That well-worn quotation, "who shall decide when doctors disagree," must,
we should think, invariably suggest itself to the reader of every new book
upon the subject of Shakspeare's text. A few months since MR. COLLIER gave
to the world a volume of _Notes and Emendations from Early Manuscript
Corrections in a Copy of the Folio 1632_[1], which was hailed by many,
ourselves among the number, as a most valuable contribution to Shakspearian
literature. From this favourable view of these manuscript emendations, many
whose opinions upon such matters deserve the highest respect at once avowed
their dissent; and we now find that we have to add to this number MR.
SINGER, who has given us the result of his examination of them in a volume
entitled _The Text of Shakspeare vindicated from the Interpolations and
Corruptions advocated by John Payne Collier, Esq., in his Notes and
Emendations_. No one can put forth higher claims to speak with authority on
any points connected with Shakspeare than MR. SINGER, who has devoted a
life to the study of his writings; and none can rise from a perusal of his
book without recognising in it evidence of MR. SINGER'S fitness for editing
the works of our great dramatist, and feeling anxious for his revised
edition of them. But we think many will regret that, while pointing out the
Notes and Emendations from which he dissents, MR. SINGER should not have
noticed those which he regards with favour; and that, in his anxiety to
vindicate the purity of Shakspeare's text from the anonymous emendator, he
should have embodied that vindication in language, which, though we are
quite sure it is unintentional on his part, gives his book almost a
personal character, instead of one purely critical.
BOOKS RECEIVED.--_Records of the Roman Inquisition, Case of a Minorite
Friar who was sentenced by S. Charles Borromeo to be walled up, and who,
having escaped, was burned in effigy: edited, with an English Translation,
Notes, &c., by_ Rev. Richard Gibbings. Published from one of the MSS.
conveyed from Rome to Paris by order of Napoleon, at the close of the last
century, as a challenge to the defenders of the papacy to acknowledge its
truth, or to controvert it.--_The History of England from the Peace of
Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles_, by Lord Mahon, Vol. III. The third
volume of this new and cheaper edition of Lord Mahon's valuable history
comprehends the period from 1740 to 1748.--_English Forests and Forest
Trees; Historical, Legendary, and Descriptive, with numerous
Illustrations._ This volume, one of the _Illustrated London Library_, is a
pleasant chatty compilation on a subject which will interest many of our
readers and correspondents by furnishing them with a series of notices of
old forests, remarkable trees, &c., which have never before been gathered
together.--_The Shakspeare Repository, edited by_ J. H. Fennell, No. II.
The second part of this periodical, the only one exclusively devoted to the
Elizabethan writers, contains, among other interesting articles, a long one
on the medical practice of Shakspeare's son-in-law, Dr. John Hall.
[Footnote 1: Since this was written we have heard that MR. COLLIER has
traced back the history of his Folio 1632 for upwards of a century.--ED.]
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