Part 26

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 we ought to read,

“Lasciami coglier,.... Che ha sua seggia,.... Dammi l’ impero.”

A Della Cruscan academician might at least have corrected by his dictionary the spelling and number 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 personæ_ 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 art 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 p. 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 Œdipus 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 be 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 Shakespeare, might have remembered the

“Would curses kill, _as doth the mandrake’s groan_.” (Second Part of 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 a few others,--but the greater 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,”--that “aprecocks” means “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.

* * * * *

We turn now to Mr. Hazlitt’s edition of Webster. We wish he had chosen Chapman; for Mr. Dyce’s Webster is hardly out of print, and, we believe, has just gone through a second and revised edition. Webster was a far more considerable man than Marston, and infinitely above him in genius. Without the poetic nature of Marlowe, or Chapman’s somewhat unwieldy vigor of thought, he had that inflammability of mind which, untempered by a solid understanding, made his plays a strange mixture of vivid expression, incoherent declamation, dramatic intensity, and extravagant conception of character. He was not, in the highest sense of the word, a great dramatist. Shakespeare is the only one of that age. Marlowe had a rare imagination, a delicacy of sense that made him the teacher of Shakespeare and Milton in versification, and was, perhaps, as purely a poet as any that England has produced; but his mind had no balance-wheel. Chapman abounds in splendid enthusiasms of diction, and now and then dilates our imaginations with suggestions of profound poetic depth. Ben Jonson was a conscientious and intelligent workman, whose plays glow, here and there, with the golden pollen of that poetic feeling with which his age impregnated all thought and expression; but his leading characteristic, like that of his great namesake, Samuel, was a hearty common sense, which fitted him rather to be a great critic than a great poet. He had a keen and ready eye for the comic in situation, but no humor. Fletcher was as much a poet as fancy and sentiment can make any man. Only Shakespeare wrote comedy and tragedy with truly ideal elevation and breadth. Only Shakespeare had that true sense of humor which, like the universal solvent sought by the alchemists, so fuses together all the elements of a character, (as in Falstaff,) that any question of good or evil, of dignified or ridiculous, is silenced by the apprehension of its thorough humanity. Rabelais shows gleams of it in Panurge; but, in our opinion, no man ever possessed it in an equal degree with Shakespeare, except Cervantes; no man has since shown anything like an approach to it, (for Molière’s quality was comic power rather than humor,) except Sterne, Fielding, and perhaps Richter. Only Shakespeare was endowed with that healthy equilibrium of nature whose point of rest was midway between the imagination and the understanding,--that perfectly unruffled brain which reflected all objects with almost inhuman impartiality,--that outlook whose range was ecliptical, dominating all zones of human thought and action,--that power of veri-similar conception which could take away Richard III. from History, and Ulysses from Homer,--and that creative faculty whose equal touch is alike vivifying in Shallow and in Lear. He alone never seeks in abnormal and monstrous characters to evade the risks and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as “great dramatists,”--as if Shakespeare did not differ from them in kind as well as in degree. Fine poets some of them were; but though imagination and the power of poetic expression are, singly, not uncommon gifts, and even in combination not without secular examples, yet it is the rarest of earthly phenomena to find them joined with those faculties of perception, arrangement, and plastic instinct in the loving union which alone makes a great dramatic poet possible. We suspect that Shakespeare will long continue the only specimen of the genus. His contemporaries, in their comedies, either force what they call “a humor” till it becomes fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like rat-catchers, in the sewers of human nature and of language. In their tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jonson, or mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman and Webster too often do. Every new edition of an Elizabethan dramatist is but the putting of another witness into the box to prove the inaccessibility of Shakespeare’s stand-point as poet and artist.

