ABBOTT'S SHAKESPEARIAN GRAMMAR.*

AMONG head masters of English public schools, Mr. Abbott is honourably known for his efforts to teach his boys to think, and not to cram, and for his determination not to sacrifice those of his boys who are not meant for the University to those who are meant for it. While sending up to Oxford and Cambridge a succession of young fellows who have won brilliant honours there, Mr. Abbott has kept up in his school the most thorough teaching of English known in any of our public schools. In all his classes, from the lowest to the highest, English authors from our own day to A.D. 1394 (Pierce the Ploughman's Crede), as well as transla- tions of Dante, Homer, &c., are read, not only as classics are read in other schools, but as exercises for thinking as well ; the authors' purpose and ideas are studied, as well as their words, and text- books are made something more than vehicles for verbal criticism. In the Early English Text Society's Report for January, 1868, Mr. Abbott says :— " I wish a boy who leaves at the age of sixteen for business, with perhaps few definite ideas from Latin authors, to have derived if possible some definite ideas from English authors. A boy who passes through the middle of the school from the age of thirteen, suppose, to that of sixteen, would in the ordinary course of things read four plays of Shake- speare, and four other standard English works. His reading would be tested by frequent examinations, and he would be taught the difference between careful reading and careless reading. Such a course might engender a desire of more extended reading, a love of good books, a

disgust for bad ones. All this seems to me very valuable consider our English training indispensable."

And, again, in the preface to this Shakespearian grammar :— "Taking the very lowest ground, I believe that an intelligent study of English is the shortest and safest way to attain to an intelligent and successful study of Latin and Ureek, and that it is idle to expect a boy to grapple with a sentence of Plato or Thucydidos if he cannot master a passage of Shakespeare or a couplet of Pope. Looking, therefore, at the study of English from the old point of view adopted by those who advocate a purely classical instruction, I am emphatically of opinion that it is a positive gain to classical studies to deduct from them an hoar or two every week for the study of English."

The present book, then, is the result of the author's practical experience in his own school, and as such deserves our respectful attention. It is, however, a book on the outer form of Shakespeare's expressions, not the inner meaning. We English are still without a real book of Shakespeare criticism that we can put into a boy's hands, much less a man's. When is our second Coleridge to write it ? When, too, is Chaucer to be known, not talked about, and the bright old man brought home to English hearts?

But to return to Mr. Abbott's work. Designed for boys though it is, it is yet a book that should be in the library of every reader of Shakespeare, that is, of every English-reading man and woman, for it discusses in detail every idiom, every construction and phrase of Shakespeare's which differs from the modern use of it, and thus brings out its full force. Starting with adjectives, Mr. Abbott deals with adverbs, articles, conjunctions, prepositions, pro- nouns, personal, relative, and interrogative,—relatival construc- tions, (so-as, that-that, &c.),—forms of verbs, auxiliary verbs, inflections of verbs, the different uses of moods (indicative, infinitive, and subjunctive, participles and verbals.) He then discusses ellipses, irregularities, compound words, prefixes and

A Shakespearian Grammars : an Attempt to Illustrate some of the Differences between Elizabethan and Modern English. For the use of Schools. By E. A. Abbott, ILA., Head Master of the City of London School, formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Revised and Enlarged Edition. London: Macmillan and Co. 1870. suffixes, and with them ends the first part of his book. As speci- mens of Mr. Abbott's treatment, we quote almost at hazard his section 17, on more, and section 259, on Shakespeare's use of that, who, and which, omitting his proofs of the latter for want of space : 17. llonu (mo-re) and Most (mo-st) (comp. E. E.nza or me; mar or mor ; maest, mast, or most) are frequently used as the comparative and superlative of the adjective "great." [Moe, or -me, as a comparative (Rich. II. ii. 1.. 239; Rich.. Ill. iv. 4. 199), is:contracted from more or mo-er. Compare "bet" for "bett-er," " leng" for "long-er," and

" streng" for "strong-er," in 0. E. See also "sith," 62].

"At our more leisure."—M. for M. i. 3. 49. "A more requital."—K J. ii. I. 34.

"With most gladness."—A. and C. ii. 2. 169.

"Oar most quiet" (our very great quiet).-2 lien. IV. iv. z. 71.

"So grace and mercy at your most need help you."—Hamlet, i. 5. 180..

Hence we understand : "Not fearing death nor shrinking for distress,

But always resolute in most extremes." 1 Hen. VI. iv. T. 38.

i.e., not "in the majority of extremities," as it would mean with us, but "in the greatest extremes."

Hence:

"More (instead of 9reater) and less came in with cap and knee."- 1 Hen. IV. iv. 3.68..

"And more and less do flock to follow him."-2 Hen. IV. i. L 209. "Both more and less have given him the revolt."— Macbeth, v. 4. 12..

That "less" refers here to rank, and not to number, is illustrated by "What great ones do, the less will prattle of."—T. N. i. 2. 83. See Chaucer : "The grete giftes to the most and leste."—C. T. 2227.

259. As regards the Shakespearean use, the following rules will gene.- rally hold good :—

(1) THAT is used as a relative (a) after a noun preceded by the article,. (1) after nouns used vocatively, in order to complete the description of the antecedent by adding some essential characteristic of it.

