original power. These are a few of the best lines : Quis non ante pedes snperbientis Herw, pronus hemi, timens recumbit ? Quis speetana oculum, bovina qualis Est 3unoni acies, quis inde missam Evitare potest sagittatu amoris? Messrs. Herbert, Drury, Jodrell, and Dr. Sumner have all contributed elegant and classical prolusions; and the plan of a continuous issue of " Musie Etonenses" cannot fail to be highly acceptable to all who have still a lingering attachment to the " old business." PUBLICATIONS RECETVED.-Arim. :31. BOOKS. Memoirs of the Court of England during the Regency, ltql to 18 . 40. Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, Hurst and Blackett Robert Bell. .1. W. Parker and Son The Poellea/ Works ,:11. r,l Byron. A New Edition, in Six Vols. Vol. VI. Murray Essay* on State 3ledicine. Henry Wyldbore Rumaev. Poetical Works of Ben .TOPIROIS. J. Churchill Lift'a a Dream : the Great Theatre of the 110r141. -- JJ. IV. Parker and Son THE PRESS. The Adventures ctf a Younger Son. Captain Trelawney. Hodgson The Dramatic Works of Wm. Shakespeare. Bell and Daldy . _ " I Too." Beelzebub: Townsend The Red Riror Settlement. A. Ross. Smith and Elder THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE WE have said that the main question raised by the Edinburgh reviewer in the article on the text of Shakespeare is—ln what light are we to regard the MS. corrections in Mr. Collier's folio? The re viewer, inclining to the supposition that the corrector had portions of the authentic text before him, and that he transcribed from them in the most pains taking way, but with occasional slips, remarks on these suppositions : If they be true, or approach the truth, then it follows that the text of the corrector must in future be received as that of the dramatist. The burden will be thrown in each instance on those who contest it. This conclusion is so monstrous, that the grounds on which it is founded must be subject to close scrutiny ; for if we are to receive the text of the corrector as authentic, and as precluding all conjec tural emendation, we shall be in a much worse con dition than if we had to begin with the first folio de novo, as we shall have to contend not only with cor ruptions on corruptions, but with "authoritative" changes which throw us back from sense to non sense, and from what Shakespeare really wrote to what ignorance and presumption has supposed he might have written. The folio corrector will be exalted into a kind of Pope, and the most obvious abuses and contradictions will be sheltered under an asser tion of his infallibility. The looseness of the reviewer's language makes it extremely difficult to grapple with him. Suppose we adduce glaring blunders which the corrector has never touched, the force of the cases, how numerous soever, may be evaded by the saving clause, that the corrector had only " portions of the authentic text " before him ; " or suppose it be shown, as in the passage from T imon of Athens noticed in our last article, that corruptions of the text have been corruptly altered, we may be reminded of the ob servation that the corrector made "occasional slips, " deviations, and misconceFtions." Even if we meet this critic on his own ground, and agree that partial authority should be conceded to the corrections, he is prepared with a denial of any right of " private judgment" whatever. We must take all the corrections or none. Even Mr. Collier is not, in the reviewer's opinion, sufficiently strong on this point : If they [the corrections] possess any well-founded claim, it must be because they are presumably authentic ; and if the great majority are presumably authentic, by what right does Mr. Collier make his selection, and say, because this or that change does not please myself, I therefore pronounce it unauthentic? It is the old fallacy of at once admitting authority, and then admitting private judgment to control it. The reviewer cannot understand tie position taken up by Mr. Dyce, that though many of the corrections are ignorant, tasteless, and wanton, yet some of them " require no authority to recommend them, because " common sense declares them to be right." This statement is plain and sensible enough, but it throws the reviewer into a state of ludicrous perplexity. He actually asks, what has "common sense to do with " the matter?" The opinion of competent critics on the value of particular corrections he regards as wholly beside the question. He returns to his first position—the corrections must be authoritative or conjectural : if they are the former, we must take them in the mass without question ; if the latter, they are of no value at all, however common sense may approve them. The reviewer is. however, sadly at fault in other parts of his article. He deprecates the "bit-by-bit discussion" which would examine the corrections in detail, as tending to end only "in hopeless and end " less controversies of individual taste; " yet it is by particular instances that he attempts to establish the authority of the corrections ; and, with that con tempt for logic, and even consistency, which charac terises his essay, he tells us at its close that— No end of controcoray has been established. We have acquired an additional guide, but we are unable to sav how far he is a safe one. We have a new authority which we dare not disregard, and yet dare not iutplicitly How otherwise than by " common sense "—by that highest kind of it, we mean, which is trained and disciplined to a particular pursuit by long observation and close study —can we hope to discriminate in these corrections between what " we dare not dis regard," yet " dare not implicitly follow"? If we voluntarily cast aside that guide, what other have we to trust to How, indeed, exceptiby the exercise of this kind of common sense, can we determine whether the corrections are of any value at all For it is to be observed that their value, or even their "authority," rests on internal evidence alone. They do not come to us from a worm-eateu chest And, SAT URDAYI found in an excavated cellar of Shakespeare's boils.