BOOKS.

MR. DYCE'S EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE.*

THE great world of Shakespearian readers is made up of many circles, and each circle has its apostolic editor, in whose text the lay members implicitly believe. But how if the preacher changes his own belief? Will he carry his congregation with him ? This more often depends upon the authority of the man than upon the soundness of his arguments ; but when both are strong the chances must be decidedly in his favour. Such we take to be the happy prospects of Mr. Dyce. Seven years ago he * The Works (If William Shakespeare. l'he text revised by the Rev. Alexander Dyne. In eight vela vole. I., IL, III. Second F4dItIon.London : Chapman and Ball. net commanded the applause of a highly refined audience ; the doctors of purism nodded their approbation, and their wives and children learned a text which must often have been very dis- tasteful to them. Now he calls upon them to unlearn it ; and, in exchange, he is offering them a reformed version, that has at least the merit of being more popularly pleasant and intelligible. Many grim elders of the circle will stand aghast at it, and appeal from the Dyce of '64 to the Dyce of '57; but their sons have been growing up meanwhile, and nine-tenths of these, we suspect, and all of their sisters, will pronounce the present edition to be the best in the world. We ourselves, after much hesitation, and still not without some hesitation, are ready to con- fess that we cantilt name a better one. The best of all perhaps, for the patient student, would be a simple reprint of the folio of 1623, with marginal readings from the quartos and other folios, and foot-notes full of the choicer modern suggestions. Yet even the student would wish to possess a corrected copy for purposes of general intellectual enjoyment, and then the question immediately arises, is there any copy which is judiciously cor- rected? We have tossed over one after another, aud re- turned to the one before us with a feeling of some relief. We cannot pretend to any sublime impartiality. Brought up on the text of sixty years since, even that of Chalmers, we were at first inclined to chuckle over every fresh admission of its merits, and even to say that Chalmers and Dyce are very much alike ; but, upon closer inspection, we have found that the minor improvements are so many, and so well supported by critical notes, that we must allow the present edition to be one of a much higher order. Even where we think that certain passages are a little over-cooked, we should often find it hard to recommend the original crudities to the popular palate ; and Mr. Dyce's notes at all events afford one the means of choosing for oneself. Chalmers, on the other hand, worked (happy man 1) for an uncritical public, and acknowledged his authorities or not, just as it suited him. Take, for instance, the famous difficulty in the Tempest (act iii., scene 1), "But these sweet thoughts doe euen refresh my labours, Most busie lest, when I doe it.'

No simple believer in Chalmers would suspect that such was the reading of the first folio, and that "most busy-less" was nothing but an invention of Theobald's. This curious compound, an offence to Mr. Dyce in 1857, has now found favour with him. We do not wonder that he appends a page of apologies ; and that, even at the last moment, he is delighted to fortify himself with a note from Mr. John Forster. A thousand small critics have nibbled at the line, and it is fair game, being manifestly corrupt ; so let us offer "most base else," &c., as suggestion 1001. After all, however, we are inclined to prefer the reading suggested by Mr. Halliwell in the notes to his folio edition,—" Most busil'est when I do it,"—i.e., even when I ant labouring most busily. That some amount of cooking is required to make sense of it every one allows ; but there are two opinions about the alleged corruptness of another line in the same play (act iv., scene 1), where Ceres is summoned from her "banks with pioned and twilled brims." Our friend Chalmers (a fair average type of the popular editor), adopted Steevens's pretty reading, " peonied and Med brims." Others have pointed out that " pyoning" (allied to pioneer) is used by Spenser for digging; and " twilled " has been explained as mounded, or altered to "tilled :"—to connect it with tewel (a pipe or funnel, Fr. tuyau), may merely serve as a proof of our desperation,—but we do seriously think that Ceres was here being complimented on her patronage of ditching and draining. Still, the old reading has not yet been clearly interpreted ; and so we can hardly blame Mr. Dyce for adopting the prettier one. He was partly influenced, we suspect, by the feelings that prompted Mr. Charles Knight's note on Romeo and Juliet, act i., scene 5, running thus :—" The reading which we give has become familiar, ... is quoted" . . &a. "Here, it appears to us, is a higher law to be observed than that of-adherence to the ancient copies." The passage thus annotated (by one of the staunchest champions of the first folio) is "Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear ;" this is taken from the second folio (1632). We hope that Mr. Dyce's new principles will not fail him when he comes to this famous outburst of love at first sight, and that he will never again (as he did in 1857) make Romeo exclaim, "It seems she hangs," &c.

