Many of our older readers can remember the anticipation with which they
looked for each successive volume of the late Dr. Young’s excellent
series of old English prose-writers, and the delight with which they
carried it home, fresh from the press and the bindery in its appropriate
livery of evergreen. To most of us it was our first introduction to the
highest society of letters, and we still feel grateful to the departed
scholar who gave us to share the conversation of such men as Latimer,
More, Sidney, Taylor, Browne, Fuller, and Walton. What a sense of
security in an old book which Time has criticised for us! What a
precious feeling of seclusion in having a double wall of centuries
between us and the heats and clamors of contemporary literature! How
limpid seems the thought, how pure the old wine of scholarship that has
been settling for so many generations in those silent crypts and
Falernian _amphoræ_ of the Past! No other writers speak to us with the
authority of those whose ordinary speech was that of our translation of
the Scriptures; to no modern is that frank unconsciousness possible
which was natural to a period when yet reviews were not; and no later
style breathes that country charm characteristic of days ere the
metropolis had drawn all literary activity to itself, and the trampling
feet of the multitude had banished the lark and the daisy from the fresh
privacies of language. Truly, as compared with the present, these old
voices seem to come from the morning fields and not the paved
thoroughfares of thought.
Even the “Retrospective Review” continues to be good reading, in virtue
of the antique aroma (for wine only acquires its _bouquet_ by age) which
pervades its pages. Its sixteen volumes are so many tickets of admission
to the vast and devious vaults of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, through which we wander, tasting a thimbleful of rich Canary,
honeyed Cyprus, or subacidulous Hock, from what dusty butt or keg our
fancy chooses. The years during which this review was published were
altogether the most fruitful in genuine appreciation of old English
literature. Books were prized for their imaginative and not their
antiquarian value by young writers who sate at the feet of Lamb and
Coleridge. Rarities of style, of thought, of fancy, were sought, rather
than the barren scarcities of typography. But another race of men seems
to have sprung up, in whom the futile enthusiasm of the collector
predominates, who substitute archæologic perversity for fine-nerved
scholarship, and the worthless profusion of the curiosity-shop for the
sifted exclusiveness of the cabinet of Art. They forget, in their
fanaticism for antiquity, that the dust of never so many centuries is
impotent to transform a curiosity into a gem, that only good books
absorb mellowness of tone from age, and that a baptismal register which
proves a patriarchal longevity (if existence be life) cannot make
mediocrity anything but a bore, or garrulous commonplace entertaining.
There are volumes which have the old age of Plato, rich with gathering
experience, meditation, and wisdom, which seem to have sucked color and
ripeness from the genial autumns of all the select intelligences that
have steeped them in the sunshine of their love and appreciation;--these
quaint freaks of russet tell of Montaigne; these stripes of crimson
fire, of Shakespeare; this sober gold, of Sir Thomas Browne; this
purpling bloom, of Lamb; in such fruits we taste the legendary gardens
of Alcinoüs and the orchards of Atlas; and there are volumes again which
can claim only the inglorious senility of Old Parr or older Jenkins,
which have outlived their half-dozen of kings to be the prize of showmen
and treasuries of the born-to-be-forgotten trifles of a hundred years
ago.
