painting" for "whose mother was his painting," is ably discussed by our Shakspeare's Scholar, and we incline on the whole to his mistrust of the change—as we certainly do to his rejection of "boast" in lieu of "beast" in Lady Macbeth's appeal; and of "Warwickshire ale" for "shire ale" in the tinker's gossip; and again of "unto truth” for "to untruth” in a much canvassed line in the "Tempest" (Act I. Sc. 2). Shakspeare, we submit, would have rejoiced in his Scholar, in these and some like instances of acute, scrutinising, rightfully jealous scholarship. Mr. White's own conjectural emendations are few and feasible—affecting little beyond a slight misprint or an error in punctuation. It should be added that, notwithstanding his rule of adhesion, wherever it is at all practicable, to the original folio, he is often free enough in his tamperings with its text, now and then scores a sentence as hopelessly corrupt, and more than once deals in somewhat arbitrary fashion with the very genuineness[1] of what is there set down.
The criticisms interspersed through his volume are highly interesting, and glow with sometimes impassioned admiration, finely attempered to the grand theme. The one badly eminent exception is that on Isabella, to which we may again refer, with regret. The following brief comment on Claudio's dread apprehension of being
worse than worst,
Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine, howling!
bespeaks the man of high thought and deep feeling:—"It should be said about the last two lines of this passage, if it never has been said,—and I believe it never has,—that they possess an awful beauty which it is hardly in the power of language to describe. The idea seems to be but vaguely hinted; and yet an undefined, peculiar dread goes with the words, that would vanish, or dwindle into certain fear, if we were told exactly what they mean. We feel that they have conveyed to us that which they themselves tell us is too horrible for utterance. What can be those monstrous thoughts which ever seem to be about to take an hideous shape, and ever again vanish into formlessness, leaving the tortured spirit howling with rage and horror at it knows not what, save that
- ↑ For example, in Theseus' famous verses on Imagination, Mr. White rejects, with a peremptory "cannot be Shakespeare's," the two concluding lines—As we have seen already, he also repudiates in toto the dirge sung by Polydore and Cadwal over their sister; declaring that nothing could be tamer, more pretentious, more unsuited to the characters. "Will anybody believe," he asks, "that Shakespeare, after he was out of Stratford grammar- school, or before, wrote such a couplet as,
"Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear.”
Midsummer Night's Dream, V. 1.'All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust?'"
To think Mr. Collier fain would keep this, makes some folks laugh. "These judicious changes," and "this important addition," he calls the new readings. Chacun à son goût. For these and similar emendations and commendations, see Collier, pp. 24, 62, 130, 161, 175, 197, 233, 246, 285,—and especially a very curious one at p. 88.
