262 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 203. 



before your notice, and I invite you to look at 

 it, and judge for yourself whether A. E. B. has 

 treated you, your paper, or the writer of that very 

 excellent article, with common fairness in the 

 remarks to which I allude. 



I make these observations on two grounds : first, 

 as one who has many reasons for being anxious 

 for the prosperity of " N. & Q. ; " and secondly, 

 because I know it to be the opinion of several of 

 your earliest and warmest friends, that there is a 

 tendency in some of your Shakspeare contributors 

 to indulge in insinuation, imputation of motives, 

 and many other things which ought never to 

 appear in your pages. We lately observed, with 

 deep regret, that you were misled (not by A.E.B.) 

 into the insertion of unjustifiable insinuations, 

 levelled against a gentleman whom we all know to 

 be a man of the highest personal honour. 



The questions which are mooted in your pages 

 ought to be discussed with the mutual forbearance 

 and enlarged liberality which are predominant in 

 the general society of our metropolis ; not with 

 the keen and angry partizanship which distin- 

 guishes the petty squabbles of a country town. 



Icon. 



Our readers know that we ourselves recently noticed 

 the tendency of too many of our correspondents to de- 

 part from the courteous sp;rit by which the earlier 

 communications to this Journal were distinguished. 

 The intention we then announced of playing the tyrant 

 in future, and exercising with greater freedom our 

 '•editorial privilege of omission," we now repeat yet 

 more emphatically. Icon well remarks that we are 

 much in the power of our contributors. Indeed we 

 are more so than even he supposes. 



An article on the Notes and Emendations which 

 lately appeared in our columns concluded, in its ori- 

 ginal form, with an argument against their genuine- 

 ness, based on tiie use of a word unknown to Shak- 

 speare and his cotemporaries. This appeared to us 

 somewhat extraordinary, and a reference to Richard- 

 son's excellent Dictionary proved that our correspon- 

 dent was altogether wrong as to his facts. We of course 

 omitted the passage ; but we ought not to have received 

 a statement founded on a mistake which might have 

 been avoided by a single reference to so common a 

 book. 



Again, at p. 194. of the present volume, another 

 correspondent, after pointing out some coincidences 

 between the old Emendator and some suggested cor- 

 rections by Z. Jackson, and stating that Mr. Collier 

 never once refers to Jackson, proceeds: "Ma. Singer, 



that the author of it was not aware of what had been 

 written in " N. & Q." on many of the points discussed 

 by him. Such knowledge might have modified some of 

 his views. 



however, talks familiarly about Jackson, in his Shak- 

 speare Vindicated, as if he had him at his fingers' ends ; 

 and yet, at p. 239., he favours the world with an ori- 

 ginal emendation (viz. ' He did behood his anger,' 

 Timon, Act III. Sc. 1.), which, however, will be found 

 at page 389. of Jackson's book." Now, after this, who 

 would have supposed that, as we learn from Mr. 

 Singer, " Mr. Ingleby has founded his charge on 

 such slender grounds as one cursory notice of Jack- 

 son at p. 283. of my book, where I mentioned him 

 merely on the authority of Mr. Collier." And who 

 that knows Mr. Singer will doubt the truth of his 

 assertion, that he has not even seen Jackson's book for 

 near a quarter of a century, and that he had not the 

 slightest reason to doubt that the conjecture of behood 

 for behave was his own property ?* 



But there is another gentleman who, although he has 

 never whispered a remonstrance to us upon the subject, 

 has even more grounds of complaint than Mr. Singer, 

 for the treatment which he has received in our columns ; 

 we mean our valued friend and contributor jMr. Col- 

 lier, who we feel has received some injustice in our 

 pages. But the fact is that, holding, as we do un- 

 changed, the opinion which we originally expressed of 

 the great value of the Notes and Emendations — know- 

 ing Mr. Collier's character to be above suspicion — and 

 believing that the result of all the discussions to which 

 the Notes and Emendations have given rise, will even- 

 tually be to satisfy the world of their great value, — we 

 have not looked so strictly as we ought to have done, 

 and as we shall do in future, to the tone in which they 

 have been discussed in " N. & Q^" 



And here let us take the opportunity of oflTering a 

 kw suggestions which we think worthy of being borne 

 in mind in all discussions on the text of Shakspeare, 

 whether the object under consideration be what Shak- 

 peare actually wrote, or what Shakspeare really meant 

 by what he did write. 



First, as to this latter point. Some years ago a 

 distinguished scholar, when engaged in translating 

 Giithe's Faust, came to a passage involved in con- 

 siderable obscurity, and which he found was inter- 

 preted very diflTerently by different admirers of the 

 poem. Unable, under these circumstances, to procure 

 any satisfactory solution of the poet's meaning, the 

 translator applied to Giithe himself, and received from 

 him the candid reply which we think it far from im- 

 probable that Shakspeare himself might give with re- 

 ference to many passages in his own writings, — " That 



*.0n this point we would call especial attention to 

 Mr. Halliwell's communication on the Difficulty of 

 avoiding Coincident Suggestions 07i the Text of Shakspeare, 

 which will be found in our present Number. 