But to return to the two volumes now in hand, our charge against Mr. Dyce of over-cooking does not so much apply to his corrections of doubtful passages as to his frequent insertions of,- little words to fill out the metre. He is very sarcastic agair • the upholders of "elegant retardation" (a mawkish phrase, certainly), or of "a pause to supply the place of a syllable;" yet surely their theories are not utterly despicable. The founda-

tion of heroic verse, indeed, (ever since its invention by the Troubadours), has always been a line of five complete feet, chiefly iambic ; but most poets, especially dramatic poets, do not count syllables on their fingers; and Mr. Dyce must take far greater liberties with Shakespeare than he has yet dared to take, if he wishes to reduce his lines to strict Popian regularity. In the second scene of the Tempest be prints two lines, which will serve as ex- amples, "Obey and be attentive, canst thou remember ? " where there is an extra-metrical syllable, and "Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since !" where there is a syllable short. These irregularities may be explained away, but we are sure that . Mr. Dyce (consistently with his caustic comments on fairy and faery) would scorn the puerile expedient of pronouncing the first "year" as a dissyllable. Now, it often happens that such a deficient syllable does actually coincide with a dramatic pause, and to many not untutored ears the de- ficiency is then grateful, and we hold that in such a case, if the sense is complete, no editor is justified in filling up the metre. "But room, fairy I—here comes Oberon !" is a line which we can read comfortably enough without the help of double dots (fadry) or of Mr. Dyce's "now." As a general rule we should ourselves prefer finding the metre complete, but still we can understand and partially sympathize with Mr. Grant White (" Shakespeare's Scholar"), when with reference to the line (Measure for Measure, act ii., scene 4), "To thy false seeming. Blood! thou art blood !" he says that the pause after the exclamation fills out the ear with rhetorical effect." Pope materially disimproved the verse by reading, "Blood, thou art but blood," for Angelo is here dwelling not on the weakness but on the over-strength of blood. Sidney Walker was almost equally unhappy in his "Blood, blood !" &c. Malone's emen- dation, "Blood, thou still art blood !" is far better, for it adds some clearness to the point of the succeeding lines, "Let's write good angel on the devil's horn [yet still], 'tis not the devil's crest." In preferring Malone (and thus again agreeing with friend Chalmers), Mr. Dyce has shown some judgment, but he would have shown more we think if he had printed the old text, and kept his metrical scruples for his notes. This course has been sometimes adopted by him, three times, for instance, in the same play, "And he that suffers. 0 it is excellent !"—again, "Than the soft myrtle ; but man, proud man !" (both in act ii., scene 2) ; and last, not least, " Die I perish ! Might but my bend- ing down" (act iii., scene I). It is far from being our habit to say impertinent things of the great dead, but we cannot help remarking here that Pope must (in his cabinet wisdom) have forgotten the dramatic necessity of a strong accentuation of each word, "Die! perish!" or he could never have tinkered up the conclusion into "might my only bending down." Wrested from the glorious context the original words may appear prosaic ;

but is there not tragic force in them, broken by breathless indig- nation, when they are heard from the mouth of Isabella ? Let the reader judge:—.

"0 faithless coward I 0 dishonest wretch !

Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice ?

Is't not a kind of incest, to take life

From thine own sister's shame? What should I think ?

Heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair ! For such a warped slip of wilderness Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance ! Die! perish ! Might but my bending down Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed : I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,

No word to save thee."

Mr. Dyes observes "that, not believing in elegant retardation,'" he considers the line." as unmetrical." It would have been easy for him to round it off. Why has he not done so ? Was it not that he felt a lurking conviction that, after all, it was written as it stands ?

Mr. Dyce has once (we think), at least, indulged his ear at the

expense of sense. We allude to a couplet in Midsummer Night's Dream (act ii., scene 2), where we take it for granted that the

principal change (viz., that of "thy hears" into "my heart ") is not only ingenious, but correct; the rest we should read as Mr.

Dye° printed it in 1857,—" Transparent Helena [a tribrach], nature here shows art [art magio, to wit], that through thy

