Sept. 1. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



157 



LONDON. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1855. 



THE FIRST GREAT ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHER STAG- 

 GERED BY " WORD " AND GRAVELLED BY 

 *' SHOULD," OR DR. S. JOHNSOn's MISTAKING OF 

 MACBETH, ACT V. SC. 5., BY BEV. W. B. ABBOW- 

 SMITH. 



Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5. : 



" Macb. I have almost forgot the taste of fears : 

 The time has been, my senses would have cool'd 

 To hear a night-shriek ; and my fell of hair 

 Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir 

 As life were in't : I have supt full with horrors ; 

 Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts, 

 Cannot once start me. — Wherefore was that cry? 



Sey. The queen, my lord, is dead. 



Macb. She should have dy'd hereafter ; 

 There would have been a time for such a worcL— 

 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow» 

 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 

 To the last syllable of recorded time ; 

 And all our yesterdays have lighted fool* 

 The way to dusty death." 



" Site should have di/'d hereafter ; 

 There would have been a time for such a word." 



" This passage has very justly been suspected of being 

 corrupt. It is not apparent for what wo)-d there would 

 have been a time, and that there would or would not be 

 a tiine for any word, seems not a consideration of import- 

 ance sufficient to transport Macbeth into the following 

 exclamation. I read, therefore, — 



' She should have dy'd hereafter 

 There ivould have been a time for — such aworldi 

 To-morrow,' &c. 



It is a broken speech, in which only a part of the thought 

 is expressed, and may be paraphrased thus : 77»e queen is 

 dead. Macbeth. Her death sliould have been deferred to 

 some more peaceful hour ; had she lived longer, there would 

 at length have been a time for the honours due to her as a 

 queen, and that respect which I owe her for her fidelity and 

 love. Such is the world. Such is the condition of human 

 life, that ive always think to -morrow will be happier than 

 to-day, but to-morrow and to-morrow steals over us unen- 

 joyed and unregarded, and we still linger in the same expect- 

 ation to the moment appointed for our end. All these days, 

 which have thus passed away, have sent multitudes of fools 

 to the grave, who were engrossed by the same dream of future 

 felicity, and, when life was departing from them, were, like 

 me, reckoning on to-morrow. Such was once my conjec- 

 ture, but I am now less confident. Macbeth might mean 

 that there would have been a more convenient ti?ne for 

 such a word, for such intelligence, and so fall into the 

 following reflection : We say we send word when we give 

 intelligence." — Johnson & Steevens' Shakspeare, in 10 

 vols., London, 1778, vol. iv, pp. 599. 600-1. 



The reader has here transcribed at full Dr. 

 Johnson's paraphrase; and as I am not aware that 

 its soundness has been questioned by succeeding 

 annotators, I presume it is one generally ac- 

 quiesced in. The whole comment is very in- 



No. 305.] 



structive ; it well" illustrates the temerity with 

 which editors betake themselves to emendation, 

 fain to drag down no less an author than Shak- 

 speare to their own capacity, when they do not at 

 once succeed in elevating that to him. In such 

 cases the reasoning appears to be very summary. 

 He does not understand his author ; what then ? 

 doubt his own intellect, his own researches ? 

 Never. Pronounce the passage corrupt ; correct 

 it, and claim credit for acuteness and ingenuity. 

 This may be a very pretty exercise, but in the 

 meantime what becomes of Shakspeare ? what 

 becomes of the English tongue ? No need, I 

 trow, for him to study that who can new-mould 

 and fashion it at will. I have oftentimes mused 

 how the Garricks and Kembles could personate 

 the dogged fatalist suddenly metamorphosed, ac- 

 cording to the received interpretation of this most 

 characteristic passage, into a maudlin sentiment- 

 alist. Their elocution and aspect must surely 

 have savoured more of a Matthews or a Liston, 

 chopping from one character to another, than of 

 their own great selves. As little can I divine 

 how the reputed moralist Johnson could ever 

 have persuaded himself that the homily of his 

 paraphrase was in unison with Macbeth's ante- 

 cedents, or with the immediate context ; that it 

 was, I say, of a piece with the reflections issuing 

 from the lips, and passing through the brain, of 

 this remorseless butcher of the widow and the 

 orphan, who now, hardened by guilt, and to all 

 good feeling reprobate, at length brought to bay, 

 bids sullen defiance to whatever can betide him. 

 Mark, reader, the current of the story. To Mac- 

 beth, contrasting his then callous indifference in 

 the apprehension of real calamities with his former 

 sensitiveness, when a night-shriek or tale of ima- 

 ginary woe would have awakened groundless fears, 

 Seyton announces the death of his wife : appa- 

 rently absorbed in his own thoughts, and exhibit- 

 ing no more consciousness of the other's presence 

 than to make the subject of his report the cue for 

 tha farther pursuit of his own meditations, the 

 usurper continues his soliloquy, and with unal- 

 tered mood sees in that event nothing but an in- 

 evitable necessity. And so far is he from regarding 

 one time as more convenient than another, that 

 the whole tenor of his subsequent remarks evinces 

 his convictions to be, that it makes no odds at 

 what point in the dull round of days man's life 

 may terminate. If she had not died now, reasons 

 he, she should have died hereafter : there would 

 have been a time when such tidings must have 

 been brought, — such a tale told. The word was 

 of course the word brought by Seyton of the 

 queen's decease. " The queen, my lord, is dead." 

 Here, as we have seen, the lexicographer made a 

 trip, but recovered himself. He took a foul fall 

 at should, and was incurably foundered. His 

 blunder grew out of obliviousness or inadvertence 



