The Press.
London, England, 1856-04-26 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

them—such as Cunningham, Grant, Mac-
gregor, &a et hoc genus omne—are the com-
monest Scotch, and require no seeking in
Canada. Many are the names of real persons
—such as General Harrison, Leslie, Wayland
Smith ; many of them are names which occur
in novels confessedly Sir Walter's own ; and
many are the names of officers engaged in the
Swedish service or the Scottish Archer Guard,
the rolls of which Sir Walter was certain to
have studied. Sir Donald Mackay, for in-
stance, commanded a brigade in the Danish
service ; and the names of Heriot, Ramsay, &c.,
occur in the papers relating to the Scottish
Archers There are perhaps half a dozen
names which it is probable Scott may have
got through his brother; but there are many
ways by which it might happen, without ne-
cessitating the hypothesis that T. Scott wrote
all the novels.

But there is still left one argument more
potent than all. Would Thomas and Mrs.
Scott have rested content with their very
moderate income while Sir Walter was making
ten thousand a year by the novels ? This is to
our mind so conclusive that we should scarcely
have examined the pamphlet in detail had it
not been that the public were considerably
impressed by it. And, indeed, it is perhaps
no loss of labour to have pointed out the flim-
siness of the arguments which have been
thought sufficient by their author to impose
on the reading classes of this country.

The Ring and the Veil. By J. A. St. John.
Three Vols. London : Chapman and Hall.
As comedy has been said to answer its true object
when it makes the audience laugh, so perhaps we
may say that a novel in some sense answers its true
end, when we can read it straight through with sus-
tained interest. This leading merit is possessed by
Mr. St. John's book, but, we are compelled to add,
few other. Most of the characters are mere daubs,
and those which affect originality are not natural.
The plot is stiff and clumsy, and the incidents im-
probable and unconnected. If it be asked how, with
all these faults, the story can be interesting, the
reply is not difficult. The fable, like many others of
the present day, is not one, but many. It is a series
of sketches such as we might read in the newspapers :
now a murder—now a critn. con. case—now a forgery
—varied with occasional glimpses of possible seduc-
tions. The hero himself, a Roman Catholic atheist,
has been defrauded of his inheritance (7,0001. a
year) by a revengeful priest, with whose mistress he
bad eloped, and in the opening of the story is walking
the streets of London in a state bordering on starva-
tion. He first becomes a ballad-singer, and then " a
literary gentleman," in which capacity he contrives to
make a competency, and is present at various
literary sArees given by aristocratic patrons of
letters, which assemblies, like a true Bohemian, he
pronounces intolerable. Continuing his career of
litereture, he becomes mixed up with a variety of
such events as we have above described, in some as
principal, in others only as an interested party, and
finally winds up by falling desperately in love with
an Italian girl who has vowed herself to the convent.
Her innocence converts him from his profligacy, and
his passion converts her from her religion. In this
instance his intentions are " strictly honourable,"
and, having recovered his property exactly at the
right moment, by a series of manmuvres which we do
not understand, he marries Angelica, and settles with
her in an obscure house in the suburbs, which love
renders "more glorious than Eden itself."
The hero and Angelica are the only two personages
in the book which are entitled to the praise of care
fully-drawn characters. But these are far from
skilful. The reformation of the one is as much too
abrupt as the conversion of the other; while the notion
that an Italian gentleman should leave his daughter, an
inexperienced girl of eighteen, in the sole charge of a
man of thirty, whom he knew to be a libertine, when
he himself was absent from England, is so ridicu-
lously improbable as to be fitted only for the Minerva
Press, or the Transpontine stage. Yet the inter-
course between Angelica and her lover during the
whole of this period is naturally full of interest, and
we forget its absurdity in the solicitude with which
we watch the progress of the contest between love
and religion on one side, and between early habits of
vice and a newly-born respect for virtue on the other.
But here too the element of exaggeration prepon-
derates. Angelica adheres to her resolution up to
the very steps of the altar, and, just as the white veil
is about to be replaced by the black, is moved from
her purpose by one glance at her lover's face, who is
a witness of the ceremony, on which she must have
seen an almost equally agonised expression on many
previous occasions. This is the concentrated essence
of melodrama; and we should not be surprised if
" The !ling and the Veil" were dramatised for the
Victoria.

