themselves of the very first rank. I could almost say that the imitations which are to be detected in Milton are almost the only imitations which deserve to be placed on the editorial page. Those of more ordinary poets might be left to be discovered by those who value them.

Again, there is a call for a large amount of editorial labour in tracing the Poet to the works in which he found the stories which have supplied him with the plots of his plays; and in exhibiting the manner in which he has proceeded in adapting the stories to dramatic purposes.

Then there is that highest criticism of all, the illustration of the Poet's general intention and genius; the unfolding his design in a whole play, or in some great and prominent character; or, universally, the consonance of each of the plays with the type of his own mind and genius.

With all these different branches of editorial labour, and with so many calls for editorial assistance, can we wonder that so much has been done for writings precious as these.

The quality of what has been done is another question. No doubt this varies. There is what is eminently good and useful; no one possessed of common honesty will deny this; and there is also what might be expunged without remorse, and no harm done to the author, the reader, or the critic. But it is of the amount that we are now speaking, and that cannot but be, as it is and as it ought to be, large. When the annotation is good and useful, I for one should never think of complaining of the amount, not even if Shakespeare were printed like one of the classics in an old edition, where in a

folio page we have two lines of text, and the rest of the page occupied with the remarks of scholiasts and critics printed in a much smaller type; provided, I say, that the matter is relevant and valuable, not the merely pedantic "deleatur d, alii legunt sic, meus codex sic habet," which the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy so happily ridicules as the work of "a company of foolish note-makers, who thus make books dear, themselves ridiculous, and do nobody good." Let the notes be but pertinent and useful, and we cannot have too many of them. But then they must be really pertinent and in some way or other serviceable, written for the sake of the author and the reader, not for the gratification of the pedantry or the love of display of the writer, nor wandering too far from the author, whose subjects are so various that there is scarcely anything for which an excuse might not be found for obtruding it upon his margin.

Let there be one such edition at least for scholars and students, not to the exclusion of the smaller volumes in which we have the text, or the text and little more, for simple recreation only.

Allusion has been made to the value of the annotation which has been bestowed on Shakespeare's writings. Whether it has fully satisfied the just expectation that might have been formed has been questioned, and very harsh things have been said of it. For my own part, it seems to me that it would be to do the old commentators very great injustice were we not to acknowledge that they have done much in every one of the departments of legitimate criticism; and that much

of what they have done is extremely well done; that their research has been most extensive and profound; the result of that research exhibited with great accuracy; that much care and attention has been bestowed upon the regulation of the text, and that there have been many most admirable conjectures where the text has come down to us corrupted. They have their share of errors and mistakes; they have their redundancies and deficiencies; but we owe them infinite obligations, as all ought to confess who wish to understand these writings, but especially they who aspire to be themselves critics, commentators, or editors. It is not going a step too far to assert that there are many things which no diligence and no acumen of any person who at this late period enters the Shakesperian field would have detected for himself; in other words, that many of the most valuable illustrations which these writings have received would have been at this hour as if they were not, had they not been presented to us by the force and genius of the old commentators. I bear them this testimony the more cordially, because I perceive a disposition abroad to undervalue their labours. It is the old story: blotting out old names on the wall of the Temple of Fame, and writing new ones over them.

But take any recent edition; remove from it all that is borrowed from the old Editors; collect everything that is really new, and how insignificant a contribution it is. The field has evidently been well laboured. If from what is done at home we turn to the labours of the men of other countries who have paid their homage to this great Poet, how every

thing upon which the mind can settle in the opinion that here is an advance made in our knowledge of these writings, is found on examination to be but the echo of the voice of some critic at home.

A few slips there are, perhaps many, even in the labours of the critics which have been admitted into the Variorum. But what of this? Is there any great body of criticism in which oversights are not to be found? Non ego offendar paucis maculis. They were original inquirers, possessed with the honest purpose of devoting themselves to the illustration of writings on which it is said that no small portion of the nation's literary reputation depends; they brought a reasonable share of judgment, learning, and industry, and they have done good service.

That they have left something to be discovered by those who follow them, is evident. If it were not so, there would have been no room for the present work, which is, throughout, supplementary to their labours. The subject, indeed, is so extensive, that there is no person who pays much attention to the history and literature of the period in which Shakespeare lived, and at the same time has his mind in some degree imbued with the language, thoughts, and subjects of his writings, who might not add something that was valuable to the mass of annotation already accumulated; and it is to be desired that those whose minds are directed to the literature and history of the Elizabethan period would remember that the writings of this great poet are most especially worthy of their attention.

This work has been prepared under the impression that I was to consider it as being so much new matter added to the stock of Shakesperian criticism, and I have, perhaps, too scupulously forborne in most cases, when it was not necessary for the just and full evolution of my meaning, to notice the opinions of other commentators on passages which I have attempted to illustrate. I wish to presume that the reader is not unacquainted with much that has been done; even that he is familiar with the notes in the Variorum. Where they end I may be said to begin. It may be proper to add, that when I speak of the Variorum it is of the edition in twenty-one volumes, prepared for the most part by Mr. Malone, but carried through the press by his friend Mr. Boswell, after the death of Mr. Malone. Like the first folio, it has some of the disadvantages of a posthumous publication.

In a work of original criticism like this there will be some things, perhaps many, which will not meet with immediate assent. There is, however, in these volumes hardly anything presented to the public but after long consideration, and the mind having been repeatedly directed upon the idea, for there is very little which was not written down many years ago, making part of a collection, not inconsiderable, for the lives and writings of the poets and verse-writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; so that what does not at first command assent, may ask for consideration from other minds before it is finally dismissed. In making these collections, how often have I been struck with the thought, how difficult it is to recover new facts even in the lives of