The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 07, May, 1858

What is Mr. Halliwell's conception of editorial duty? As we read along, and the once fair complexion of the margin grew more and more pimply with pencil-marks, like that of a bad proof-sheet, we began to think that he was acting on the principle of every man his own washerwoman, —that he was making blunders of set purpose, (as teachers of languages do in their exercises,) in order that we might correct them for ourselves, and so fit us in time to be editors also, and members of various learned societies, even as Mr. Halliwell himself is. We fancied, that, magnanimously waving aside the laurel with which a grateful posterity crowned General Wade, he wished us "to see these roads before they were made," and develope our intellectual muscles in getting over them. But no; Mr. Halliwell has appended notes to his edition, and among them are some which correct misprints, and therefore seem to imply that he considers that service as belonging properly to the editorial function. We are obliged, then, to give up our theory that his intention was to make every reader an editor, and to suppose that he wished rather to show how disgracefully a book might be edited and yet receive the commendation of professional critics who read with the ends of their fingers. If this were his intention, Marston himself never published so biting a satire.

Let us look at a few of the intricate passages, to help us through which Mr. Halliwell lends us the light of his editorial lantern. In the Induction to "What you Will" occurs the striking and unusual phrase, "Now out up-pont," and Mr. Halliwell favors us with the following note: "Page 221, line 10. Up-pont.—That is, upon't." Again in the same play we find—

  "Let twattling fame cheatd others rest,  I um no dish for rumors feast."

Of course, it should read,—

  "Let twattling [twaddling] Fame cheate others' rest,  I am no dish for Rumor's feast."

Mr. Halliwell comes to our assistance thus: "Page 244, line 21, [22 it should be,] I um,—a printer's error for I am." Dignus vindice nodus! Five lines above, we have "whole" for "who'll," and four lines below, "helmeth" for "whelmeth"; but Mr. Halliwell vouchsafes no note. In the "Fawn" we read, "Wise neads use few words," and the editor says in a note, "a misprint for heads"! Kind Mr. Halliwell!

Having given a few examples of our "Editor's" corrections, we proceed to quote a passage or two which, it is to be presumed, he thought perfectly clear.

  "A man can skarce put on a tuckt-up cap,  A button'd frizado sute, skarce eate good meate,  Anchoves, caviare, but hee's satyred  And term'd phantasticall. By the muddy spawne  Of slymie neughtes, when troth, phantasticknesse—  That which the naturall sophysters tearme  Phantusia incomplexa—is a function  Even of the bright immortal part of man.  It is the common passe, the sacred dore,  Unto the prive chamber of the soule;  That bar'd, nought passeth past the baser court.  Of outward scence by it th' inamorate  Most lively thinkes he sees the absent beauties  Of his lov'd mistres."—Vol. I. p. 241.

In this case, also, the true readings are clear enough:—

  "And termed fantastical by the muddy spawn  Of slimy newts";

and

  –"past the baser court  Of outward sense";—

but, if anything was to be explained, why are we here deserted by our fida compagna?

Again, (Vol. II. pp. 55-56,) we read, "This Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent discourse, and never speakes his signes to me, and men of profound reach instruct aboundantly; hee begges suites with signes, gives thanks with signes," etc.

This Granuffo is qualified among the "Interlocutors" as "a silent lord," and what fun there is in the character (which, it must be confessed, is rather of a lenten kind) consists in his genius for saying nothing. It is plain enough that the passage should read, "a man of excellent discourse, and never speaks; his signs to me and men of profound reach instruct abundantly," etc.

In both the passages we have quoted, it is not difficult for the reader to set the text right. But if not difficult for the reader, it should certainly not have been so for the editor, who should have done what Broome was said to have done for Pope in his Homer,—"gone before and swept the way." An edition of an English author ought to be intelligible to English readers, and, if the editor do not make it so, he wrongs the old poet, for two centuries lapt in lead, to whose works he undertakes to play the gentleman-usher. A play written in our own tongue should not be as tough to us as Aeschylus to a ten-years' graduate, nor do we wish to be reduced to the level of a chimpanzee, and forced to gnaw our way through a thick shell of misprints and mispointings only to find (as is generally the case with Marston) a rancid kernel of meaning after all. But even Marston sometimes deviates into poetry, as a man who wrote in that age could hardly help doing, and one of the few instances of it is in a speech of Erichtho, in the first scene of the fourth act of "Sophonisba," (Vol. I. p. 197,) which Mr. Halliwell presents to us in this shape:—

