The Shakespeare-Expositor. Thomas KeightleyЧитать онлайн книгу.
leave your brother speed to gos elsewhere.
3 Hen. VI. iv. 1.
In Troilus and Cressida, v. 2, there is a passage to which transposition, and it alone, gives sense. It is difficult to see how the printer could have made such a jumble; and yet it is manifest that he must have done so. There is, however, as I have shown in my note on the place, just such another in the play of The Two Noble Kinsmen, which the editors have made no attempt at correcting. In the following passage of Chaucer,
Tooke my horse and forthe I went,
Oute of my chaumbre; I never stent.
Book of the Duchesse.
I would read
Oute of my chaumbre forthe I went,
And tooke my hors; I never stent.
In the same poet's Romaunt of the Rose, we have the following passage, unnoticed by any editor,
Thine armys shalt thou sprede abrode
As man in warre were forweriede,
where in the first line we should read "abrode sprede," and in the second reject "were" as an addition of the copyist. An exactly similar transposition occurs in a later part of that poem.
10.
Substitution.—"He who has not repeatedly observed how a copyist, from inattention, sets down a word which his mind has presented to him instead of that which is before his eyes, must have seen little of copies of print or manuscript." These are the words of a Spanish writer, and they are of universal application. I remember myself once, with Herodotus before my eyes, writing Sestos for Abydos; and the changes I have made in copying passages for this work have amazed me. In Corneille's play of Rodogune (i. 1), we read enlever where the proper word is élever, and Voltaire justly suspected that it was an error of the original printer. Further on the reader will meet with a similar error in the original edition of Tasso's Gerusalemme.
The most ordinary case of substitution seems to be that of synonyms; at least there is none to which I have been so subject myself. In giving examples I will commence with Spenser.
A yearly solemn feast she wonts to make.
F. Q. ii. 2. 42.
Now, as the rimes are hold, told, the poet must have written, or have intended to write, hold.
That doth against the dead his hand uprear.
Ib. ii. 8. 29.
Here the word must have been upheave, the rimes being leave, cleave, bereave.
When walking through the garden them she spied.
Ib. iii. 6. 40.
As the rimes are law, draw, we must of course read saw.
Of finest gold. The fifth game was a great new standing bowl,
To set down both ways. These brought in, Achilles then stood up.
Chapman, Iliads, xxiii. 249.
The right word, it is quite plain, is cup.
Or painful to his slumbers; easy, sweet,
And as a purling stream, thou son of Night.
Fletch. Valentinian, v. 2.
Here, as it has been shown, the proper word is light; yet Mr. Dyce has not ventured to receive it.
Mi si scoperse; onde mi nacque un ghiaccio
Nel core, ed evvi ancora,
E sarà sempre, fin ch'io le sia in braccio.
My late friend Rossetti, in copying out this passage of Petrarca in his Amor Platonico, etc., wrote gelo for ghiaccio, and never saw the error, even in reading the proof; and so it is printed.
On the other hand, the adjacent or riming lines sometimes terminate in the same word. There are many instances in Shakespeare, and I have met with the following in Italian.
Ciascun de' cavalieri ebbe e sergenti
Ed al servizio suo donne e sergenti.
B. Tasso, Amadigi, xxii. 67.
where, as the rimes show, the first line should end with una stanza.
Bears in his boasted fan an Iris bright,
When her discoloured bow she spreads through heaven bright.
F. Q. iii. 11. 47.
We meet also with places where the sense or the metre, unaided by rime, must be our guide in correcting—ex. gr.,
The round earth, heaven's great queen and Pallas to whose bands.
Chapman, Iliads, i. 395.
Here the metre shows that the right word is Minerva, not Pallas.
There is one most remarkable case of substitution to which sufficient attention has never been given by the critics. It may be termed reaction or repetition, and arises from the impression made by some particular word on the mind of the transcriber or printer, or even of the writer himself.
Thus in a proof-sheet of my Milton I found
A furnace horrible on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed.
Par. Lost, i. 61.
while the word before the compositor's eyes was dungeon.
To me most fatal, me most it concerns.
Par. Reg. iv. 205: Todd's 4th edit.
Here, again, the true reading is so; yet, as most makes good sense, if the error had been in the original edition it would in all probability never have been detected. Opening by chance Bloomfield's pretty poem of The Farmer's Boy (ed. 1857), I met with
Till when up-hill the destined hill he gains.
Winter, 173.
We may find in Chaucer—
What ladies fairest ben or best dauncing,
Or which of hem can daunce best or sing.
Knt's Tale.
Here for dauncing we should probably read loking.
Of his gladnesse he gladed her anone.
Tr. and Cr. i.
The poet probably wrote goodnesse.
For though a man forbide drunkenesse,
He not forbides that every creature
Be drunkeles for alway, as I gesse.
Ib. ii.
We should read commaundes in the second line.
Witness the daily libels almost ballads
In every place, almost in every province,
Are made upon your lust.
Thierry and Theodoret, i. 1.
We should for the first almost, which must be wrong, probably read and the. Mr. Dyce seems never to have seen this; for he had no conception of this source of error: yet I wonder common sense did not suggest that something must be wrong.
The things that grievous were to do or bear
Them to renew, I wote, breeds no delight;
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