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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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THE ENGLISH OF SHAKSPEARE . The English of Shakespeare illustrated in a Philological Commentary on his " Julius Ccesar . " By George L . Craik , Professor of English History and Literature ia . Queen ' s College , Belfast . Chapman and Hall . Pjrofessok Cjraik has done for Shakspeare wliat scholars have for centuries been doing for the ancient classics , but what no one hitherto has had tie ingenuity to devise or the courage to execute for our greatest classic . Among the many erudite but almost worthless books written about Shakspeare , this small volume is conspicuous for learning , judgment , purpose , and direct utility . It consists of three parts . The first part , containing the Prolegomena , narrates the ascertained facts of Shakspeare ' s personal history , and the probable dates of the worts ; discusses the sources for the text of the Plays ; enumerates the Shakspearean Editors and Commentators , and enters into the intricate subject of the Mechanism of English verse and
Shakspeare ' s nrosody . The second part contains the philological commentary , The third part is devoted to a reprint of Julius Casar , according to Professor Craik ' s recension of the text , with the novel and ingenious contr ivance , which will doubtless hereafter be followed , of numbering the speeches . In the Greek plays the lines are numbered , and every student is aware of the immense benefit derived from this practice ; but in the Greek plays the speeches are constantly of so great a length that nothing less than numbering the lines would serve the student ' s purpose ; in modern plays , the brevity of the speeches , and the frequent occurrence of speeches less than a line in length , often merely of a word or two , suggest the propriety of Professor Craik ' s plan . There is no one , except the happy possessor of a text utterly without notes , who has not been irritated by the obtrusive twaddle , and the
nonexplaming ingenuity of explanation , whicli , under the guise of commentary , editors foist upon Shakspeare ' s pages . In seven cases out of every ten the student gets no instruction on the point wliich perplexes him . Nothing is elucidated . What was dark before has become still more obscure . The editor has displayed his acquaintance with old copies and black letter literature ; meanwhile , the difficulty remains the same . In Professor Craik ' s commentary the student will find genuine erudition turned to a genuine purpose ; there is nothing set down for the sake of display ; authors are not quoted upon the slightest provocation ; parallel passages are only adduced as cumulative evidence . The olject of the commentary is the English language , its structure , its meaning , its licences ; and no student of the English language and of Shakspeare will read it without clear profit . A passage or two will display the nature of this commentary , and for the sake of fairness , we will not select the best , but the most tjpical passages : —
If it be aught toward . —AH that tlie prosody- demands here ia that the word toward be pronounced in two syllables ; th « accent may be either on the firat or the second . Toward when an adjective has , I b « lieve , always the accent on the Urat syllable in Shakespeare ; but its customary pronunciation may have been otherwise in his day when it was a preposition , as it ia here . Milton , however , In the few cases in which he does not run the two syllables into one , always accents the first . And he uses both toward and towards . Again , on the next page : — Your outward favour . —A man ' s favour is his aspect or appearance . The word is now lost tons in that sense ; butwo still uso . /< u > 0 uredwith well , ill , and perhaps other quahfynig « terms , for featured or locking ; as In Gen . xli . 4 : — " The ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kme did eat up tho seven well-favoured and fat kine . " Favour seems to be used fat face from the same confusion or natural transference of meaning between
the expressions for tho feeling in the mind and the outward indication of it in the look that has led to the word countenance , which commonly denotes the latter , being sometimes employed , by a process the reverse of what we have in tho case offavour , in the sense of at least one modification pf the former-, as when we speak of any one giving something hia countenance ,, or countenancing it . In this case , howover , it ought to bo observed that countenan ce has the meaning , not simply of favourable feeling or approbation , but of its expression or avowal . The French terms from which we have borrowed our favour and countenance , do not appear to have either of them undergone the transference of moaning which has befallen tho English forms . But contenance , which ia still also used by the French in tlvo sense of material capacity , haa drifted far away from its original import in coming to Bignify one ' s aspect or physiognomy . It la really also the same word with the French a . nd English can # : nence and tho Latin continentia . - " '
