The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes by Samuel Johnson

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The part of criticism in which the whole succession of editors has
laboured with the greatest diligence, which has occasioned the most
arrogant ostentation, and excited the keenest acrimony, is the
emendation of corrupted passages, to which the publick attention, having
been first drawn by the violence of the contention between Pope and
Theobald, has been continued by the persecution, which, with a kind of
conspiracy, has been since raised against all the publishers of
Shakespeare.

That many passages have passed in a state of depravation through all the
editions, is indubitably certain; of these the restoration is only to be
attempted by collation of copies, or sagacity of conjecture. The
collator's province is safe and easy, the conjecturer's perilous and
difficult. Yet, as the greater part of the plays are extant only in one
copy, the peril must not be avoided, nor the difficulty refused.

Of the readings which this emulation of amendment has hitherto produced,
some from the labours of every publisher I have advanced into the text;
those are to be considered as, in my opinion, sufficiently supported;
some I have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous; some I
have left in the notes without censure or approbation, as resting in
equipoise between objection and defence; and some, which seemed specious
but not right, I have inserted with a subsequent animadversion.

Having classed the observations of others, I was at last to try what I
could substitute for their mistakes, and how I could supply their
omissions. I collated such copies as I could procure, and wished for
more, but have not found the collectors of these rarities very
communicative. Of the editions which chance or kindness put into my
hands I have given an enumeration, that I may not be blamed for
neglecting what T had not the power to do.

By examining the old copies, I soon found that the later publishers,
with all their boasts of diligence, suffered many passages to stand
unauthorised, and contented themselves with Rowe's regulation of the
text, even where they knew it to be arbitrary, and with a little
consideration might have found it to be wrong. Some of these alterations
are only the ejection of a word for one that appeared to him more
elegant or more intelligible. These corruptions I have often silently
rectified; for the history of our language, and the true force of our
words, can only be preserved, by keeping the text of authors free from
adulteration. Others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or
regulated the measure: on these I have not exercised the same rigour; if
only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, I have
sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies
is such, as that some liberties may be easily permitted. But this
practice I have not suffered to proceed far, having restored the
primitive diction wherever it could for any reason be preferred.

The emendations, which comparison of copies supplied, I have inserted in
the text: sometimes, where the improvement was slight, without notice,
and sometimes with an account of the reasons of the change.

Conjecture, though it be sometimes unavoidable, I have not wantonly nor
licentiously indulged. It has been my settled principle, that the
reading of the ancient books is probably true, and, therefore, is not to
be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity, or mere improvement
of the sense. For though much credit is not due to the fidelity, nor any
to the judgment of the first publishers, yet they who had the copy
before their eyes were more likely to read it right, than we, who read
it only by imagination. But it is evident that they have often made
strange mistakes by ignorance or negligence, and that, therefore,
something may be properly attempted by criticism, keeping the middle way
between presumption and timidity.

Such criticism I have attempted to practise, and, where any passage
appeared inextricably perplexed have endeavoured to discover how it may
be recalled to sense, with least violence. But my first labour is,
always to turn the old text on every side, and try if there be any
interstice, through which light can find its way; nor would Huetius
himself condemn me, as refusing the trouble of research, for the
ambition of alteration. In this modest industry I have not been
unsuccessful. I have rescued many lines from the violations of temerity,
and secured many scenes from the inroads of correction. I have adopted
the Roman sentiment, that it is more honourable to save a citizen than
to kill an enemy, and have been more careful to protect than to attack.

I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts, though
I believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority. Some of
those which are divided in the later editions have no division in the
first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no division in
the preceding copies. The settled mode of the theatre requires four
intervals in the play; but few, if any, of our author's compositions can
be properly distributed in that manner. An act is so much of the drama
as passes without intervention of time, or change of place. A pause
makes a new act. In every real, and, therefore, in every imitative
action, the intervals may be more or fewer, the restriction of five acts
being accidental and arbitrary. This Shakespeare knew, and this he
practised; his plays were written, and, at first, printed in one
unbroken continuity, and ought now to be exhibited with short pauses,
interposed as often as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is
required to pass. This method would at once quell a thousand
absurdities.

