more strict adherence to the old copies, and many judicious notes, fully earned the praise of having superseded him. But the foundation of Theobald's edition was laid in error; the text he undertook to correct was that of Pope, and his collation of the old copies was neither sufficiently extensive nor accurate to make very considerable progress towards its amendment. nevertheless, purged it from many arbitrary corruptions, and though he cannot himself be acquitted from the charge of innovation, yet in comparison with Pope, he appears a judicious critic. His first edition was in seven vols. octavo; his second in eight vols. duodecimo, in 1740.

He,

A splendid edition of Shakspeare was printed at Oxford, in 1744, by Sir Thomas Hanmer, but with little advantage to the poet. Hanmer thought all was right that had been done by former editors, and for himself he seems to have despised all common canons of criticism. He disdained reference to either the quartos or folios, and printed the text of Pope, adding whatever he conjectured would contribute to the beauty, harmony, or force of his author.

In 1747 Bishop Warburton published the dramatist in eight octavo volumes. The avowed champion of Pope acted consistently in making that poet's edition the ground-work of his own,

and he more than emulated the boldness of his protegé in the temerity with which he himself trod the path of criticism. Of all the guides through the difficulties of a corrupted text, antiquated phraseology, and obscure expression, Warburton was the most incompetent. No consideration restrained him from the substitution of his own chimerical conceits in the place of his author's text, and in the copious notes which accompanied it, he perpetually exhibits the most perverse interpretations, and improbable conjectures; he at one time gives the author more profundity of meaning than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader. His emendations may sometimes, indeed, be thought successful; but they are fortunate guesses, rather than wise conclusions.

Nearly a century and a half had elapsed since the death of Shakspeare, and no critical edition of his works existed which could boast a higher authority for its text, than the fourth folio, partially amended, or capriciously and ignorantly altered. The dramatist now fell into different hands, and a proper basis was laid for a correct text. The first folio, collated with whatever earlier copies the editor could procure, was the foundation of Johnson's edition, in eight

volumes, octavo, published in 1765. Much of Johnson's text is far more accurate than that of any of his predecessors, and so correct was his acumen as a verbal critic, that had his diligence extended over the whole of his work, the philological labours of others would have been spared. But indolence was his bane; his text is in consequence faulty, and his acquaintance with the domestic history of the Elizabethan age was so superficial that he could not perform the harmless drudgery of explaining the local allusions of his author. Johnson's skill was great in disentangling complicated passages, and his paraphrases are remarkable for their accuracy and beauty. When Shakspeare was the poet of common life, Johnson was his faithful interpreter, for the author of "The Rambler" knew human nature well; but he could not watch his course through the vast regions of the imagination, and his adamantine and rugged mind was impassive to the playful sparkles of Shakspeare's fancy. Johnson's general critical abilities are displayed in his noble Preface; but his unfitness for his office of commentator on Shakspeare is manifest in his observations at the close of each play, than which nothing can be more tame, insipid, and unsatisfactory. It is singular, that his

subject no where inspires him, except when he is dilating on the character of Falstaff.

Johnson was assisted by Steevens, in the publication of another edition of Shakspeare in 1773, in ten octavo volumes; the result of their joint labours was a new publication of the same number of volumes in 1778; and a third edition, bearing the names Johnson and Steevens, appeared, under the superintendence of Isaac Reed, in 1785.

There is no necessity for me to notice at any length Capell's edition, in ten crown-octavo volumes, in 1768, for the work is more remarkable for typographical beauty than critical merit; and I pass on at once to the names of Steevens and Malone.

Steevens commenced his career of labour in the cause of Shakspeare in 1766, by superintending the reprint of such of the dramatist's plays as had made their appearance in quarto, and preparing a list, to accompany them, of the various readings of the different quarto editions of each play. Where the dissimilarity between the early and later editions was so great as to create a suspicion that the former was a first draft which the author afterwards expanded, Mr. Steevens printed the first as well as the subsequent copy, conceiving that there were many persons,

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who, not contented with the possession of a finished picture of some great master, would be desirous to procure the first sketch that was made for it, that they might have the pleasure of tracing the progress of the artist from the first colouring to the finishing stroke."

Steevens subsequently assisted Johnson, but in 1793 he appeared as an independent editor of Shakspeare, though he affixed to his work the name of his former coadjutor, being unable, as he says with modesty and beauty, "to forego an additional opportunity of recording in a title page that he had once the honour of being united in a task of literature with Dr. Samuel Johnson." This was the last edition of Shakspeare of which Steevens superintended the publication, but his attention to a subject which employed so many years of his life did not relax, and previous to his death, in 1800, he had prepared another edition in twenty-one volumes, on which Mr. Isaac Reed bestowed his attention in its passage through the press in 1803.

In the course of his Shakspearean labours, Steevens received many valuable communications from Malone; who, in 1780, added to Steevens' second edition two supplementary volumes, containing Shakspeare's Poems, the seven spurious plays ascribed to him by the third folio, and