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Page 20
Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing
little; for raising in the publick expectations, which at last I
have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and
that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those
who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what
they think impossible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no
opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task
with no slight solicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work
has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore;
or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate. In many
I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I
have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not passed over,
with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader
and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my
ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning
upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence,
that, where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that,
where others have said enough, I have said no more.
Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him,
that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who
desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read
every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence
of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let
it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is
strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of
Theobald and Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity,
through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension
of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures
of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness; and read the
commentators.
Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect
of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption;
the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader
is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book,
which he has too diligently studied.
Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there
is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension
of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a
close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the
whole is discerned no longer.
It is not very grateful to consider how little the succession of
editors has added to this authour's power of pleasing. He was read,
admired, studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all
the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon
him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions
understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce "that Shakespeare was the
man, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest
and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still
present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily:
When he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater
commendation: he was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles
of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him
injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many
times flat and insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches,
his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when
some great occasion is presented to him: No man can say, he ever
had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as
high above the rest of poets,
"Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi."
It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary;
that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure.
But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things;
that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by
accident and time; and more than has been suffered by any other
writer since the use of types, has been suffered by him through
his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that superiority of mind,
which despised its own performances, when it compared them with
its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preserved, which
the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of
restoring and explaining.
Among these candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the
judgment of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce
my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had
the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature
deficient, and I should feel little solicitude about the sentence,
were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.
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