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

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

MAY 3, 1856.

The sailors sought for safety by our boat,
And left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us.
3ly wife, more careful fur the latter-born,
ii d fasteu'd him unto a small spare mast,
Such as seafaring men provide for storms :
To him one of the other twins wad bound,
Whilst I had been like heedful of the other.
The children thus dispos'ci, my wife and I,
Firing our eyes on whom our care was fir'd,
Fasten'd ourselves at either end the mast ;
And floating straight, obedient to the stream,
Were carried towards Corinth, as we thought.
At length the sun, gazing upon the earth,
Pispers'd those vapours that offended us,
And by the benefit of his wish'd light
The seas war'd calm, and we discovered
Two ships from far making amain to us;
Of Corinth that, of Epidanrus this:
lint ere they came,—O, let me say no More !
Gather the sequel by that went before.
Duke. Nay, forward, old man ; do not break off so,
For we may pity, though not ps.rdon thee.
„Epos. 0, had the gods done so. I had not now
Worthily terra'd them merciless to us!
For ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues,
We were encounter'd by a mighty rock,
Which being violently borne upon,
Our helpful ship was splitted in the midst;
So that in this unjust divorce of us
Fortune had left to both of us alike
What to delight in, what to sorrow for.
Her part, poor soul! seeming as burdened
With lesser weight, but not with lesser woe,
Was carried with move speed before the wind,
And in our sight they three were taken up
By fishermen of Corinth, as we thought.
At length another ship had seized on us;
And knowing whom it was their hap to save,
Gave healthful welcome to their shipwreck'd guests ;
And would have reft the fishers of their prey,
Had not their bark been very low of sail,
And therefore homeward did they bend their course.
The line for elucidation in this passage is :
For, ere the ships could meet by twice fire kaguec.
By the description of 2Egeon it would appear that
the two ships he had discerned could have been at
no great distance when the disaster which separated
him from his wife occurred. He was able to make
out to what ports they belonged, and he was a wit-
ness to his wife and the two children being rescued
from the sea. We may be quite sure, therefore, that
Shakespeare never wrote, "by twice five leagues,"
which would be absolute nonsense. Three or four
miles would be the utmost distance that we could
allow for the ships when seen in the first instance,
and that distance must have been much lessened
before the wreck took place. " Twice five leagues "
make a distance of thirty miles ; but dEgeon speaks
as if the ships were rapidly approaching when his
mischance happened, his calamity being aggravated
in recollection by the very circumstance of succour
being so near at hand. It is improbable that, in the
speech as originally written, there is any allusion to
distance at all. A man in .Egeon's perilous state
would not think of estimating the exact distance
which separated him from aid. Had he said, " ere
the ships could meet by half a mile," the passage
would have been intelligible, but assuredly not poetic.
We fancy he must have contented himself with say-
ing "ere the ships could meet," as above he had
said :

But ere they came,—O, let me say no more !

At all events, it must be evident that the passage is
most corrupt as it stands, nor can we think of any
satisfactory emendation ; but assuredly if we had the
genuine text of Shakespeare before us, as it is as-
sinned the corrector bad, the error would be dis-
covered at a glance ; and it is, at least, remarkable
that while the MS. corrector has, according to what
is said by the reviewer, anticipated so many of the
emendations which have been published by the com-
mentators, he should not have touched many pas-
sages where the corruption has been unnoticed or is
inexplicaJle. The true sense of the above passage we
imagine should. be "ere the ships could meet, by ad-
"verse fortune--or a continuance of the mischance
" which befell us from the first—we were encountered
"by a mighty rock ; " and it is not improbable, nc w that
the corruption is pointed out, that some acute mind
may be able to suggest the right reading. " League "
is so remarkable a word that we are inclined to think
it must have been originally used, and the line
might have read something like—
For, ere the ships could meet, by ill fates leagued
Vie were encuunter'd,
But we do not venture to propose any reading. We
only adduce the passage to rebut the monstrous
assumption that a prima-facie case has been made
out that the text of the corrector is the genuine text
of Shakespeare. In connection with the passage
quoted, we may mention that the last word in the
line--

While I had been like careful of the other,
should be altered to the plural sense, " others:: as
-Egeon is speaking of the two companion children
to those secured by his wife. We find that the cor-
rector's Pen has been busy with this very scene. In
the line printed in the folio—
To seek thy help by beneficial help,

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