  –"hard by the reverent (!) ruines  Of a once glorious temple rear'd to Jove  Whose very rubbish….  ….yet beares  A deathlesse majesty, though now quite rac'd, [razed,]  Hurl'd down by wrath and lust of impious kings,  So that where holy Flamins [Flamens] wont to sing  Sweet hymnes to Heaven, there the daw and crow,  The ill-voyc'd raven, and still chattering pye,  Send out ungratefull sounds and loathsome filth;  Where statues and Joves acts were vively limbs,* * * * *  Where tombs and beautious urnes of well dead men  Stood in assured rest," etc.

The verse and a half in Italics are worthy of Chapman; but why did not Mr. Halliwell, who explains up-pont and I um, change "Joves acts were vively limbs" to "Jove's acts were lively limned," which was unquestionably what Marston wrote?

In the "Scourge of Villanie," (Vol. III. p. 252,) there is a passage which has a modern application in America, though happily archaic in England, which Mr. Halliwell suffers to stand thus:—

  "Once Albion lived in such a cruel age  Than man did hold by servile vilenage:  Poore brats were slaves of bondmen that were borne,  And marted, sold: but that rude law is torne  And disannuld, as too too inhumane."

This should read—

  "Man man did hold in servile villanage;  Poor brats were slaves (of bondmen that were born)";

and we hope that some American poet will one day be able to write in the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of his forefathers.

We will give one more scrap of Mr. Halliwell's text:—

    "Yfaith, why then, caprichious mirth,  Skip, light moriscoes, in our frolick blond,  Flagg'd veines, sweete, plump with fresh-infused joyes!"

which Marston, doubtless, wrote thus:—

    "I'faith, why then, capricious Mirth,  Skip light moriscoes in our frolic blood!  Flagged veins, swell plump with fresh-infused joys!"

We have quoted only a few examples from among the scores that we had marked, and against such a style of "editing" we invoke the shade of Marston himself. In the Preface to the Second Edition of the "Fawn," he says, "Reader, know I have perused this coppy, to make some satisfaction for the first faulty impression; yet so urgent hath been my business that some errors have styll passed, which thy discretion may amend."

Literally, to be sure, Mr. Halliwell has availed himself of the permission of the poet, in leaving all emendation to the reader; but certainly he has been false to the spirit of it in his self-assumed office of editor. The notes to explain up-pont and I um give us a kind of standard of the highest intelligence which Mr. Halliwell dares to take for granted in the ordinary reader. Supposing this nousometer of his to be a centigrade, in what hitherto unconceived depths of cold obstruction can he find his zero-point of entire idiocy? The expansive force of average wits cannot be reckoned upon, as we see, to drive them up as far as the temperate degree of misprints in one syllable, and those, too, in their native tongue. A fortiori, then, Mr. Halliwell is bound to lend us the aid of his great learning wherever his author has introduced foreign words and the old printers have made pie of them. In a single case he has accepted his responsibility as dragoman, and the amount of his success is not such as to give us any poignant regret that he has everywhere else left us to our own devices. On p. 119, Vol. II., Francischina, a Dutchwoman, exclaims, "O, mine aderliver love." Here is Mr. Halliwell's note. "Aderliver.—This is the speaker's error for alder-liever, the best beloved by all." Certainly not "the speaker's error," for Marston was no such fool as intentionally to make a Dutchwoman blunder in her own language. But is it an error for alder-liever? No, but for alderliefster. Mr. Halliwell might have found it in many an old Dutch song. For example, No. 96 of Hoffmann von Fallersleben's "Niederländische Volkslieder" begins thus:—

  "Mijn hert altijt heeft verlanghen  Naer u, die alderliefste mijn."

But does the word mean "best beloved by all"? No such thing, of course; but "best-beloved of all,"—that is, by the speaker.

In "Antonio and Mellida" (Vol. I. pp. 50-51) occur some Italian verses, and here we hoped to fare better; for Mr. Halliwell (as we learn from the title-page of his Dictionary) is a member of the "Reale Academia di Firenze." This is the Accademia della Crusca, founded for the conservation of the Italian language in its purity, and it is rather a fatal symptom that Mr. Halliwell should indulge in the heresy of spelling Accademia with only one c. But let us see what our Della Cruscan's notions of conserving are. Here is a specimen:—

  "Bassiammi, coglier l'aura odorata  Che in sua neggia in quello dolce labra.  Dammi pimpero del tuo gradit' amore."

