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Mr. Richard Grant White, as we gather from incidental allusions in the volume[1] before us, is a gentleman connected with the American press—young (for Mr. Collier, he remarks, "had taken a respectable position in critical literature before I was born"), and enthusiastic in Shakspearian scholarship , and in the study of all contemporary and cognate appliances and means for the elucidation of his great Subject-Object. Until five years ago, it appears, Mr. White had read and delighted in Shakspeare, with an ear perversely, and of malice prepense, deaf to the charmings of commentators, charm they never so wisely—though in their case, perhaps, "wisely" is not quite the word; disgusted once for all with the speculations of Shakspearian speculators, the reformations of Shakspearian reformers, the emendations of Shakspearian emendators, he had forsworn, while still in statu pupillari, the whole kith and kin of these "tedious old fools;" the occasional cause of this systematic abjuration being Dr. Johnson's strictures, known but not read of all men, on the "folly of the fiction, and absurdity of the conduct" of "Cymbeline," and the "unresisting imbecility" of its general character. This unkindest cut of all from the paw of the Great Bear was too much for Mr. White; henceforth he could and he would be willingly ignorant, wilfully because blissfully ignorant, of the critical guild in their practices on Shakspeare; he would renounce them and all their works; he would be cynical in his refusal to let them stand between him and the Sun. Doctor Samuel had almost been the death of him,—at the least would be the death to his enjoyment of "Cymbeline," if allowed to go on still in his wickedness; no wonder, then, if the indignant Shakspeare's Scholar exclaims—"Shocked, wounded, repelled, with a sense of personal wrong I flung the book aside, and mentally registered a solemn vow never to read again a criticism or comment of any kind upon Shakespeare's works." But, five years ago, Mr. White, in a moment big with fate, purchased a copy of Knight's Pictorial Edition, believing that after his long abstinence from all intercourse with expositors, he might with indifference read a commentator again, and with impunity. The immediate result of acquaintance with Mr. Knight was to put his reader on the critical study of the text; and from that time to this, with the exception of his professional duties, we have in that reader a diligent, earnest, loving, painful Shakspeare's Scholar. Five years "of hard labour" have impressed him, vividly and vexatiously enough, with renewed and deepened scorn of the "mass of mingled learning and ignorance, sense and folly, with which Shakespeare has been as nearly as possible overwhelmed." The appearance of Mr. Collier's volume occasioned some contributions on the subject, by Mr. White, in Putnam's
- ↑ Shakespeare's Scholar: being Historical and Critical Studies of his Text, Characters, and Commentators, with an Examination of Mr. Collier's Folio of 1632. By Richard Grant White, A.M. New York: 1854.
