We have received from a valued and kind correspondent (not one of those
emphatically good-natured friends so wittily described by Sheridan) the
following temperate remonstrance against the tone which has distinguished
several of our recent articles on Shakspeare:--
_Shakspeare Suggestions_ (Vol. viii., pp. 124. 169.).--
"Most busy, when least I do."
I am grateful to A. E. B. for referring me to the article on "Shakspeare
Criticism" in the last number of _Blackwood's Magazine_. It is a very able
paper, and worthy of general attention.
I ought to add some few explanatory observations upon the subject of my
former communication, but the tone of A. E. B.'s comments forbids me to
proceed with the discussion; the more especially as my suggestion has been
made a reason for introducing into your pages comments which seem to me to
be altogether unwarrantable upon other portions of the article in
Blackwood. Whoever may be the writer of that article--I do not know--he
needs no other defence than a reference to his paper. It is not on his
account that I venture to allude to this subject; it is rather on yours,
Mr. Editor, and with a view to the welfare of your paper. I cannot think
that you or it will be benefited by converting conversational gossip about
Shakspeare difficulties into "a duel in the form of a debate," seasoned
with sarcasm, insinuation, and satiric point. This is not the kind of
matter one expects to find in "N. & Q." neither do I think your pages
should be made a vehicle for "showing up" such of "the herd of menstrual
Aristarchi" as chance to differ in opinion from some of your smart and
peremptory, but not unfrequently inaccurate and illiberal correspondents.
I know that you yourself are in this respect much in the power of your
contributors. Probably you were as ignorant of the existence of the article
in Blackwood as I was.[1] It is now brought {262} before your notice, and I
invite you to look at it, and judge for yourself whether A. E. B. has
treated you, your paper, or the writer of that very excellent article, with
common fairness in the remarks to which I allude.
I make these observations on two grounds: first, as one who has many
reasons for being anxious for the prosperity of "N. & Q.;" and secondly,
because I know it to be the opinion of several of your earliest and warmest
friends, that there is a tendency in some of your Shakspeare contributors
to indulge in insinuation, imputation of motives, and many other things
which ought never to appear in your pages. We lately observed, with deep
regret, that you were misled (not by A. E. B.) into the insertion of
unjustifiable insinuations, levelled against a gentleman whom we all know
to be a man of the highest personal honour.
The questions which are mooted in your pages ought to be discussed with the
mutual forbearance and enlarged liberality which are predominant in the
general society of our metropolis; not with the keen and angry partizanship
which distinguishes the petty squabbles of a country town.