SATURDAY,

THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE.
AN article in the last Edinburgh on the text of
Shakespeare, written with the object of giving
" authority " to the MS. corrections of Mr. Collier's
Folio of 1632, calls for more critical attention than
we can usually bestow on review papers. This
article sets out with asserting that a wide distinction
must be made between mere "conjectural emenda-
tion," which the reviewer treats very contemptuously,
and emendation proceeding from authority of what•
ever kind it may be. The purpose of making this
distinction, in the first instance, is to discredit all
that has been done by the editors of Shakespeare
down to this present year, from Rowe to Singer, who
had no better guide to purge the text from manifold
and gross errors than acute critical ability, fine feeling
for the poet, a comparison of probabilities, and
attentive study of the literature and social atmo-
sphere of Shakespeare's time; and to magnify the
mass of corrections which appear on the margin of
the " beer-soiled," "tobacco-stained," and "candle-
snuffed" folio discovered by Mr. Collier. To the
authority of this volume, which the reviewer tells us
" seems to have undergone the discipline of some
"servants'-hall," the criticism of Rowe, Theobald,
Pope, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, Malone.
Steevens, and a host of others in more modern day,
is to give place. They had no authority for their
corrections, but the MS. corrector had authority for
his.

"Whatever is not conjectural " says the Edinburgh
reviewer, authentic." On that rock he takes his
stand, and would build his text. if the MS. corrector
did not proceed purely from conjecture in the alters.
tions he made, he mils:, have proceeded from
authority ; and if we admit one correction to be made
on authority, then there is a presumption that all
must have been made on authority. The reviewer
labours to show that some corrections are of a kind
which cannot be imagined to be purely conjectural,
and having obtained as he fancies by these instances
a pivot for his lever, he proceeds to shake the whole
text :

If in part only authentic—if we once establish that the
corrector has even partial authority—every one of his
readings, whether we like it or not, has a certain amount
of a priori evidence in its favour, and no mere conjecture
ought to be admitted to stand against such presumption.
But this critic, who is of a class of mind that loves to
build inverted pyramids, that thinks this sort of logic
can raise a St. Peter's on a needle's point, forgets that
he ought first to define what he means by authority
and authentic, as opposed to conjecture. This question
is a very subtle one, and as difficult to determine as
the difference between direct and circumstantial
evidence. Under certain conditions the latter may
be surer than the former, and in some cases conjec-
tural emendation may be a safer guide than correc
tions in an old handwriting found in a " beer-stained"
folio.

The folio of 1632 was published sixteen years
after Shakespeare's death, and the copy of which
Mr. Collier by the "merest accident" became the
possessor contains, says that gentleman, " notes and
"emendations in a handwriting not much later than
" when it came from the press." Now the " autho-
rity" for such corrections might proceed from many
various kinds of sources, and might be of all kinds
of value, from the MSS. of Shakespeare himself,
down to the gossip of actors, or the often-copied
"parts" given to the players to learn. "Whatever
"is not conjectural is authentic !" Did ever critic
lay down a canon more essentially absurd? We
know that actors in our own time were accustomed
to stretch a line across the stage on which the gar-
ments of Prospero were hung. A person might accept
that traditional interpretation of the text. It would
not be conjectural, but would it be authentic? The
reviewer is so shortsighted, so confined in his scan
of probabilities, that he supposes we must choose
between accepting the notes of the corrector as
purely conjectural, or as derived (in part at least)
from an examination of the very :rIS. text of Shake-
speare. It is to the latter conclusion that he would
lead us :

On the whole, we are strongly attracted towards an
hypothesis which we have already indicated : that the cor-
rector had under his eyes large portions of the authentic
text of Shakespeare, in what shape it is impossible to say :
that he transcribed from his mysterious original in the
molt painstaking manner, and with general accuracy, but
still with occasional slips, deviations, and misconceptions•
For this hypothesis there is no shad )w of founda-
tion, and that it should have been put forth at all is
disgraceful to the criticism of our day. It is to be
decisively refuted by an examination of the correc-
tor's work.

Let us say before proceeding further that we are
willing to assume that the corrections are genuine,—
that is, that they belong to a period not far removed
from that of the date of the folio. But surely those
who are sceptical on the point have grounds for their
scepticism. Are literary forgeries, not less elaborate,
unknown? Can we forget Chatterton and Ireland?
Have we not recently had a new Waverley novel from
France ? Is is not possible that Mr. Collier may
have been imposed on?

