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His notes exhibit sometimes perverse interpretations, and sometimes improbable conjectures; he at one time gives the authour more profundity of meaning than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader. But his emendations are likewise often happy and just; and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and sagacious.
The extent and atrocity of his emendations can be realized by a comparison of texts. But the sonnets survived the improvements, and even made headway under them; and when, in 1863, Guasti gave the original readings to the public, the world was prepared for them.
'I am no poet, he says, 'as you are, but Delhi made my soul burn within me, and I never heard "God save the Queen" or saw the Union Jack flying in the heart of India without feeling the tears in my eyes, which are not much used to tears. He becomes poetical for once; he applies the lines of 'that feeble poem Maud' to the Englishmen who are lying beneath the Cashmire Gate, and fancies that we could say of Hastings and Clive, and many another old hero, that their hearts must 'start and tremble under our feet, though they have lain for a century dead. Then he turns to his favourite 'Christmas Hymn, and shows how, with certain easy emendations, Milton's announcement of the universal peace, when the 'Kings sate still with awful eye, might be applied to the Pax Britannica in India.
I should like to see any man's biography with corrections and emendations by his ghost. We don't know each other's secrets quite so well as we flatter ourselves we do. We don't always know our own secrets as well as we might. You have seen a tree with different grafts upon it, an apple or a pear tree we will say.
The 'Free and Candid Disquisitions, published in 1749 by John Jones, Vicar of Alconbury, did something towards reviving interest in the question. It was mainly a compilation of opinions advanced by eminent divines, past and living, in favour of revising the Liturgy, and making certain omissions and emendations in it. Introductory essays were prefixed.
Goldsmith . The Epitaph, written for him by Dr. Johnson, became the subject of conversation, and various emendations were suggested, which it was agreed should be submitted to the Doctor's consideration. But the question was, who should have the courage to propose them to him?
Forthwith the avenger sat him down to a task of composition. The apology which, after sundry corrections and emendations, he finally produced in fair copy, was not alone complete and explicit: it was fairly abject. In such terms might a confessed and hopeless criminal cast himself desperately upon the mercy of the court.
Ingleby substitutes Shakespeare for Milton, and maintains that the mass of Shakespearian emendations that have been proposed during the last twenty years are needless; and that corruptions have been assumed where none exist, owing to the limited knowledge possessed by the critics. At once there is a chorus from all of us, sciolists, of "Corruption!" "Sophistication!"
At five-and-twenty, Crump invented three new metres, and published an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek Comedy, with no less than twenty emendations upon the German text of Schnupfenius and Schnapsius. These Services to religion instantly pointed him out for advancement in the Church, and he is now President of Saint Boniface, and very narrowly escaped the bench.
I am just undertaking an edition of Lucan, my friend Mr. Bentley having in his possession his father's notes and emendations on the first seven books.
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