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4. When he does not like an expression and cannot mend it he may abuse the author for it.

5. Or he may condemn it as a foolish expression.

6. As every author is to be corrected into all possible per-. fection, and of that perfection the professed critic is the sole judge, he may alter any word or phrase which does not want amendment, or which will do, provided he can think of anything which he imagines will do better.

The other canons cover every possible fault a critic can be guilty of. A few examples will show with what good sense and caustic wit Mr. Edwards points out Warburton's mistakes.

Canon II. Example 33. Twelfth Night.

It is silly sooth

And dallies with the innocence of love

Like the old age.

'It is a plain old song,' says Shakespeare; has the simplicity of the ancients, and dallies with the innocence of love; i. e., sports and plays innocently with a love subject, as they did in old times.

But Mr. Warburton, who is here out of his element, and on a subject not dreamt of in his philosophy, pronounces peremptorily:

'Dallies has no sense; we should read tallies.' Spoken more like a baker or a milkman than a lover. EDWARDS.

Canon II. Example 37. Measure for Measure.

For all thy blessed youth becomes as aged.

Warburton says, "Read "for palled, thy blazed youth becomes assuaged." The reason for this alteration is worthy of the critic by profession, who not finding in his author what to censure first corrupts under pretence of amending him, and then abuses him for the imputed sentiment. EDWARDS.

Canon V. Example 7. Hamlet.

That father lost, lost his.

Mr. Warburton's reason for believing that the beauty of redoubling the word lost, is easier to be conceived than explained, is, because when it is explained, it amounts to nonsense. An odd reason, this. EDWARDS.

/Canon VIII. Example 37. Much Ado About Nothing.

Past the infinite of thought.

Human thought cannot sure be called infinite with any kind of figurative propriety. I suppose the true reading was definite. WARBURTON.

Whatever the impropriety of applying this term to finite and even trifling things, the practice is so common that it is almost a shame to quote any proof of it, but I cannot forbear giving one from one of Mr. W.'s own prefaces. — Edwards.

Canon VI. Example 5. Cymbeline.

The very Gods.

The very Gods may indeed signify the Gods themselves, yet I am persuaded the reading is corrupt and that Shakespeare wrote 'the warey Gods,' warey here signifying forewarning ready to give notice, and not as in its more usual meaning, cautious, reserved. WARBURTON.

Here again it is to be wished that Mr. Warburton had given some authority for using the word in this sense, which, if he had looked for, he might have found at least how to spell it. - EDWARDS.

Canon VIII. Example 39. 1 Henry IV.

If I travel but four foot, by the square further on foot I shall break my wind.

The thought is humorous and alludes to his bulk, insinuating that his (Falstaff's) legs being four foot asunder, when he advanced four foot this put together made four foot square. WARBURTON.

According to this rule let us measure the leap of the dancer in the Winter's Tale, who 'jumped twelve foot and a half by the square,' i. e., twelve foot forward and as much sideways. But whether he did this by jumping in the diagonal, or whether he carried his legs twelve feet and a half asunder, is not very easily determined. By the square in both places Shakespeare means nothing more than a common measure, a foot rule (carpenter's square).- EDWARDS.

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There is something very modern in the tone and style of Edwards's criticism of criticism. He makes few mistakes in his book. In Macbeth the Sergeant says:As whence the sun 'gins his reflection Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break. Reflection means the turning back of the sun after the solstice whence, at the equinox, storms were supposed to be engendered, but both Edwards and Warburton take it to mean reflection of light. Warburton thinks that storms come from the east when the sun begins to shine; Edwards, that they come from the sky (heaven) whence the sun gives his reflection,' or his light and heat, reading 'gives' for 'gins' on the authority of Pope. Both are wrong.1

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1 In the seventh edition of Edwards's book, published after the author's death (1765), a number of sonnets are found which just miss being excellent social verse. There is also an excursus on spelling reform, entitled the Trial of the Letter V or Upsilon, in which Apollo hears the petitions of various letters. The letter N petitions that G may be excluded from the words foreign and sovereign. A cross-petitions that E and I may be ousted and he put in possession (sovran). O enters a complaint against U for intruding in the words labor, honor, and 'all words ending in or derived from the Latines.' This was granted at once, fortyfive years before the day of Noah Webster. In fact this eighteenth-century barrister's ideas on spelling are more radical than those of our reformers, except with regard to ough, which multi-sonant combination he votes to retain in all its incongruous but time-honored positions.

CHAPTER V

THE LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDITORS

DR. JOHNSON (1709-1784)

WHEN we read Dr. Johnson's prospectus or the introduction to his edition of the plays (1765), we feel at once that we are in the grasp of a powerful intellect. There is a dignified march in the opening paragraphs, and a massive good sense in the handling of the subject, that is very impressive. But we soon find that it is an intellect no less limited than powerful, and one strangely unconscious of its limitations. This impression is increased by the notes to the separate plays. When the point can be determined by good sense, when it is a question of the meaning of certain words or the grammatical relation of certain clauses, Dr. Johnson's notes are instructive. He says, 'This must mean so and so,' or 'This is nonsense, I can make nothing of it,' and we are apt to agree with him. But when some necessary question of the play is to be considered, especially anything depending on the vital nature of the characters, this robust intellect is helpless. It is men of this type that have built imperial England. Intellectual integrity, regard for truth, justice, and duty have made Englishmen successful in dealing with Oriental nations. But at the same time a peculiar inability to take the sympathetic and imaginative point of view prevents them from comprehending the inner life of alien races, so that sometimes, as in India and Egypt, England, though a beneficent, is a hated power, and a mutiny may arise and the English officials be entirely unable to foresee or prevent it. This same unwillingness or inability to understand a

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mental condition foreign to insular education, and an absolute certainty that the individual's point of view is the correct and only one, characterizes Dr. Johnson's criticism of Shakespeare.

Dr. Johnson was a scholar, a moralist, and a literary man, but his scholarship was almost entirely confined to the classics and the Latin element of our language, his philosophy was dogmatic and rested on arbitrary assumptions, and his knowledge of literature did not cover the intimate acquaintance with the writings of the Elizabethan period his task demanded. It is a tribute to the estimation in which Shakespeare's plays were held that the two leading literary men of their respective generations should be chosen to edit them. Dr. Johnson was a conscientious worker, but at the period (1756) when he undertook to bring out an edition of Shakespeare he was beginning to grow old and weary, and was inclined to procrastinate, so much so that he had to be sharply reminded of his duty. Very likely he had underestimated the immense labor necessary for the minute examination of each line and the collation of the quartos with the First Folio. He laid down the excellent rule that the old books were probably right,' and that 'conjecture should not be substituted unless justified by probability.' On the whole, his edition was a disappointment, even in his own day.

Dr. Johnson was not a poet, and it is only through the poet in us that we can appreciate Shakespeare. He hated romanticism or any tendency to give an air of mystery or a tone of enthusiasm or passion to a literary representation of life. He could see nothing in Gray's Odes or Milton's Lycidas. They were too spectacular, and conveyed no definite moral. For him the poet must hold a mirror up to nature, but it must not be a magic mirror—it must be destitute of the first quality for

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