We love, we own, to read the great productions of the human mind as they
were written. We have this feeling even about scientific treatises;
though we know that the sciences are always in a state of progression,
and that the alterations made by a modern editor in an old book on any
branch of natural or political philosophy are likely to be improvements.
Some errors have been detected by writers of this generation in the
speculations of Adam Smith. A short cut has been made to much knowledge
at which Sir Isaac Newton arrived through arduous and circuitous paths.
Yet we still look with peculiar veneration on the _Wealth of Nations_
and on the _Principia_, and should regret to see either of those great
works garbled even by the ablest hands. But in works which owe much of
their interest to the character and situation of the writers the case is
infinitely stronger. What man of taste and feeling can endure
_rifacimenti_, harmonies, abridgements, expurgated editions? Who ever
reads a stage-copy of a play when he can procure the original? Who ever
cut open Mrs. Siddons's _Milton_? Who ever got through ten pages of Mr.
Gilpin's translation of John Bunyan's _Pilgrim_ into modern English? Who
would lose, in the confusion of a _Diatessaron_, the peculiar charm
which belongs to the narrative of the disciple whom Jesus loved? The
feeling of a reader who has become intimate with any great original work
is that which Adam expressed towards his bride:
'Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart.'
No substitute, however exquisitely formed, will fill the void left by
the original. The second beauty may be equal or superior to the first;
but still it is not she.--LORD MACAULAY. _Boswell's Life of Johnson._