In restoring the author's works to their integrity, I have considered
the punctuation as wholly in my power; for what could be their care of
colons and commas, who corrupted words and sentences? Whatever could be
done by adjusting points, is, therefore, silently performed, in some
plays with much diligence, in others with less; it is hard to keep a
busy eye steadily fixed upon evanescent atoms, or a discursive mind upon
evanescent truth.

The same liberty has been taken with a few particles, or other words of
slight effect. I have sometimes inserted or omitted them without notice.
I have done that sometimes, which the other editors have done always,
and which, indeed, the state of the text may sufficiently justify.

The greater part of readers, instead of blaming us for passing trifles,
will wonder that on mere trifles so much labour is expended, with such
importance of debate, and such solemnity of diction. To these I answer
with confidence, that they are judging of an art which they do not
understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor
promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism, more
useful, happier, or wiser.

As I practised conjecture more, I learned to trust it less; and after I
had printed a few plays, resolved to insert none of my own readings in
the text. Upon this caution I now congratulate myself, for every day
increases my doubt of my emendations.

Since I have confined my imagination to the margin, it must not be
considered as very reprehensible, if I have suffered it to play some
freaks in its own dominion. There is no danger in conjecture, if it be
proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those
changes may be safely offered, which are not considered, even by him
that offers them, as necessary or safe.

If my readings are of little value, they have not been ostentatiously
displayed or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer notes,
for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment. The work is
performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence, ignorance, and
asinine tastelessness of the former editors, and showing, from all that
goes before and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the
old reading; then by proposing something, which to superficial readers
would seem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; then
by producing the true reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding
with loud acclamations on the discovery, and a sober wish for the
advancement and prosperity of genuine criticism.

All this may be done, and, perhaps, done sometimes without impropriety.
But I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires
many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot
without so much labour appear to be right. The justness of a happy
restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied
to criticism, "quod dubitas ne feceris."

To dread the shore which he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to the
sailor. I had before my eye so many critical adventures ended in
miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every
page, wit struggling with its own sophistry, and learning confused by
the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I
admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossessing their
emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how many
of the readings which I have corrected may be, by some other editor,
defended and established.

Critics I saw, that others' names efface,
And fix their own, with labour, in the place;
Their own, like others, soon their place resign'd,
Or disappear'd, and left the first behind.
POPE.

That a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be
wonderful, either to others or himself, if it be considered, that in his
art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that
regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed at
every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a slight misapprehension
of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient
to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds
best, he produces, perhaps, but one reading of many probable, and he
that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The
allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has all
the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a
happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise
against it.

Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world;
nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised so many
mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the
bishop of Aleria[22] to English Bentley. The criticks on ancient authors
have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the
editor of Shakespeare is condemned to want. They are employed upon
grammatical and settled languages, whose construction contributes so
much to perspicuity, that Homer has fewer passages unintelligible than
Chaucer. The words have not only a known regimen, but invariable
quantities, which direct and confine the choice. There are commonly more
manuscripts than one; and they do not often conspire in the same
mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to Salmasius how little
satisfaction his emendations gave him: "Illudunt nobis conjecturae
nostrae, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices incidimus." And
Lipsius could complain that criticks were making faults, by trying to
remove them: "Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur." And, indeed,
where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and
Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are
often vague and disputable, like mine or Theobald's.

Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing
little; for raising in the publick expectations which at last I have not
answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of
knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not
what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible
to be done. I have, indeed, disappointed no opinion more than my own;
yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight solicitude. Not
a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I
have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which I have not endeavoured
to illustrate. In many I have failed, like others; and from many, after
all my efforts, I have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not
passed over, with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the
reader and to myself, but, where I could not instruct him, have owned my
ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning
upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that,
where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where
others have said enough, I have said no more.

Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him, that
is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to
feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play, from
the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his
commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at
correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let
it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let
him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and
corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his
interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased,
let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the
work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts
are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he
suspects not why; and at last throws away the book which he has too
diligently studied. Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been
surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the
comprehension of any great work in its full design and in its true
proportions; a close approach shows the smaller niceties, but the beauty
of the whole is discerned no longer.