bosom makes me see my heart." He now makes it flow a little smoother thus, "Transparent Helen ! nature shows her art,"—as if this "art" were a recognized attribute of nature. In another place (the concluding speech of act i,.., Love's Labour Lori) he attains his end by putting such a senile iteration as " what—what!" into the lusty month of Biron. With Mr. Samuel Bailey, we prefer, " What ! I to love ! I sue! I seek a wife. . . . Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all!" Mr. Dyce objects that, if the sign of the in- finitive is inserted before "love," it ought also to be inserted before " sue " and " seek ;" but surely the objection is trivial, for all these verbs have the force of an infinitive with or with- out the sign. Before leaving this speech of Birdn's we may say a word on " whitely wanton" as applied to his black Beauty, Rosaline. It may perhaps be accepted as meaning tender (the next words, "with a velvet brow," clearly referring to the downy horns of a young deer) ; but might it not be a misprint for " willy," wilful ? The word is used by Chaucer, and by the Scotch, according to " Jamieson's Dictionary." We are haunted, moreover, by a vague notion of having seen the phrase willy- wanton. But this is a mere passing fancy, which Mr. Dyce may puff into limbo if he pleases ; we shall make no appeal, for we have a real respect for his judgment in most cases of pure reason apart from rhythm. He is welcome, too, to deal summarily with two more readings that have occurred to us, viz., one in Merry Wives of Windsor (act i., scene 3), "the revolt of Nym is dangerous " (this self-styling vein being often affected by the swashbucklers), instead of "the revolt of mine," or, as Mr. Dyes (after Pope) prints it," this revolt of mine ;" the other is in Two Gentlemen of Verona (act iv., scene 3), "Madam, I pity much your grievances, in that I know they virtuously are graced," instead of "are placed." It would be idle to multiply these random guesses ; but we must find space for an instance of what still remains to be done by more systematic research. In a note on Measure for Measure (act i., scene 2) Mr. Dyce justifies the old reading of "denunciation" (viz., of banns of marriage); but he hesitates when he comes to "propagation of a dower ;" his veteran instincts lead him to prefer it to prorogation, or pro- curation, or propugnation, or preservation ; but why should he say that "it has been forcedly explained as equivalent to pay- ment ?" Only let him remember that Shakespeare (see Lord Campbell "On the Legal Acquirements of Shakespeare '') was once a lawyer's clerk, and he will allow that the young poet may have had to copy a document or two similar to that cited in " Ducange's Glossary," under the head of " Propagatio. . . . Payemen t ;" beginning, " Et tune fuit facts propagatio limredibus et executoribus." The commoner form of the word was perpacatio or perpagatio.

To conclude, this fine edition comes so near to our own ideal of a popular one that we only the more regret its flattering the taste for mere smoothness of numbers. In the Cambridge edi- tion, on the other hand, enough is altered to make the text unhandy for the student, while enough is unaltered to leave it uncouth for the holiday reader. Still, the world is wide ; and the Cambridge editors have formed a choice little circle of their own. It is evident that their rivalry, however harmless, has ex- cited Ur. Dyce, and sharpened his abuse of the "English Rhythms" of Dr. Guest, and his praise of the "Shakespeare's Versification " of the late Sidney Walker. And this brings us to the vehemence of Mr. Dyce against most other living commentators. Some of them have assisted him, and to these he makes his bow ; among others, to Mr. Lettsom (the editor of Sidney Walker's papers), and to his printer, Mr. Robson, whose critical services we have heard rated so highly that we are sorry not to find the means of specifying them ; he even spares a few civil words for the inge- nuity of his rival editor, Mr. Staunton, but more often he displays himself in a state of passion unbecoming a man of his emi- nence. He growls at Mr. Brae and Dr. Ingleby like a watch- dog at two vagabond intruders, and he positively foams now and then as if lie would bite Mr. Collier. But his character of watchdog sinks into that of an angry lap-dog, when (in a note on Two Gentlemen of Verona, act v., scene 4) he complains that an excellent "comment on the text" pointed out by himself has been borrowed by Mr. Collier without acknowledgment, the said "com- ment" being a passage out of "Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare!' Mr. Dyce must not misunderstand us ; we admire him in spite of his infirmities of temper. So far as we can judge, he has honestly registered his own debts to Mr. Collier's familiar spirit, the "Old Corrector ;" and it would be wrong to refuse a hint from the Old Corrupter himself, if he should happen (for once in the way) to cite Shakespeare to the purpose. One word more. The genuine sayings of the poet have appeared to us (even in this tercentenary period), so much more interesting than his apocryphal doings that we have barely left ourselves room for a little remonstrance. Mr. Dyes has given currency to some new facts, about which there is nothing very remarkable, except that he has pledged himself for their authenticity by printing them here (pp. 64, 65, 114) without any reference to the originals. We know that they are taken from Mr. Halliwell, but we ought not to have been left to find that out for ourselves. And has Mr. Dyce made a per- sonal inspection of the manuscripts? Has lie any notion when and whence they came into the hands of Mr. R. B. Wheler? They may be all genuine, but there is a certain little fac-simile given by Mr. Halliwell that has an ugly look about it—in short, Mr. Dyce has not been so cautious about these as he has been about the "Ellesmere Papers." In 1857 lie printed the latter in the " Life" itself, but carefully inclosed them between brackets. They are now only too much honoured by being thrust into the "Appendix," and they may perhaps be joined by others in the third edition, and totally disappear with them in the fourth. Mr. Dyce was at first very unwilling "to supply a memoir of Shakespeare ;" it is to be hoped that this "un- grateful task" will not bring him even more trouble than he could have foreboded. But at any rate his other volumes of the text will be looked forward to with pleasure, and we promise ourselves a curious treat in the "Glossary."