It is clear enough that the first and third verses ought to read,

"Lasciami coglier,—Dammi l'impero,"

though we confess that we could make nothing of in sua neggia till an Italian friend suggested ha sua seggia. But a Della Cruscan academician might at least have corrected by his dictionary the spelling of labra.

We think that we have sustained our indictment of Mr. Halliwell's text with ample proof. The title of the book should have been, "The Works of John Marston, containing all the Misprints of the Original Copies, together with a few added for the First Time in this Edition, the whole carefully let alone by James Orchard Halliwell, F.R.S., F.S.A." It occurs to us that Mr. Halliwell may be also a Fellow of the Geological Society, and may have caught from its members the enthusiasm which leads him to attach so extraordinary a value to every goose-track of the Elizabethan formation. It is bad enough to be, as Marston was, one of those middling poets whom neither gods nor men nor columns (Horace had never seen a newspaper) tolerate; but, really, even they do not deserve the frightful retribution of being reprinted by a Halliwell.

We have said that we could not feel even the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the blunders of the old copies had been faithfully followed in the reprinting. We see reason for doubting whether Mr. Halliwell ever read the proof-sheets. In his own notes we have found several mistakes. For instance, he refers to p. 159 when he means p. 153; he cites "I, but her life," instead of "lip"; and he makes Spenser speak of "old Pithonus." Marston is not an author of enough importance to make it desirable that we should be put in possession of all the corrupted readings of his text, were such a thing possible even with the most minute painstaking, and Mr. Halliwell's edition loses its only claim to value the moment a doubt is cast upon the accuracy of its inaccuracies. It is a matter of special import to us (whose means of access to originals are exceedingly limited) that the English editors of our old authors should be faithful and trustworthy, and we have singled out Mr. Halliwell's Marston for particular animadversion only because we think it on the whole the worst edition we ever saw of any author.

Having exposed the condition in which our editor has left the text, we proceed to test his competency in another respect, by examining some of the emendations and explanations of doubtful passages which he proposes. These are very few; but had they been even fewer, they had been too many.

Among the dramatis personae of the "Fawn," as we said before, occurs "Granuffo, a silent lord." He speaks only once during the play, and that in the last scene. In Act I., Scene 2, Gonzago says, speaking to Granuffo,—

               "Now, sure, thou are a man  Of a most learned scilence, and one whose words  Have bin most pretious to me."

This seems quite plain, but Mr. Halliwell annotates thus:—"Scilence.—Query, science? The common reading, silence, may, however, be what is intended." That the spelling should have troubled Mr. Halliwell is remarkable; for elsewhere we find "god-boy" for "good-bye," "seace" for "cease," "bodies" for "boddice," "pollice" for "policy," "pitittying" for "pitying," "scence" for "sense," "Misenzius" for "Mezentius," "Ferazes" for "Ferrarese,"—and plenty beside, equally odd. That he should have doubted the meaning is no less strange; for on page 41 of the same play we read, "My Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know you'l say nothing,"—on pp. 55-56, "This Granuffo is a right wise good lord, a man of excellent discourse and never speaks,"—and on p. 94, we find the following dialogue:—

"Gon. My Lord Granuffo, this Fawne is an excellent fellow.

"Don. Silence.

"Gon. I warrant you for my lord here."

In the same play (p. 44) are these lines.—

            "I apt for love?  Let lazy idlenes, fild full of wine  Heated with meates, high fedde with lustfull ease  Goe dote on culler [color]. As for me, why, death a sence,  I court the ladie?"

This is Mr. Halliwell's note:—"Death a sence.—'Earth a sense,' ed. 1633. Mr. Dilke suggests:—'For me, why, earth's as sensible.' The original is not necessarily corrupt. It may mean,—why, you might as well think Death was a sense, one of the senses. See a like phrase at p. 77." What help we should get by thinking Death one of the senses, it would demand another Oedipus to unriddle. Mr. Halliwell can astonish us no longer, but we are surprised at Mr. Dilke, the very competent editor of the "Old English Plays," 1815. From him we might have hoped for better things. "Death o' sense!" is an exclamation. Throughout these volumes we find a for o',—as, "a clock" for "o'clock," "a the side" for "o' the side."