Webster’s most famous works are “The Duchess of Malfy” and “Vittoria Corombona,” but we are strongly inclined to call “The Devil’s Law-Case” his best play. The two former are in a great measure answerable for the “spasmodic” school of poets, since the extravagances of a man of genius are as sure of imitation as the equable self-possession of his higher moments is incapable of it. Webster had, no doubt, the primal requisite of a poet, imagination, but in him it was truly untamed, and Aristotle’s admirable distinction between the _Horrible_ and the _Terrible_ in tragedy was never better illustrated and confirmed than in the “Duchess” and “Vittoria.” His nature had something of the sleuth-hound quality in it, and a plot, to keep his mind eager on the trail, must be sprinkled with fresh blood at every turn. We do not forget all the fine things that Lamb has said of Webster, but, when Lamb wrote, the Elizabethan drama was an El Dorado, whose micaceous sand, even, was treasured as auriferous,--and no wonder, in a generation which admired the “Botanic Garden.” Webster is the Gherardo della Notte of his day, and himself calls his “Vittoria Corombona” a “night-piece.” Though he had no conception of Nature in its large sense, as something pervading a whole character and making it consistent with itself, nor of Art, as that which dominates an entire tragedy and makes all the characters foils to each other and tributaries to the catastrophe, yet there are flashes of Nature in his plays, struck out by the collisions of passion, and dramatic intensities of phrase for which it would be hard to find the match. The “prithee, undo this button” of Lear, by which Shakespeare makes us feel the swelling of the old king’s heart, and that the bodily results of mental anguish have gone so far as to deaden for the moment all intellectual consciousness and forbid all expression of grief, is hardly finer than the broken verse which Webster puts into the mouth of Ferdinand when he sees the body of his sister, murdered by his own procurement:--

“Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young.”

He has not the condensing power of Shakespeare, who squeezed meaning into a phrase with an hydraulic press, but he could carve a cherry-stone with any of the _concettisti_, and abounds in imaginative quaintnesses that are worthy of Donne, and epigrammatic tersenesses that remind us of Fuller. Nor is he wanting in poetic phrases of the purest crystallization. Here are a few examples:--

“Oh, if there be another world i’ th’ moon, As some fantastics dream, I could wish all _men_, The whole race of them, for their inconstancy, Sent thither to people that!”

(Old Chaucer was yet slier. After saying that Lamech was the first faithless lover, he adds,--

“And he invented _tents_, unless men lie,”--

implying that he was the prototype of nomadic men.)

“Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds: In the trenches, for the soldier; in the wakeful study, For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea, For men of our profession [merchants]; all of which Arise and spring up honor.”

(“Of all which,” Mr. Hazlitt prints it.)

“Poor Jolenta! should she hear of this, She would not after the report keep fresh So long as flowers on graves.”

“For sin and shame are ever tied together With Gordian knots of such a strong thread spun, They cannot without violence be undone.”

“One whose mind Appears more like a ceremonious chapel Full of sweet music, than a thronging presence.”

“What is death? The safest trench i’ th’ world to keep man free From Fortune’s gunshot.”

“It has ever been my opinion That there are none love perfectly indeed, But those that hang or drown themselves for love,”

says Julio, anticipating Butler’s

“But he that drowns, or blows out ’s brains, The Devil’s in him, if he feigns.”

He also anticipated La Rochefoucauld and Byron in their apophthegm concerning woman’s last love. In “The Devil’s Law-Case,” Leonora says,--

“For, as we love our youngest children best, So the last fruit of our affection, Wherever we bestow it, is most strong, Most violent, most unresistible; Since ’t is, indeed, our latest harvest-home, Last merriment ’fore winter.”

In editing Webster, Mr. Hazlitt had the advantage (except in a single doubtful play) of a predecessor in the Rev. Alexander Dyce, beyond all question the best living scholar of the literature of the times of Elizabeth and James I. If he give no proof of remarkable fitness for his task, he seems, at least, to have been diligent and painstaking. His notes are short and to the point, and--which we consider a great merit--at the foot of the page. If he had added a glossarial index, we should have been still better pleased. Mr. Hazlitt seems to have read over the text with some care, and he has had the good sense to modernize the orthography, or, as he says, has “observed the existing standard of spelling throughout.” Yet--for what reason we cannot imagine--he prints “I” for “ay,” taking the pains to explain it every time in a note, and retains “banquerout” and “coram” apparently for the sake of telling us that they mean “bankrupt” and “quorum.” He does not seem to have a quick ear for scansion, which would sometimes have assisted him to the true reading. We give an example or two:--

“The obligation wherein we all stood bound Cannot be concealed [_cancelled_] without great reproach.”

“The realm, not they, Must be regarded. Be [we] strong and bold, We are the people’s factors.”

“Shall not be o’erburdened [_overburdened_] in our reign

“A merry heart And a good stomach to [a] feast are all.”