We confess a bibliothecarian avarice that gives all books a value in our
eyes; there is for us a recondite wisdom in the phrase, “A book is a
book”; from the time when we made the first catalogue of our library, in
which “Bible, large, 1 vol.,” and “Bible, small, 1 vol.,” asserted their
alphabetic individuality and were the sole _B_s in our little hive, we
have had a weakness even for those checker-board volumes that only fill
up; we cannot breathe the thin air of that Pepysian self-denial, that
Himalayan selectness, which, content with one bookcase, would have no
tomes in it but _porphyrogeniti_, books of the bluest blood, making room
for choicer new-comers by a continuous ostracism to the garret of
present incumbents. There is to us a sacredness in a volume, however
dull; we live over again the author’s lonely labors and tremulous hopes;
we see him, on his first appearance after parturition, “as well as could
be expected,” a nervous sympathy yet surviving between the late-severed
umbilical cord and the wondrous offspring, doubtfully entering the
Mermaid, or the Devil Tavern, or the Coffee-house of Will or Button,
blushing under the eye of Ben or Dryden or Addison, as if they must
needs know him for the author of the “Modest Enquiry into the Present
State of Dramatique Poetry,” or of the “Unities briefly considered by
Philomusus,” of which they have never heard and never will hear so much
as the names; we see the country-gentlemen (sole cause of its surviving
to our day) who buy it as a book no gentleman’s library can be complete
without; we see the spendthrift heir, whose horses and hounds and
Pharaonic troops of friends, drowned in a Red Sea of claret, bring it to
the hammer, the tall octavo in tree-calf following the ancestral oaks of
the park. Such a volume is sacred to us. But it must be the original
foundling of the book-stall, the engraved blazon of some extinct
baronetcy within its cover, its leaves enshrining memorial-flowers of
some passion which the churchyard smothered ere the Stuarts were yet
discrowned, suggestive of the trail of laced ruffles, burnt here and
there with ashes from the pipe of some dozing poet, its binding worn and
weather-stained, that has felt the inquisitive finger, perhaps, of
Malone, or thrilled to the touch of Lamb, doubtful between desire and
the odd sixpence. When it comes to a question of reprinting, we are more
choice. The new duodecimo is bald and bare, indeed, compared with its
battered prototype that could draw us with a single hair of association.
It is not easy to divine the rule which has governed Mr. Smith in making
the selections for his series. A choice of old authors should be a
_florilegium_, and not a botanist’s _hortus siccus_, to which grasses
are as important as the single shy blossom of a summer. The old-maidenly
genius of antiquarianism seems to have presided over the editing of the
“Library.” We should be inclined to surmise that the works to be
reprinted had been commonly suggested by gentlemen with whom they were
especial favorites, or who were ambitious that their own names should be
signalized on the title-pages with the suffix of EDITOR. The volumes
already published are: Increase Mather’s “Remarkable Providences”; the
poems of Drummond of Hawthornden; the “Visions of Piers Ploughman;” the
works in prose and verse of Sir Thomas Overbury; the “Hymns and Songs”
and the “Hallelujah” of George Wither; the poems of Southwell; Selden’s
“Table-Talk”; the “Enchiridion” of Quarles; the dramatic works of
Marston, Webster, and Lilly; Chapman’s translation of Homer; Lovelace,
and four volumes of “Early English Poetry”! The volume of Mather is
curious and entertaining, and fit to stand on the same shelf with the
“Magnalia” of his book-suffocated son. Cunningham’s comparatively recent
edition, we should think, might satisfy for a long time to come the
demand for Drummond, whose chief value to posterity is as the Boswell of
Ben Jonson. Sir Thomas Overbury’s “Characters” are interesting
illustrations of contemporary manners, and a mine of foot-notes to the
works of better men,--but, with the exception of “The Fair and Happy
Milkmaid,” they are dull enough to have pleased James the First; his
“Wife” is a _cento_ of far-fetched conceits,--here a tomtit, and there a
hen mistaken for a pheasant, like the contents of a cockney’s game-bag,
and his chief interest for us lies in his having been mixed up with an
inexplicable tragedy and poisoned in the Tower, not without suspicion of
royal complicity. The “Piers Ploughman” is a reprint, with very little
improvement that we can discover, of Mr. Wright’s former edition. It
would have been very well to have republished the “Fair Virtue,” and
“Shepherd’s Hunting” of George Wither, which contain all the true poetry
he ever wrote; but we can imagine nothing more dreary than the seven
hundred pages of his “Hymns and Songs,” whose only use, that we can
conceive of, would be as penal reading for incorrigible poetasters. If a
steady course of these did not bring them out of their nonsenses,
nothing short of hanging would. Take this as a sample, hit on by opening
at random:--
“Rottenness my bones possest;
Trembling fear possessèd me;
I that troublous day might rest:
For, when his approaches be
Onward to the people made,
His strong troops will them invade.”