I

APRIL 26, 1856.

But, conceding as much as Mr. Collier couldfpos-
sibly desire, and conceding also to the reviewer that
some of the emendations bear intrinsic evidence that
they are not purely conjectural,—conceding further
that some of them are of undoubted worth, and ought
to he received into the text,—the question yet re-
mains, what [degree of "authority " can be allowed
them? The MS. corrector may have been a thea-
trical manager, or author, or actor. He might have
bad access to the stage copies of plays, more correct
in some instances than the printed folio, or he might
have derived some corrections from players in the
course of their representations. In one respect we
agree with the Edinburgh reviewer. The corrector
.
seems, his revision, to have been intent on the
preparation of the plays for the stage, and to have
made many of his corrections on the same principle
that guides alterations, or mutilations, of the text in
our own day,—the convenience of the stage.
So much of "authority" may be conceded to the cor-
rections as would be derived from familiarity with the
stage of the period, but no more. The supposition of the
reviewer that the corrector had any part of the
BIS. text of Shakespeare before him is not sup-
ported by a particle of evidence, and is against all
probability. Unless special care be taken of MS. it
soon disappears after it has been once printed, and
the "papers " which Heminge and Condell profess
to have received from Shakespeare formed probably
but a small part of the copy they used, as it is likely
his original MSS. were soon cast aside or worn out
after copies had been taken for the use of the stage.
The reviewer has unwarrantably exceeded the facts
known in saying that Shakespeare "left his MSS.
with his associates ;" and that Heminge and Condell
" brought out the first folio edition of his plays,
"professing to follow implicitly the MSS., which ac-
cording to their statement were so clearly written
"as scarcely to admit of mistake." This is very
wide of their statement that they "scarce received
"from him a blot in his papers." Their desire to
recommend their volume is so palpable, that it is
likely they as far magnified the authenticity of
the MSS. they had "gathered" and "collected," as
they assuredly did the "care and pain" with which
they published them.
That the corrections could not have been made

from the authority of original MSS. is clear from
this,—tbat in many cases obvious corruptions of the
text are left untouched ; and that in others, correc-
tions are made in gross ignorance of what the true
reading should be. Our space does not admit of
much detail, but we will say a few words on each
point. _ _ _

In a previous article we took the play of The Tem-
pest to show that there was still room for further
improvement in the text. We particularly noticed
three instances where the corruption was obvious,
and the true reading scarcely disputable. No notice
is taken of either passage by Mr. Collier's corrector.
Let us take another instance from that same scene
(Tempest, act ii. sc. 2) whence two of our former
instances were drawn. Antonio, when tempting Sebas-
tian to kill his brother, asks who is next heir to
Naples, and is answered " Claribel." He then
labours to show that Claribel being Queen of Tunis,
is so far removed from Naples that it is impossible
she should ever return to claim the crown :

She that dwells
Ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples
Can have no note unless the sun were post.
• • • • • •
A space whose every cubit
Seems to cry out, " How shall that Claribel
Measure us bock to Naples ?" Keep in Tunis
And let Sebastian wake.
The lovers of Shakespeare do not need to be told
that he uses "measure " as a verb in the sense of to
journey; or, as Johnson explains, " to pass through,
" to judge of extent of territory by marching over,"
as in the passages:—

A true devoted pilgrim is not weary
To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps.
Haste away,
For we must measure twenty miles to-day.
The meaning of the above passage is plainly, " How
"shall Ularibel come back to Naples? Let her keep
"in Tunis, that Sebastian may be King." And if
we substitute " her " for " us," we shall obtain the
true reading :

How shall that Claribel
Measure her back to Naples ? Keep in Tunis
And let Sebastian wake.
In the same sense does Dryden use measure :

The vessel loughs the
And measures back with speped her formersea way.
This is precisely one of those cases which the
corrector, had he had the original MS. before him,
could not have missed. The error is undoubted ;
but likely to escape attention without comparison
with the true text, or without very careful scrutiny.
We could point out a number of instances of the
like kind, but we are compelled to abide by one
example. We turn to La tease of corruption,
Corruptly altered.