“Have her meat serv’d up by bawds and ruffians” [_dele_ “up.”]

“Brother or father In [a] dishonest suit, shall be to me.”

“What’s she in Rome your greatness cannot awe. Or your rich purse purchase? Promises and threats.” [_dele_ the second “your.”]

“Through clouds of envy and disast [rous] change.”

“The Devil drives, ’tis [it is] full time to go.”

He has overlooked some strange blunders. What is the meaning of

“Laugh at your misery, as foredeeming you An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth Would soon be lost i’ the air”?

We hardly need say that it should be

“An idle meteor, which, drawn forth the earth, Would,” &c.

“_For_wardness” for _fro_wardness,” (Vol. II. p. 87,) “tennis-balls struck and ban_ded_” for “ban_died_,” (Ib. p. 275,) may be errors of the press; but

“Come, I’ll love you wisely: That’s jealousy,”

has crept in by editorial oversight for “wisely, that ’s jealously.” So have

“Ay, the great emperor of [_or_] the mighty Cham”;

and

“This wit [_with_] taking long journeys”;

and

“Virginius, thou dost but supply my place, I thine: Fortune hath lift me [_thee_] to my chair, And thrown me headlong to thy pleading bar”;

and

“I’ll pour my soul into my daughter’s belly, [_body_,] And with my soldier’s tears embalm her wounds.”

We suggest that the change of an _a_ to an _r_ would make sense of the following: “Come, my little punk, with thy two compositors, to this unlawful painting-house,” [printing-house,] which Mr. Hazlitt awkwardly endeavors to explain by this note on the word _compositors_,--“i. e. (conjecturally), making up the composition of the picture “! Our readers can decide for themselves;--the passage occurs Vol. I. p. 214.

We think Mr. Hazlitt’s notes are, in the main, good; but we should like to know his authority for saying that _pench_ means “the hole in a bench by which it was taken up,”--that “descant” means “look askant on,”--and that “I wis” is equivalent to “I surmise, imagine,” which it surely is not in the passage to which his note is appended. On page 9, Vol. I., we read in the text,

“To whom, my lord, bends thus your awe,”

and in the note, “i. e. submission. The original has _aue_, which, if it mean _ave_, is unmeaning here.” Did Mr. Hazlitt never see a picture of the Annunciation with _ave_ written on the scroll proceeding from the bending angel’s mouth? We find the same word in Vol. III. p. 217:--

“Whose station’s built on avees and applause.”

Vol. III. pp. 47, 48:--

“And then rest, gentle bones; yet pray That when by the precise you are view’d, A supersedeas be not sued To remove you to a place more airy, That in your stead they may keep chary Stockfish or seacoal, for the abuses Of sacrilege have turned graves to viler uses.”

To the last verse Mr. Hazlitt appends this note, “Than that of burning men’s bones for fuel.” There is no allusion here to burning men’s bones, but simply to the desecration of graveyards by building warehouses upon them, in digging the foundations for which the bones would be thrown out. The allusion is, perhaps, to the “Churchyard of the Holy Trinity”;--see Stow’s _Survey_, ed. 1603, p. 126. Elsewhere, in the same play, Webster alludes bitterly to “begging church-land.”

Vol. I. p. 73, “And if he walk through the street, he ducks at the penthouses, like an ancient that dares not nourish at the oathtaking of the prætor for fear of the signposts.” Mr. Hazlitt’s note is, “_Ancient_ was a standard or flag; also an _ensign_, of which Skinner says it is a corruption. What the meaning of the simile is the present editor cannot suggest.” We confess we find no difficulty. The meaning plainly is, that he ducks for fear of hitting the penthouses, as an ensign on the Lord Mayor’s day dares not flourish his standard for fear of hitting the signposts. We suggest the query, whether _ancient_, in this sense, be not a corruption of the Italian word _anziano_.

Want of space compels us to leave many other passages, which we had marked for comment, unnoticed. We are surprised that Mr. Hazlitt, (see his Introduction to “Vittoria Corombona,”) in undertaking to give us some information concerning the Dukedom and Castle of Bracciano, should uniformly spell it _Brachiano_. Shakespeare’s _Petruchio_ might have put him on his guard. We should be glad also to know in what part of Italy he places _Malfi_.