Southwell is, if possible, worse. He paraphrases David, putting into his
mouth such punning conceits as “fears are my feres,” and in his “Saint
Peter’s Complaint” makes that rashest and shortest-spoken of the
Apostles drawl through thirty pages of maudlin repentance, in which the
distinctions between the north and northeast sides of a sentimentality
are worthy of Duns Scotus. It does not follow, that, because a man is
hanged for his faith, he is able to write good verses. We would almost
match the fortitude that quails not at the good Jesuit’s poems with his
own which carried him serenely to the fatal tree. The stuff of which
poets are made, whether finer or not, is of a very different fibre from
that which is used in the tough fabric of martyrs. It is time that an
earnest protest should be uttered against the wrong done to the
religious sentiment by the greater part of what is called religious
poetry, and which is commonly a painful something misnamed by the noun
and misqualified by the adjective. To dilute David, and make doggerel of
that majestic prose of the Prophets which has the glow and wide-orbited
metre of constellations, may be a useful occupation to keep
country-gentlemen out of litigation or retired clergymen from polemics;
but to regard these metrical mechanics as sacred because nobody wishes
to touch them, as meritorious because no one can be merry in their
company,--to rank them in the same class with those ancient songs of the
Church, sweet with the breath of saints, sparkling with the tears of
forgiven penitents, and warm with the fervor of martyrs,--nay, to set
them up beside such poems as those of Herbert, composed in the upper
chambers of the soul that open toward the sun’s rising, is to confound
piety with dulness, and the manna of heaven with its sickening namesake
from the apothecary’s drawer. The “Enchiridion” of Quarles is hardly
worthy of the author of the “Emblems,” and is by no means an
unattainable book in other editions,--nor a matter of heartbreak, if it
were. Of the dramatic works of Marston and Lilly it is enough to say
that they are truly _works_ to the reader, but in no sense dramatic,
nor, as literature, worth the paper they blot. They seem to have been
deemed worthy of republication because they were the contemporaries of
true poets; and if all the Tuppers of the nineteenth century will buy
their plays on the same principle, the sale will be a remunerative one.
It was worth while, perhaps, to reprint Lovelace, if only to show what
dull verses may be written by a man who has made one lucky hit. Of the
“Early English Poetry,” nine tenths had better never have been printed
at all, and the other tenth reprinted by an editor who had some vague
suspicion, at least, of what they meant. The Homer of Chapman is so
precious a gift, that we are ready to forgive all Mr. Smith’s
shortcomings in consideration of it. It is a vast _placer_, full of
nuggets for the philologist and the lover of poetry.
Having now run cursorily through the series of Mr. Smith’s reprints, we
come to the closer question of _How are they edited?_ Whatever the merit
of the original works, the editors, whether self-elected or chosen by
the publisher, should be accurate and scholarly. The editing of the
Homer we can heartily commend; and Dr. Rimbault, who carried the works
of Overbury through the press, has done his work well; but the other
volumes of the Library are very creditable neither to English
scholarship nor to English typography. The Introductions to some of
them are enough to make us think that we are fallen to the necessity of
reprinting our old authors because the art of writing correct and
graceful English has been lost. William B. Turnbull, Esq., of Lincoln’s
Inn, Barrister at Law, says, for instance, in his Introduction to
Southwell: “There was resident at Uxendon, near Harrow on the Hill, in
Middlesex, a Catholic family of the name of Bellamy whom [which]
Southwell was in the habit of visiting and providing with religious
instruction when he exchanged his ordinary [ordinarily] close
confinement for a purer atmosphere.” (p. xxii.) Again, (p. xxii,) “He
had, in this manner, for six years, pursued, with very great success,
the objects of his mission, when these were abruptly terminated by his
foul betrayal into the hands of his enemies in 1592.” We should like to
have Mr. Turnbull explain how the _objects_ of a mission could be
terminated by a betrayal, however it might be with the mission itself.