The following ia more exhaustive ;—• lJL inSi lieJ : ~~ Iif <*?™ etim ( >* " * fetf or leve- ) , in tho comparative litfer or Srthoi ft l !^ ^ 'If *" " f Anglo-Saxon ^ si gnifying dear . "No modern fhij ' * j > ° lteYO nys Homo Tooko ( Z > . of P . 201 ) , « . would now venture any of J& esfl words in o serious pasaago ; and they seem to bo cautiously shunned or ridiculed in common conversation , ns a vulgarity . Hut they are good Enclish . words , and more frequently used by our old Kngllsh writers than any other word of a corresponding signification . The common ragdorn substitute fgr WJB toon , and for to /*
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The reader , if attracted by science and its applications , will find in the Westminster a paper on " Boiling Water , " containing an account of the Geisers of Iceland , and some of th « carious phenomena of boiling watera paper valuable for its matter , but heavily written—and in the British Quarterly a paper on " The Smoke Nuisance— -its Cause and Cure , " which to all inhabitants of large cities will be of great interest . The politics and polemics of the Reviews will also find readers ; but more literary inclinations will lean towards the article on " Worldliness and Other-worldliness " in the Westminster , wherein the poet Young 5 s criticized as man , poet , Calvinist , and moralist .
Having come to the end of these Reviews , he may attack a fresh pile , and begin with the new Magazine , the National , a sort of pictorial Household Words , with matter of various tastes . Mr . Shiri-ey Hibberd tells an interesting anecdote in his account of his Aquarium . The fish , crabs , reptiles in his tank are mostly furnished him by a wandering amphibious naturalist , who daily wades in the Lea or New River , and , although stone Hind , is an expert huntsman , groping about with his hands , and thus catching the pi ' ey ; which done , he quits the water with his sole companion , a dog , and without stopping to dry his clothes wanders off in search of purchasers .
Of our table , as on the table of many a club and Teading-room , lies a pile of periodicals , wiicn would furnish matter for weeks of leisure if life had no more serious demands than that of wliling away t"he hours ; and certainly the great majority of our readers would eye this pile with something of that envy which moves a small boy standing outside the pastrycook ' s shop , and . contemplating the wealth of tarts that have so little power over the pastrycook ' s desires . In his impatience , one of these readers might take up the British Quarterly , and having gone through the historical narrative which sets forth the " Great Oyer of Poisoning "—not without a passing reflection that those were terrible times , and that there is considerable satisfaction in
¦ £ he consciousness of living in times when judicial proceedings are so infinitely superior he might be led by such train of thought to open the Westminster ^ Review and read the article on " English Law : its Oppression and Confusion , " because however he may be disposed to glorify the present age in contrast with the days of old , he must think meanly of it in contrast with the ideal in his mind , especially as regards Law . Or he might turn to another article in the same Review , attracted by the title , to learn what was revealed of the "Mysteries of Cefalonia , " and there he would be both amused and astounded at finding a Thackekat in the Ionian Islands , painting society tiere with the same keen , wholesome satire , and with a sterner -purpose , than Thackeray . It is a very remarkable paper indeed ; and the extracts given , from the G-reek satirist fully account for his excommunication by the Greek Church . The tone in-which he addresses his Holiness has an earnestness mo reader will mistake , while a certain Thackeba . tish humour plays about the sentences . ' Read . this sketch of the Greek Priesthood : —
" In the bosom of our community , Right Reverend Father , there are to be seen certain persons wearing long , full , black dresses , large beards , their hair unshorn after the faBbion of women , and a hat like a pot without a handle upon their heads . These , your Holiness , have renounced the world ; that is to say , they have renounced the burdens of the community , and yet live amid the community , singing , eating and drinking , and doing nothing . Nor is that all—idleness and solitariness easily elide into overbearingness : they maintain that they are the depositaries of all religion , and as such desire in the name of the religion to exercise authority over us . " . Now , if the Protestants allow their priests a certain authority , that does not seem