A similar exclamation is to be found in three other places in the same play, where the sense is obvious. Mr. Halliwell refers to one of them on p. 77,—"Death a man! is she delivered!" The others are,—"Death a justice! are we in Normandy?" (p. 98); and "Death a discretion! if I should prove a foole now," or, as given by Mr. Halliwell, "Death, a discretion!" Now let us apply Mr. Halliwell's explanation. "Death a man!" you might as well think Death was a man, that is, one of the men!—or a discretion, that is, one of the discretions!—or a justice, that is, one of the quorum! We trust Mr. Halliwell may never have the editing of Bob Acres's imprecations. "Odd's triggers!" he would say, "that is, as odd as, or as strange as, triggers."

Vol. III., p. 77,—"the vote-killing mandrake." Mr. Halliwell's note is, "vote-killing.—'Voice-killing,' ed. 1613. It may well he doubted whether either be the correct reading." He then gives a familiar citation from Browne's "Vulgar Errors." "Vote-killing" may be a mere misprint for "note-killing," but "voice-killing" is certainly the better reading. Either, however, makes sense. Although Sir Thomas Browne does not allude to the deadly property of the mandrake's shriek, yet Mr. Halliwell, who has edited Shakspeare, might have remembered the

"Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan," (2d Part Henry VI., Act III. Scene 2.)

and the notes thereon in the variorum edition. In Jacob Grimm's "Deutsche Mythologie," (Vol. II. p. 1154,) under the word Alraun, may be found a full account of the superstitions concerning the mandrake. "When it is dug up, it groans and shrieks so dreadfully that the digger will surely die. One must, therefore, before sunrise on a Friday, having first stopped one's ears with wax or cotton-wool, take with him an entirely black dog without a white hair on him, make the sign of the cross three times over the alraun, and dig about it till the root holds only by thin fibres. Then tie these by a string to the tail of the dog, show him a piece of bread, and run away as fast as possible. The dog runs eagerly after the bread, pulls up the root, and falls stricken dead by its groan of pain."

These, we believe, are the only instances in which Mr. Halliwell has ventured to give any opinion upon the text, except as to a palpable misprint, here and there. Two of these we have already cited. There is one other,—"p. 46, line 10. Iuconstant.—An error for inconstant." Wherever there is a real difficulty, he leaves us in the lurch. For example, in "What you Will," he prints without comment,—

"Ha! he mount Chirall on the wings of fame!" (Vol. I. p. 239,)

which should be "mount cheval," as it is given in Mr. Dilke's edition (Old English Plays, Vol. II. p. 222). We cite this, not as the worst, but the shortest, example at hand.

Some of Mr. Halliwell's notes are useful and interesting,—as that on "keeling the pot," and some others,—but a great part are utterly useless. He thinks it necessary, for instance, to explain that "to speak pure foole, is in sense equivalent to 'I will speak like a pure fool,'"—that "belkt up" means "belched up,"—"aprecocks," "apricots." He has notes also upon "meal-mouthed," "luxuriousnesse," "termagant," "fico," "estro," "a nest of goblets," which indicate either that the "general reader" is a less intelligent person in England than in America, or that Mr. Halliwell's standard of scholarship is very low. We ourselves, from our limited reading, can supply him with a reference which will explain the allusion to the "Scotch barnacle" much better than his citations from Sir John Maundeville and Giraldus Cambrensis,—namely, note 8, on page 179 of a Treatise on Worms, by Dr. Ramesey, court physician to Charles II.

Next month we shall examine Mr. Hazlitt's edition of Webster.

Waverley Novels. Household Edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.

This beautiful edition of Scott's Novels will be completed in forty-eight volumes. Thirty are already published, and the remaining eighteen will be issued at the rate of two volumes a month. As this edition, in the union of elegance of mechanical execution with cheapness of price, is the best which has yet been published in the United States, and reflects great credit on the taste and enterprise of the publishers, its merits should be universally known. The paper is white, the type new and clear, the illustrations excellent, the volumes of convenient size, the notes placed at the foot of the page, and the text enriched with the author's latest corrections. It is called the "Household Edition"; and we certainly think it would be a greater adornment, and should be considered a more indispensable necessity, than numerous articles of expensive furniture, which, in too many households, take the place of such books.