From the many similar flowers in the Introduction to Mather’s
“Providences,” by Mr. George Offor, (in whom, we fear, we recognize a
countryman,) we select the following: “It was at this period when,
[that,] oppressed by the ruthless hand of persecution, our Pilgrim
Fathers, threatened with torture and death, succumbed not to man, but
trusting on [in] an almighty arm, braved the dangers of an almost
unknown ocean, and threw themselves into the arms of men called savages,
who proved more beneficent than national Christians.” To whom or what
our Pilgrim Fathers _did_ succumb, and what “national Christians” are,
we leave, with the song of the Sirens, to conjecture. Speaking of the
“Providences,” Mr. Offor says, that “they faithfully delineate the state
of public opinion two hundred years ago, the most striking feature being
an implicit faith in the power of the [in-]visible world to hold
visible intercourse with man:--not the angels to bless poor erring
mortals, but of demons imparting power to witches and warlocks to
injure, terrify and destroy,”--a sentence which we defy any witch or
warlock, though he were Michael Scott himself, to parse with the
astutest demonic aid. On another page, he says of Dr. Mather, that “he
was one of the first divines who discovered that very many strange
events, which were considered preternatural, had occurred in the course
of nature or by deceitful juggling; that the Devil could not speak
English, nor prevail with Protestants; the smell of herbs alarms the
Devil; that medicine drives out Satan!” We do not wonder that Mr. Offor
put a mark of exclamation at the end of this surprising sentence, but we
do confess our astonishment that the vermilion pencil of the
proof-reader suffered it to pass unchallenged. Leaving its bad English
out of the question, we find, on referring to Mather’s text, that he was
never guilty of the absurdity of believing that Satan was less eloquent
in English than in any other language; that it was the British (Welsh)
tongue which a certain demon whose education had been neglected (not
_the_ Devil) could not speak; that Mather is not fool enough to say that
the Fiend cannot prevail with Protestants, nor that the smell of herbs
alarms him, nor that medicine drives him out. Anything more helplessly
inadequate than Mr. Offor’s preliminary dissertation on Witchcraft we
never read; but we could hardly expect much from an editor whose
citations from the book he is editing show that he had either not read
or not understood it.
Mr. Offor is superbly Protestant and iconoclastic,--not sparing, as we
have seen, even Priscian’s head among the rest; but, _en revanche_, Mr.
Turnbull is ultramontane beyond the editors of the _Civiltà Cattolica_.
He allows himself to say, that, “after Southwell’s death, one of his
sisters, a Catholic in heart, but timidly and blamably simulating
heresy, wrought, with some relics of the martyr, several cures on
persons afflicted with desperate and deadly diseases, which had baffled
the skill of all physicians.” Mr. Turnbull is, we suspect, a recent
convert, or it would occur to him that doctors are still secure of a
lucrative practice in countries full of the relics of greater saints
than even Southwell. That father was hanged (according to Protestants)
for treason, and the relic which put the whole pharmacopœia to shame
was, if we mistake not, his neckerchief. But whatever the merits of the
Jesuit himself, and however it may gratify Mr. Turnbull’s catechumenical
enthusiasm to exalt the curative properties of this integument of his,
even at the expense of Jesuits’ bark, we cannot but think that he has
shown a credulity that unfits him for writing a fair narrative of his
hero’s life, or making a tolerably just estimate of his verses. It is
possible, however, that these last seem prosaic as a necktie only to
heretical readers.
We have singled out the Introductions of Messrs. Turnbull and Offor for
special animadversion because they are on the whole the worst, both of
them being offensively sectarian, while that of Mr. Offor in particular
gives us almost no information whatever. Some of the others are not
without grave faults, chief among which is a vague declamation,
especially out of place in critical essays, where it serves only to
weary the reader and awaken his distrust. In his Introduction to
Wither’s “Hallelujah,” for instance, Mr. Farr informs us that “nearly
all the best poets of the latter half of the sixteenth century--for that
was the period when the Reformation was fully established--and the whole
of the seventeenth century were sacred poets,” and that “even
Shakespeare and the contemporary dramatists of his age sometimes attuned
their well-strung harps to the songs of Zion.” Comment on statements
like these would be as useless as the assertions themselves are absurd.
We have quoted these examples only to justify us in saying that Mr.
