880 HORACE HOWARD FURNESS. 



of the text. But the collations of Clark and Wright gave no clue to 

 the extent to which any particular reading had been adopted by 

 subsequent editors, and Dr. Furness felt that this lack of guidance as 

 to the balance of authority was a serious defect. 



After mature deliberation and long preparation, he resolved to 

 supply this want, and in 1871 appeared Romeo and Juliet as the first 

 volume of A New Varioruin Edition of Shakespeare. This colossal 

 undertaking, however, accomplished much more than the supple- 

 menting of the work of the Cambridge editors on the text. It sum- 

 marized with great skill and conciseness, usually in the actual words 

 of the commentators, all the criticism, textual, exegetical, and appre- 

 ciative, down to Dr. Furness's own day. The appendices gave in 

 similar fashion the gist of discussion and research on matters of date, 

 sources, authenticity, and the like, with descriptions of the leading 

 roles as interpreted by great actors. In short, it summarized every- 

 thing of value — and, inevitably, much of no value — that had been 

 written which could throw light on the dramas or form the basis for 

 further investigation; and this was done not only for English scholar- 

 ship but for all the countries where Shakespeare is studied. In the 

 forty-one years between the publication of the first volume and his 

 death. Dr. Furness completed fourteen plays — the fruit of extraordi- 

 nary industry, vast scholarship, and an admirably sane judgment. 



For it would be a mistake to suppose that his work was that of a 

 mechanical compiler. Every page bears token of his penetration and 

 acuteness; and in the later volumes he allowed himself much greater 

 freedom in the passing of judgment on disputed questions; so that, 

 between his interjected comments and the prefaces in which he was 

 accustomed to let himself go at the conclusion of each stage in his 

 great task, the reader who never saw him comes to form no vague idea 

 of his genial and witty guide. 



Recognition of the magnitude of the service undertaken by Dr. 

 Furness came early and continued to grow to the end of his life. He 

 received many honors: Ph.D. from Halle; Litt.D. from Columbia 

 and Cambridge, England; LL.D. from Harvard, Yale, and Pennsyl- 

 vania. Notable among his memberships of learned societies was his 

 presidency of the German Shakespeare Society. When he died on 

 August 13, 1912, he was recognized throughout the world as belonging 

 to the first rank of Shakespearian scholars, and as having placed all 

 future workers in his field under infinite obligations by his untiring 

 industry, his insight, and his patient fairness. 



W. A. Neilson. 