° at Stratford. They could not have been made until at least sixteen years alter Shakespeare's death, and may probably be referred to a much later period. There is no kind of indication to guide us by whom they were made, or from what sources they were derived. We must judge them by their own merit alone ; and how absurd is it then to suppose that we are not to discuss them separately, that we are not to examine them in a critical spirit, and that the right of "private judgment " is to be barred by the plea of authority. . _ _ The cluin,y manner in which Mr. Collier has given these corrections to the world renders it extremely difficult to examine what this plea of "authority " is worth. Had the corrections been published in a separate form (as they easily might have been), or, still better, had they been published in conjunction with a reprint of the folio of 1032, the public would at once have been iu a condition to judge of their authenticity and worth. But Mr. Collier has chosen to incorporate them with the standard text, to mix them up with all the corrections which have been made since the work of emendation began, and to issue this multiform text, resulting from the labours of a hundred commentators, without note or com ment of any kind to distinguish the authors of the various corrections. We can, indeed, by careful comparison with the ordinary text, find out what novelties are due to the MS. corrector, but we have no clue to the manner in which he dealt with those corrupt passages which have been amended by the editors from Rowe downwards.. To take the ploy of Twelfth Night, which the reviewer particularises to show the value of the 11S. corrections, we know that the opening lines stood in the folio : That strain again; it had a dying fall: 0 ! it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour. Rowe suggested that for " sound " we should read " wind; " but Pope with exquisite feeling and sagacity proposed " south." The emendation ba.'4 been re. ceived into the text, anl though we cannot certainly assert that Shakespeare wrote this word, yet the con clusion that he did so falls little short of absolute moral certainty. In Mr. Collier's volume, "south is printed, but whether he inserts it on the authority of his MS. corrector or of Pope, we have no means of ascertaining. In act ii. sc. 3 of this play, Sir Toby jests with Aguecheek on the lankness of his hair. The passage as originally printed read : Sir Andrew. . . . Oh, had I but followed the arts! Sir Toby. Then hadst thou an excellent head of hair. Sar And. Why, would that have mended my hair? Sir Toby. Past question, for thou seest it will not cool my nature. Sir And But it becomes me well enough, does it not? Sir Toby. Excellent ; it hangs like flax on a distaff. Theobald restored the passage by substituting for the words in italics, " curl by nature," and so Mr. Collier prints it, but without the slight/2st notice whether the MS. corrector had touched the passage. These are but two instances out of hundreds which might he cited to show what "conjectural emenda tion " has done for what we maj unhesitatingly term the restoration of the text. We should like to know how the MS. corrector has dealt with those two passages in Timon of Athens, which subsist as most admirable records of the rare skill and certainty of conjectural emendation, and which are printed by Mr. Collier with very slight alteration from tLe standard text : Our poesy is as a gum. which oozes From whence nourished. The oar, Taste, touch, smell, pleased from thy table rise. These only now come but to feast thine eyes. If we are told that the MS. corrector has anticipated the restoration of numerous passages such as tilt se— evolved by the slow efforts of successive commenta tors—we shall be compelled to rate his authority higher than we yet see cause to do, or we shall be compelled to suppose that the agreement of these MS. corrections with emendations received long previous to Mr. Collier's "discovery " is less fortuitous than it seems. And we should be the rather forced to this conclu sion by observing that with regard to passages ob viously corrupt, yet which have remained with little notice, or which have baffled all attempts to eluci date them, the MS. corrector is either silent or at fault. Many instances of both kinds of defect have already been published, but we will notice one, which, so far as we know, has entirely escaped attention. The Comedy of Errors opens with an account by .Egeon of the shipwreck by which he was separated from his wife, and one of his twin sons with one of the Dromios. We beg our readers to excuse the somewhat long passage, following the account of the storm, as it is printed in Mr. Collier's "corrected text of 1853