to > me at all strange . The priests of the Protestants are men of education , learning and morality ; so that their society is profitable , and the slight authority they possess beneficial . But for own priests , how can we , if we have any sense , admit tiera into our houses , and allow them any authority over our families ? Their ignorance is proverbial ( ignor-ante come un ^ rete greco i a European phrase ); their morals , before and after their ordination , are notorious to us all ; and their education is that which they picked up in their various unordained capacities of porters , boatmen , shopmen , or servants . Your Holiness need not tell me that the Holy Spirit by virtue of ordination has cleansed them from the old man , and created in them the new man ; your Holiness and I may believe this , but thtreare many who don't /"
This last touch is admirable . Here is a passage as applicable to Ireland as to Ionia : — " Among the other articles which are sold in these religious repositories are the pTayera for the sick . "Whenever one of his parishioners' wives has a sick child , the minister , who haa previously taught her the necessity of such prayers undeT the circumstances , receives twelve , fifteen , or twenty obols for performing one—for urging God to restore to health the child of the woman who has given him the aforesaid obols . " Let your Holiness suppose that you . had received power as vicegerent of the Most High , to heal according to your otto judgment , -whenever benevolence or charity might move you thereto . Suppose that my child was sick , and that I and his mother came before you on our knees , weeping out cur very hearts' blood ; that you mb wasted
, aa . w with our griefs , and sorrowing for tlie danger of a being that ( under < Jod ) we ourselves had created , a darling on whom we had set all onr love and all our souls ; even if your Holiness in your wisdom did not think fit , or if your heart ¦ was not moved to grant oar request , you would at least not hear our cry -with indifference , and your door would open to us none the l « ss easily on any other occasion . But if , in place of going myself to seek you , I were to pay somebody else sixpence to go instead and petition you to save my child from the danger—how much -would you value such a prayer ? A . 8 I conjecture , you would count it a sixpenny petition . You tvould hear It with due contempt , and would bo wroth with the utterer and with mo . Surely , ( Jodis not moved either by the conjurations of witches , or by the set forms of priests . He is only pleased with the utterances of the heart ; and that is a worship which none can offer botter than ho who has the grief in his heart . Paid-for prayers profit nobody except the receiver of the money paid for them . "
Having had enouglt of political and ecclesiastical matters , the reader may wish to refresh his mind with a little literature , and for this purpose he again recurs to > the British Quarterly , and reads a pleasant retrospective review of Sir Thoma . 8 Bbowitjc , one of the quaint worthies of our Literature ; or he may be attracted b y the article on Wobdswobth in tlie National Review , a philosophical disquisition on a subject which seems inexhaustible ; having learned with this writer to enter into WoRDswonTH ' s meditative spirit , he may pass on to another article in the same review , on Bamac , a poor article indeed , made tip from Lfcow Gozlah ' s charming little volumeBalzac
, en JPantov / Ies , but as the majority of readers have not seen , and will not see the volume , the article will put them in possession of some amusing details , and somewhat modify their conceptions of the great novelist , who , by the way , is Very pedantically and unfairly troat « d in the last Revue des Deux Mpn&ei . In th , e Naiiwal also tliere is a defence of Mr . Spubgeon , and an attempt to show why Sp 0 Rgbo » nxsm and Caxvinism impress thousands \\\ apit * of common sense , and let us add , in spite of healthy moral instinots , p n tho ^ hole this is , in our opinion , the poorest number tho National has issued , containing no one article , likely to excite much attention ,
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Critics are not tie legislators , but the judges and police of Uteratiiie . ^ Theydo not . i , makelaw 3—they interpret and try to enforce them—JEdznbvrffhBevteto .
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40 THI LEADEB ^ [ ffo » 355 ^ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 10, 1857, page 40, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2175/page/16/
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