Smith must select his editors with more care if he wishes that his
“Library of Old Authors” should deserve the confidence and thereby gain
the good word of intelligent readers,--without which such a series can
neither win nor keep the patronage of the public. It is impossible that
men who cannot construct an English sentence correctly, and who do not
know the value of clearness in writing, should be able to disentangle
the knots which slovenly printers have tied in the thread of an old
author’s meaning; and it is more than doubtful whether they who assert
carelessly, cite inaccurately, and write loosely are not by nature
disqualified for doing thoroughly what they undertake to do. If it were
unreasonable to demand of every one who assumes to edit one of our early
poets the critical acumen, the genial sense, the illimitable reading,
the philological scholarship, which in combination would alone make the
ideal editor, it is not presumptuous to expect some one of these
qualifications singly, and we have the right to insist upon patience and
accuracy, which are within the reach of every one, and without which all
the others are wellnigh vain. Now to this virtue of accuracy Mr. Offor
specifically lays claim in one of his remarkable sentences: “We are
bound to admire,” he says, “the accuracy and beauty of this specimen of
typography. Following in the path of my late friend William Pickering,
our publisher rivals the Aldine and Elzevir presses, which have been so
universally admired.” We should think that it was the product of those
presses which had been admired, and that Mr. Smith presents a still
worthier object of admiration when he contrives to follow a path and
rival a press at the same time. But let that pass;--it is the claim to
accuracy which we dispute; and we deliberately affirm, that, so far as
we are able to judge by the volumes we have examined, no claim more
unfounded was ever set up. In some cases, as we shall show presently,
the blunders of the original work have been followed with painful
accuracy in the reprint; but many others have been added by the
carelessness of Mr. Smith’s printers or editors. In the thirteen pages
of Mr. Offor’s own Introduction we have found as many as seven
typographical errors,--unless some of them are to be excused on the
ground that Mr. Offor’s studies have not yet led him into those arcana
where we are taught such recondite mysteries of language as that verbs
agree with their nominatives. In Mr. Farr’s Introduction to the “Hymns
and Songs” nine short extracts from other poems of Wither are quoted,
and in these we have found no less than seven misprints or false
readings which materially affect the sense. Textual inaccuracy is a
grave fault in the new edition of an old poet; and Mr. Farr is not only
liable to this charge, but also to that of making blundering
misstatements which are calculated to mislead the careless or uncritical
reader. Infected by the absurd cant which has been prevalent for the
last dozen years among literary sciolists, he says,--“The language used
by Wither in all his various works--whether secular or sacred--is pure
Saxon.” Taken literally, this assertion is manifestly ridiculous, and,
allowing it every possible limitation, it is not only untrue of Wither,
but of every English poet, from Chaucer down. The translators of our
Bible made use of the German version, and a poet versifying the English
Scriptures would therefore be likely to use more words of Teutonic
origin than in his original compositions. But no English poet can write
English poetry except in English,--that is, in that compound of Teutonic
and Romanic which derives its heartiness and strength from the one and
its canorous elegance from the other. The Saxon language does not sing,
and, though its tough mortar serve to hold together the less compact
Latin words, porous with vowels, it is to the Latin that our verse owes
majesty, harmony, variety, and the capacity for rhyme. A quotation of
six lines from Wither ends at the top of the very page on which Mr. Farr
lays down his extraordinary _dictum_, and we will let this answer him,
Italicizing the words of Romance derivation:--
“Her true _beauty_ leaves behind _Apprehensions_ in the mind, Of more
sweetness than all _art_ Or _inventions_ can _impart_; Thoughts too deep
to be _expressed_, And too strong to be _suppressed._”
Mr. Halliwell, at the close of his Preface to the Works of Marston,
(Vol. I. p. xxii,) says, “The dramas now collected together are
reprinted absolutely from the early editions, which were placed in the
hands of our printers, who thus had the advantage of following them
without the intervention of a transcriber. They are given as nearly as
possible in their original state, the only modernizations attempted
consisting in the alternations of the letters _i_ and _j_, and _u_ and
_v_, the retention of which” (does Mr. Halliwell mean the letters or the
“alternations”?) “would have answered no useful purpose, while it would
have unnecessarily perplexed the modern reader.”