The success of this edition, which has been as great as that of most new novels, is but another illustration of the permanence of Scott's hold on the general imagination, resulting from the instinctive sagacity with which he perceived and met its wants. The generation of readers for which he wrote has mostly passed away; new fashions in fiction have risen, had their day, and disappeared; he has been subjected to much acute and profound criticism of a disparaging kind; and at present he has formidable rivals in a number of novelists, both eminent and popular;—yet his fame has quietly and steadily widened with time, the "reading public" of our day is as much his public as the reading public of his own, and there has been no period since he commenced writing when there were not more persons familiar with his novels than with those of any other author. Some novelists are more highly estimated by certain classes of minds, but no other comprehends in his popularity so many classes, and few bear so well that hardest of tests, re-perusal. Many novels stimulate us more, and while we are reading them we think they are superior to Scott's; but we miss, in the general impression they leave on the mind, that peculiar charm which, in Scott, calls us back, after a few years, to his pages, to revive the recollection of scenes and characters which may be fading away from our memories. We doubt, also, if any other novelist has, in a like degree, the power of instantaneously withdrawing so wide a variety of readers from the perplexities and discomforts of actual existence, and making them for the time denizens of a new world. He has stimulating elements enough, and he exhibits masterly art in the wise economy with which he uses them; but he still stimulates only to invigorate; and when he enlivens jaded minds, it is rather by infusing fresh life than by applying fierce excitements, and there is consequently no reaction of weariness and disgust. He appeases, satisfies, and enchants, rather than stings and inflames. The interest he rouses is not of that absorbing nature which exhausts from its very intensity, but is of that genial kind which continuously holds the pleased attention while the story is in progress, and remains in the mind as a delightful memory after the story is finished. It may also be said of his characters, that, if some other novelists have exhibited a finer and firmer power in delineating higher or rarer types of humanity, Scott is still unapproached in this, that he has succeeded in domesticating his creations in the general heart and brain, and thus obtained the endorsement of human nature as evidence of their genuineness. His characters are the friends and acquaintances of everybody,—quoted, referred to, gossipped about, discussed, criticized, as though they were actual beings. He, as an individual, is almost lost sight of in the imaginary world his genius has peopled; and most of his readers have a more vivid sense of the reality of Dominie Sampson, Jennie Deans, or any other of his characterizations, than they have of himself. And the reason is obvious. They know Dominie Sampson through Scott; they know Scott only through Lockhart. Still, it is certain that the nature of Scott, that essential nature which no biography can give, underlies, animates, disposes, and permeates all the natures he has delineated. It is this, which, in the last analysis, is found to be the source of his universal popularity, and which, without analysis, is felt as a continual charm by all his readers, whether they live in palaces or cottages. His is a nature which is welcomed everywhere, because it is at home everywhere. The mere power and variety of his imagination cannot account for his influence; for the same power and variety might have been directed by a discontented and misanthropic spirit, or have obeyed the impulses of selfish and sensual passions, and thus conveyed a bitter or impure view of human nature and human life. It is, then, the man in the imagination, the cheerful, healthy, vigorous, sympathetic, good-natured, and broad-natured Walter Scott himself, who, modestly hidden, as he seems to be, behind the characters and scenes he represents, really streams through them the peculiar quality of life which makes their abiding charm. He has been accepted by humanity, because he is so heartily humane,—humane, not merely as regards man in the abstract, but as regards man in the concrete.

We have spoken of the number of his readers, and of his capacity to interest all classes of people; but we suppose, that, in our day, when everybody knows how to read without always knowing what to read, even Scott has failed to reach a multitude of persons abundantly capable of receiving pleasure from his writings, but who, in their ignorance of him, are content to devour such frightful trash in the shape of novels as they accidentally light upon in a leisure hour. One advantage of such an edition of his works as that which has occasioned these remarks is, that it tends to awaken attention anew to his merits, to spread his fame among the generation of readers now growing up, and to place him in the public view fairly abreast of unworthy but clamorous claimants for public regard, as inferior to him in the power to impart pleasure as they are inferior to him in literary excellence. That portion of the public who read bad novels cannot be reached by criticism; but if they could only be reached by Scott, they would quickly discover and resent the swindle of which they have so long been the victims.