Most people are aware of the great demand there is for English
literature, and indeed for all literature in the United States: for some
years the anxiety of persons in that part of the world to obtain copies
of our early printed books, prose, poetry, and plays, has been well
known to such as collect and sell them on this side of the water. Where
American purchasers could not obtain original editions they have, in all
possible cases, secured reprints, and they have made some themselves.
Not very long since a present of a most creditable and well-edited
republication of "Four Old Plays" was sent to me from Cambridge, U.S.,
consisting of "Three Interludes: _Thersytes_, _Jack Jugler_, and
Heywood's _Pardoner and Frere_; and _Jocasta_, a tragedy by Gascoigne
and Kinwelmarsh." They are preceded by a very well written and
intelligent, and at the same time modest, Introduction, signed F.J.C.,
the initials of Mr. Francis James Child; who in fact was kind enough to
forward the volume to me, and who, if I am not mistaken, was formerly a
correspondent of mine in a different part of the republic.
My particular reason for noticing the book is to impress upon editors in
this country the necessity of accuracy, not only for the sake of readers
and critics here, but for the sake of those abroad, because Mr. Child's
work illustrates especially the disadvantage of the want of that
accuracy. It so happens that two, if not three, of the pieces included
in the Cambridge volume, are absolutely unique, and are now in the
library of the Duke of Devonshire. They went through my hands some years
ago, and as they had been previously reprinted in London (two of them
for the Roxburghe Club), I took the opportunity of collating my copies
of them. The third interlude, which was not reprinted for any society,
but as a private speculation, "by George Smeeton, in St. Martin's
Church-yard," is Heywood's _Pardoner and Frere_, the full title of which
is "_A mery playe betwene the pardoner, and the frere, the curate and
neybour Pratte_." The original copy has the following imprint:
"Imprynted by Wyllyam Rastell the v. day of Apryll, the yere of our
lorde, M. CCCCC. xxx III."
The reprint by Smeeton is in black letter, and it professes to be a
fac-simile, or as nearly so as possible; and although it consists of
only eight leaves, it contains no fewer than forty variations from the
original, all more or less important, and one of them the total omission
of a line, so that the preceding line is left without its corresponding
rhyme, and the sense materially injured.
Unfortunately, Mr. Child reprinted in America from this defective
reprint in England; but his sagacity prevented him from falling into
some of the blunders, although it could not supply him with the wanting
line; and his notes are extremely clear and pertinent. I shall not go
over the thirty-nine other errors; but I shall just quote the passage as
it stands in the (as far as I know) unique copy, now deposited at
Devonshire House, and supply in italics the necessary line. It occurs in
a speech by the Pardoner, near the end, where he is praising one of his
relics:-- {210}
"I wyll edefy more, with the syght of it
Than wyll all the pratynge of holy wryt;
For that except that the precher, hym selfe lyue well,
His predycacyon wyll helpe neuer a dell,
And I know well, that thy lyuynge is nought:
_Thou art an apostata, yf it were well sought_,
An homycyde thou art I know well inoughe," &c.
The line omitted is the more remarkable, because it contains an instance
of the employment of a word very old in our language, and in use in the
best periods of our prose and poetry: "apostata" is explained in the
_Promptorium_, is found in Skelton and Heywood, and so down to the time
of Massinger, who was especially fond of it.
How many copies were issued of Smeeton's reprint of _The Pardoner and
the Frere_, I know not; but any of your readers, who chance to possess
it, will do well to add the absent line in the margin, so that the
mistake may be both rectified and recorded. I was not aware of Mr.
Child's intention to re-publish the interlude in the United States, or I
would long ago have sent him the correction, as indeed I did, a day or
two after I received his volume. It was, nevertheless, somewhat
ungracious to thank him for his book, and at the same time to point out
an important error in it, for which, however, he was in no way
responsible.