This is not very clear; but as Mr. Halliwell is a member of several
learned foreign societies, and especially of the Royal _Irish_ Academy,
perhaps it would be unfair to demand that he should write clear English.
As one of Mr. Smith’s editors, it was to be expected that he should not
write it idiomatically. Some malign constellation (Taurus, perhaps,
whose infaust aspect may be supposed to preside over the makers of bulls
and blunders) seems to have been in conjunction with heavy Saturn when
the Library was projected. At the top of the same page from which we
have made our quotation, Mr. Halliwell speaks of “conveying a favorable
impression _on_ modern readers.” It was surely to no such phrase as this
that Ensign Pistol alluded when he said, “_Convey_ the _wise_ it call.”
A literal reprint of an old author may be of value in two ways: the
orthography may in certain cases indicate the ancient pronunciation, or
it may put us on a scent which shall lead us to the burrow of a word
among the roots of language. But in order to this, it surely is not
needful to undertake the reproduction of all the original errors of the
press; and even were it so, the proofs of carelessness in the editorial
department are so glaring, that we are left in doubt, after all, if we
may congratulate ourselves on possessing all these sacred blunders of
the Elizabethan type-setters in their integrity, and without any
debasement of modern alloy. If it be gratifying to know that there lived
stupid men before our contemporary Agamemnons in that kind, yet we
demand absolute accuracy in the report of the phenomena in order to
arrive at anything like safe statistics. For instance, we find (Vol. I.
p. 89) “ACTUS SECUNDUS, SCENA PRIMUS,” and (Vol. III. p. 174) “_exit
ambo_,” and we are interested to know that in a London printing-house,
two centuries and a half ago, there was a philanthropist who wished to
simplify the study of the Latin language by reducing all the nouns to
one gender and all the verbs to one number. Had his emancipated
theories of grammar prevailed, how much easier would that part of boys
which cherubs want have found the school-room benches! How would birchen
bark, as an educational tonic, have fallen in repute! How white would
have been the (now black-and-blue) memories of Dr. Busby and so many
other educational _lictors_, who, with their bundles of rods, heralded
not alone the consuls, but all other Roman antiquities to us! We dare
not, however, indulge in the grateful vision, since there are
circumstances which lead us to infer that Mr. Halliwell himself (member
though he be of so many learned societies) has those vague notions of
the speech of ancient Rome which are apt to prevail in regions which
count not the _betula_ in their _Flora_. On page xv of his Preface, he
makes Drummond say that Ben Jonson “was dilated” (_delated_,--Gifford
gives it in English, _accused_) “to the king by Sir James Murray,”--Ben,
whose corpulent person stood in so little need of that malicious
increment!
What is Mr. Halliwell’s conception of editorial duty? As we read along,
and the once fair complexion of the margin grew more and more pitted
with pencil-marks, like that of a bad proof-sheet, we began to think
that he was acting on the principle of every man his own
washerwoman,--that he was making blunders of set purpose, (as teachers
of languages do in their exercises,) in order that we might correct them
for ourselves, and so fit us in time to be editors also, and members of
various learned societies, even as Mr. Halliwell himself is. We fancied,
that, magnanimously waving aside the laurel with which a grateful
posterity crowned General Wade, he wished us “to see these roads
_before_ they were made,” and develop our intellectual muscles in
getting over them. But no; Mr. Halliwell has appended notes to his
edition, and among them are some which correct misprints, and therefore
seem to imply that he considers that service as belonging properly to
the editorial function. We are obliged, then, to give up our theory that
his intention was to make every reader an editor, and to suppose that he
wished rather to show how disgracefully a book might be edited and yet
receive the commendation of professional critics who read with the ends
of their fingers. If this were his intention, Marston himself never
published so biting a satire.
Let us look at a few of the intricate passages, to help us through which
Mr. Halliwell lends us the light of his editorial lantern. In the
Induction to “What you Will” occurs the striking and unusual phrase,
“Now out up-pont,” and Mr. Halliwell favors us with the following note:
“Page 221, line 10. _Up-pont._--That is, upon’t.” Again in the same play
we find--
“Let twattling fame cheatd others rest,
I um no dish for rumors feast.”