The edition of Malone, however, which in ten volumes octavo included as well the poems as the plays of Shakspeare, was so well received by the public as to induce its editor to devote almost the entire remainder of his days to its revision and improvement; and in 1821, nine years after his death, it re-appeared in twenty-one volumes octavo, under the care and arrangement of Mr. Boswell, to whom the materials thus industriously accumulated by the deceased critic had been very happily consigned.

As an editor of Shakspeare, Mr. Malone may be justly considered as in many respects superior to his predecessors. Not one of them, in fact, had attempted the task without, in a greater or less degree, neglecting or tampering with the original text; whilst Malone, by the scrupulous fidelity with which he adhered to the elder copies, whether quarto or first folio, never adopting a reading unsanctioned by their authority, unless where an absolute want of intelligibility from typographical carelessness compelled him to do so, and then never without due notice, presented us, for the first time, with as perfect a transcript of the words of Shakspeare as can now probably be obtained.

Nor are his powers as a commentator, though he has little pretension to the intellectual vivacity of Steevens, to be lightly estimated. His notes, though somewhat dry and verbose, are full of information; his History of the Stage is singularly

elaborate and exact; and Mr. Boswell assures us that "Professor Porson, who was by no means in the habit of bestowing hasty or thoughtless praise, declared to him that he considered the Essay on the three parts of Henry the Sixth as one of the most convincing pieces of criticism that he had ever read; nor," he adds, "was Mr. Burke less liberal in his praises."*

The chief, and perhaps the only prominent fault of Malone as an illustrator of Shakspeare, has arisen from his too anxious efforts to pour out all he had acquired on each subject without due reference to its greater or minor importance; a want of discrimination which has not unfrequently rendered him heavy and tedious. It is, indeed, devoutly to be wished that an edition of Shakspeare were undertaken, which, whilst in the notes it expunged all that was trifling, idly-controversial, indecorous, and abusive, should, at the same time, retain every interesting disquisition, though in many instances re-modelled, re-written, and condensed; nor fearing to add what farther research under the guidance of taste might suggest. In bulk, such an edition might not be less than what has appeared so formidable in the impressions of Steevens and Malone, but the commentary would assume a very different aspect.1

+

* Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, vol. xxi. p. 207.

I consider the specimen of an edition of Shakspeare given.

to the public by Mr. Caldecott in 1819, as approaching very nearly this description, and I rather wonder sufficient encou

After this cursory account of the chief editors of Shakspeare, I have now to turn to that branch of

`ragement has not been afforded Mr. Caldecott for the prosecution of his design. The volume is entitled "Hamlet and As -You Like It. A Specimen of a new Edition of Shakspeare." London: John Murray. The principle on which the work is constructed is thus explained by the editor: "The first folio is made the groundwork of the proposed edition and present specimen, in which also will be admitted such additional matter as has occurred in the twenty quartos published by Mr. Steevens. Wherever the reading of the folio is departed from, the folio text is given in its place on the margin; but unless any thing turns upon the old spelling, in which case it is retained in the text, the modern spelling is throughout adopted; and the punctuation is altogether taken into the editor's hands. Where'ever also such alterations as appear material are found in the folio 1632, they are noticed in the margin.-Not to interpose any thing of length between the author and his reader, we have thought it proper to throw the notes that are grammatical, philological, critical, historical, or explanatory of usages, to the end of each play; and at the bottom of the pages of the text, to give such only as were immediately necessary to explain our author's meaning.-We have made no comments but where we have felt doubt ourselves, or seen that others have; and we have suffered nothing like difficulty to pass without offering our conjecture at least, or acknowledging our inability to remove it."—Advertisement to the Reader, pp. vii—x.

The only alteration which I should wish to see made in this plan, would be to have the whole of the notes immediately connected with the text instead of the larger portion of them thrown, as is now the case, to the end of each play. I am persuaded, indeed, that the trouble occasioned by the necessity of almost perpetually turning from one part of a book to another, 'would with many persons prove an insuperable bar to the consultation of any commentary. May not a feeling by the public of the inconveniency of this arrangement, have in some degree operated to arrest the completion of the editor's labours?

my subject which includes the DETACHED PUBLICATIONS EXCLUSIVELY APPROPRIATED to the poet, and which, as opening a field of great extent and no little intricacy, I shall, for the sake of perspicuity, arrange under the three heads of controversial, annotative, and dissertative criticism, passing, however, as lightly and rapidly over the ground occupied by my first division as possible, presenting as it does, with occasional illustrations of some value, so much of what is vindictive, trivial, or repulsive.

The arena opens most inauspiciously with the controversy of Rymer, Gildon, and Dennis, on the merits and demerits of the bard, three men as little calculated by their temper, taste, and talents, to do justice to the subject as could well be enumerated. This was followed by the attack of Theobald on Pope under the title of "Shakspeare Restored," and by the war-hoop which was not unjustly raised against the dogmatism and supercilious arrogance of Warburton, by Grey, Edwards, Holt, Nichols, and Heath; a pentarchy displaying no small portion of wit, humour, and sarcastic keenness. The irony of Edwards, indeed, was conducted in his "Canons of Criticism" with uncommon skill and point, forming, in its tone and manner, a striking contrast to the bitter and vehement spirit of Heath; whilst the pamphlet of Mr. Holt points out in its very title-page what may be considered, notwithstanding the subsequent host of commentators and critics, as yet to be successfully achieved

for the fame of Shakspeare; namely, "to rescue that aunciente English Poet and Play-wrighte Maister William Shakspeare from the many Errours faulsely charged on him by certaine newfangled Wittes; and to let him speak for himselfe, as right well he wotteth, when freede from the many careless Mistakings of the heedless first Imprinters of his Workes."

Nor were the three great editors of Shakspeare, Johnson, Steevens, and Malone, more fortunate than their predecessors Pope and Warburton had been, in escaping the ebullitions of spleen and malignity. From the coarse and bitter invective of Kenrick however, unaccompanied as it was by any superior talent, Johnson had nothing to apprehend, and he disdained to reply; but his coadjutor Steevens, and the indefatigable Malone, had to meet and to parry the keen and envenomed arrows of Ritson, a man certainly of considerable sagacity and very minute accuracy, but whose unhappy and uncontrolled temper led him, as I have before remarked, into the most indecorous and merciless abuse.

Nor was this the only opponent whose talents were of a formidable kind, that Mr. Malone had to contend with. One of the most singular and daring attempts at imposition in the literary world perhaps on record, brought him into contact with Mr. George Chalmers, a critic and antiquary of much acuteness and penetration, and as industrious as himself. I allude to the pretended Shakspeare