(2) WHO is used (a) as the relative to introduce a fact about the antecedent. It may often be replaced by "and he," "for he," "though he," ttc. (5) It is specially used after antecedents that are lifeless or irrational, when personification is employed, but not necessarily after personal pronouns.

(3) Waxen is used (a) in cases where the relative clause variew between an essential characteristic and an accidental fact, especially where the antecedent is preceded by that ; (5) where the antecedent is. repeated in the relative clause; (c) in the form " the which," where the antecedent is repeated, or whore attention is expressly called to the- antecedent, mostly in cases where there is more than one possible ante- cedent, and care is required to distinguish the real one; (d) where- " which" means "a circumstance which," the circumstance being, gathered from the previous sentence.

Good and sound as most of Mr. Abbott's work in the first part of his book is, it has yet one great fault, that in but few cases is- the historical method thoroughly carried out. The author has a. comical little passage in his preface that "care has been taken to- avoid any unnecessary parade of Anglo-Saxon or Early English that might interfere with the distinct object of the work." The- fact is, that Shakespeare's English cannot be rightly understood without going far back beyond Shakespeare : investigations into- the meanings of phrases, &c., cannot be started at 1570 or 1600.. Mr. Abbott knows this, and when the history of a word, or usage lay near at hand, he has used it ; but what is. necessary is the historical treatment of every idiom ; and this, we- trust Mr. Abbott will give us as he learns more Early English and Anglo-Saxon. Even if he has carried out his threat of stereo- typing the book for boys, so that no further changes are to. be made in it, we hope he will give up this finality doctrine- for the older English readers and foreigners who will have con- tinual recourse to his work. The present book is but a foundatim for a better, and the true use for Mr. Abbott to put his stereotype- plates to is to melt them as soon as he gets fuller knowledge. On the general question of Shakespeare's grammar, Mr. Abbott shows- that its leading feature is its independence. If an adjective is- wanted as an adverb, or vice versa, a noun as a verb, or vice versa,. Shakespeare so uses it at once. If a word has too many syllables, off with its head ; if too few (in some cases), add one to it_ Grammaris meant for poetry, not poetry for grammar ; and within certain limits Shakespeare made his own laws, regardless of Cheke, Mulcaster, &c.

The second part of Mr. Abbott's book is devoted to prosody,. and here his fault seems to be his too clop adherence to his. classical feet. He starts from feet, not beats, accents, or stresses,. and consequently will not see that the beat or accent is the mails thing in the verse, the feet unimportant. Hence, too, he cannot

properly estimate the value of the pause in Shakespeare's verse,. where it as truly fills the place of a foot as it does of a note in. music. His section 506 must be widely extended. Take a speci- men from Lear, ii. I. 111 (Abbott, p. 374), where Mr. Abbott's. feet make him spoil the reading of a line :— "Corn. I's he I pursti I ed?

A' I y, m good 16rd."

Or again, Lear v. L, 28 (Abbott, p. 363) :—

" Edm. Sir, you I speak no I b(e)I. I Re9- Why is J this reiason'd?"

As a consequence of having the law of Shakespeare's verse wrongly stated, we are obliged to have 62 sections, in 101 pages of apparent exceptions to the law, whereas these exceptions are but illustrations of the ever-varying working of the law, that lends itself to the expression of every feeling. Much of the freedom of the 5-beat line is (as Mr. Abbott notices) shown in Chaucer, who in his second period first got English poetry out of the poor old 4-beat verse of Hampole, Barbour, &c. ; and by Shakespeare's time the 5-beat line was freer still ; the beat could be on any syllable of a measure, and the measure, though generally of two syllables, might be more or less at will. Another great omission that we notice in Mr. Abbott's second part, is the passing over of the change in Shakespeare's verse from the unbroken metre of his youth, to the interrupted of his later age,—a change which Mr, C. Bathurst so well brought out in his capital little "Remarks on the Differences in Shakespeare's Versification in Different Periods of his Life." J. W. Parker, 1857.) Without pledging ourselves to Mr. Bathurst's Four Periods, we cannot doubt that his distinction of the unbroken lines of the early Comedies as that of " Errors,"j- where the voice generally dwells on the last word of a line, to the inter- rupted,—as in " Coriolanus," "Winter's Tale," "The Tempest,"$ &c., where the voice is passed on to the middle of the following line, is, on the whole, a sound one, large as the exceptions to it may be. We commend Mr. Bathurst's half-crown book and the subject to Mr. Abbott and our readers. The justness of Mr. Bathurst's classification of Shakespeare's plays will, we believe, be generally acknowledged when the plays are printed and studied in chrono- logical order.

Mr. Abbott ends his book with some very good remarks on simile and metaphor, some sample "Notes and Questions" on Macbeth, act iii., and two careful indexes to his quotations and text. The book as a whole does him very great credit, will be of great service to every Shakespeare reader, boy and man, and will prove a perfect blessing to foreigners. But we say again, that if Mr. Abbott values rightly either his own reputation or the study of English, he will complete the historical part of his book, revise the prosody, and melt his stereotype plates.