It is not very grateful to consider how little the succession of editors
has added to this author's power of pleasing. He was read, admired,
studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the
improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him;
while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions understood;
yet then did Dryden pronounce "that Shakespeare was the man, who, of all
modern and, perhaps, ancient poets, had the largest and most
comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him,
and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any
thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those, who accuse him to
have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was
naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature;
he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where
alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the
greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comick wit
degenerating into clinches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is
always great when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can
say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise
himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi."

It is to be lamented that such a writer should want a commentary; that
his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure. But it
is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which
must happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by accident and time;
and more than has been suffered by any other writer since the use of
types[23], has been suffered by him through his own negligence of fame,
or, perhaps, by that superiority of mind, which despised its own
performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those
works unworthy to be preserved, which the criticks of following ages
were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining.

Among these candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the judgment
of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce my commentary
as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving.
Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I should feel
little solicitude about the sentence, were it to be pronounced only by
the skilful and the learned.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dr. Johnson's Preface first appeared in 1765. Malone's Shakespeare,
i. 108. and Boswell's Life of Johnson, i.

[2] Est vetus atque probus, centum qui perficit annos. Hon. Ep. II. 1.
v. 39.

[3] With all respect for our great critic's memory we must maintain,
that love has the _greatest_ influence on the sum of life: and every
popular tale or poem derives its main charm and power of pleasing
from the incidents of this universal passion. Other passions have,
undoubtedly, their sway, but love, when it does prevail, like
Aaron's rod, swallows up every feeling beside. It is one thing to
introduce the fulsome _badinage_ of compliment with which French
tragedy abounds, and another to exhibit the

--"very ecstacy of love:
Whose violent property foredoes itself,
And leads the will to desperate undertakings,
_As oft as any passion under heaven_,
That does afflict our natures."--

HAMLET. Act ii. Sc. i.

[4]
Quaerit quod nusquam est gentium, repent tamen.
Facit illud verisimile, quod mendacrium est.
PLAUTI PSEUDOLUS, Act i. Sc. 4.

Ficta voluptatis causa, sint proxima veris. HOR. ARS POET, 338.

See too the celebrated passage of Shakespeare himself--
Midsummer-night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1; and Idler, 84.--Ed.

[5] The judgment of French poets on these points may be inferred from
the tenour of Boileau's admonitions:

Gardez donc de donner, ainsi que dans Clelie,
L'air ni l'esprit francois a l'antique Italie;
Et, sous des noms romains faisant notre portrait,
Peindre Caton galant, et Brutus dameret.
Art Poetique, iii.--Ed.

[6] The critic must, when he wrote this, have forgotten the Cyclops of
Euripides, and also the fact, that when an Athenian dramatist
brought out his _three_ tragedies at the Dionysiac festival, he
added, as a fourth, a sort of farce; a specimen of which Schlegel
considers the Cyclops. Mr. Twining, in his amusing and instructive
notes on Aristotle's Poetics, refers to the drunken jollity of
Hercules in the Alcestis, and to the ludicrous dialogue between
Ulysses and Minerva, in the first scene of the Ajax of Sophocles, as
instances of Greek tragi-comedy. We may add the Electra of
Euripides; for if the poet did not intend to burlesque the rules of
tragic composition in many of the scenes of that play, and to make
his audience laugh, he calculated on more dull gravity in Athens,
than we are accustomed to give that city of song the credit for. The
broad ridicule which Aristophanes casts against the tragedians is
not half so laughable.

[7] Thus, says Dowries the Prompter, p. 22: "The tragedy of Romeo and
Juliet was made some time after [1662] into a tragi-comedy, by Mr.
James Howard, he preserving Romeo and Juliet alive; so that when the
tragedy was revived again, 'twas played alternately, tragical one
day, and tragi-comical another, for several days together."
STEEVENS.

[8] This opinion is controverted, and its effects deplored, by Dr. J.
Warton, in a note to Malone's Shakespeare, i. p. 71.--Ed.

[9] Dr. Drake conceives that Dr. Wolcot was indebted to the above noble
passage for the _prima stamina_ of the following stanza:

Thus, while I wond'ring pause o'er Shakespeare's page
I mark, in visions of delight, the sage
High o'er the wrecks of man who stands sublime,
A column in the melancholy waste,
(Its cities humbled, and its glories past,)
Majestic 'mid the solitude of time.--Ed.

[10] The poets and painters before and of Shakespeare's time were all
guilty of the same fault. The former "combined the Gothic mythology
of fairies" with the fables and traditions of Greek and Roman lore;
while the latter dressed out the heroes of antiquity in the arms
and costume of their own day. The grand front of Rouen cathedral
affords ample and curious illustration of what we state. Mr.
Steevens, in his Shakespeare, adds, "that in Arthur Hall's version
of the fourth Iliad, Juno says to Jupiter:

"The time will come that _Totnam French_ shall turn."

And in the tenth Book we hear of "The Bastile": "Lemster wool," and
"The Byble."

[11] The relaxations of "England's queen" with her maids of honour were
not, if we may credit the existing memoirs of her court, precisely
such as modern fastidiousness would assign to the "fair vestal
throned by the west."

[12] A very full and satisfactory essay on the learning of Shakespeare,
may be found in Mr. Malone's Edition of Shakespeare, i. 300.

[13]
[Greek: Memonomenos d' o tlaemon
Aealin aethelon katheudein.] Anac. 8.

[14] The Comedy of Errors, which has been partly taken by some wretched
playwright from the Menaechmi of Plautus, is intolerably stupid:
that it may occasionally display the touch of Shakespeare, cannot
be denied; but these _purpurei panni_ are lamentably infrequent;
and, to adopt the language of Mr. Stevens, "that the entire play
was no work of his, is an opinion which (as Benedick says) fire
cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake." Dr. Drake's
Literary Life of Johnson.--Ed.

[15] A list of these translations may be seen in Malone's Shakespeare,
i. 371. It was originally drawn up by Mr. Steevens.--Ed.

[16] See Dryden in the Epistle Dedicatory to his Rival Ladies.--Ed.

[17] It appears, from the induction of Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair,"
to have been acted before the year 1590.--STEEVENS.

[18] The errors of the promoter's books of the present day excite the
violent invective of Mr. Steevens, in his notes on Johnson's
Preface.--Ed.

[19] This assertion is contradicted by Steevens and Malone, as regards
the second edition 1632. The former editor says, that it has the
advantage of various readings which are not merely such as
reiteration of copies will produce. The curious examiner of
Shakespeare's text, who possesses the first of these folio
editions, ought not to be unfurnished with the second. See Malone's
List of Early Editions in his Shakespeare, ii. 656.--Ed.

[20] It is extraordinary that this gentleman should attempt so
voluminous a work, as the Revisal of Shakespeare's text, when he
tells us in his preface, "he was not so fortunate as to be
furnished with either of the folio editions, much less any of the
ancient quartos: and even Sir Thomas Hanmer's performance was known
to him only by Dr. Warburton's representation."--FARMER.

[21] Republished by him in 1748, after Dr. Warburton's edition, with
alterations, &c.--STEEVENS.

[22] John Andreas. He was secretary to the Vatican library during the
papacies of Paul the second and Sixtus the fourth. By the former,
he was employed to superintend such works as were to be multiplied
by the new art of printing, at that time brought into Rome. He
published Herodotus, Strabo, Livy, Aulus Gellius, &c. His
schoolfellow, Cardinal de Cusa, procured him the bishopric of
Arcia, a province in Corsica; and Paul the second afterwards
appointed him to that of Aleria, in the same island, where he died
in 1493. See Fabric. Bibl. Lat. iii. 894, and Steevens, in Malone's
Shak. i. 106.

[23] See this assertion refuted by examples in a former note.--Ed.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
ON THE
PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE.

TEMPEST.

It is observed of The Tempest, that its plan is regular; this the author
of The Revisal[1] thinks, what I think too, an accidental effect of the
story, not intended or regarded by our author. But whatever might be
Shakespeare's intention in forming or adopting the plot, he has made it
instrumental to the production of many characters, diversified with
boundless invention, and preserved with profound skill in nature,
extensive knowledge of opinions, and accurate observation of life. In a
single drama are here exhibited princes, courtiers, and sailors, all
speaking in their real characters. There is the agency of airy spirits,
and of an earthly goblin; the operations of magick, the tumults of a
storm, the adventures of a desert island, the native effusion of
untaught affection, the punishment of guilt, and the final happiness of
the pair for whom our passions and reason are equally interested.

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