Some time ago, Dr. W. J. Lawrence, writing in the Criterion, stated his belief that the Shakespearean “Bad Quartos” which have in the past provoked so many conflicting explanations are in reality nothing more than unauthorized stage adaptations made directly from the full theatre manuscript by pirates who then performed the plays in the provinces. Dr. Lawrence reached this conclusion after finding certain similarities running through all the bad quartos, notably the absence of reflective passages, which would indicate abridgment for provincial performance, and the transposition of scenes, which might have resulted from the necessities of doubling. As to the bad quarto of Henry V, at least, I am convinced that Dr. Lawrence's theory is the right one. From a careful word-for-word comparison of that text with the folio text of 1623, I had myself reached the same conclusion before his article came to my attention. Since Dr. Lawrence did not attempt to show the manner in which the supposed adaptation was made, I shall here set forth the results of my own more detailed study in support of his general hypothesis.

That two boys of seventeen should have welcomed the most important early book of the romantic movement in England is remarkable, a curiosity of literature. The letters of Thomas De Quincey and John Wilson, in praise of the Lyrical Ballads, probably afforded Wordsworth greater pleasure in 1802 and 1803 than any commendation outside of his immediate circle.

Professor J. Q. Adams, in his admirable edition of Macbeth, has recently contended unequivocally that “in several places” of the original text, the Folio, “portions of Shakespeare's play are lost or intentionally omitted.” Specifically, he argues that three scenes—one each in the first, second, and last acts—have been lost. For various reasons this contention challenges more detailed consideration than it seems thus far to have received. It is an integral though not necessarily a vital part of the commentary in this edition; it revives—though with a decided difference—an old and much-debated hypothesis concerning textual losses from this play; and it requires, if certain aspects of the reasoning underlying it are to be accepted, a not inconsiderable readjustment of current views as to the swift and compelling structural efficacy of the play as it stands, not to mention a fresh appraisal of no less a personage than Lady Macbeth. Yet Professor Adams's edition adheres scrupulously—except perhaps in the three instances to be noted—to the principle which prompts the present inquiry. “We ought,” says Bradley in a very similar connection, “to do our best to interpret the text”—i.e., the text as it stands—“before we have recourse to this kind of suggestion.” Granting that an able exposition of textual difficulties is a boon in itself, are the difficulties such as to justify conjecture concerning exactly what may or may not have been lost or purposely omitted, and where?

Although printed forty years ago in a once well-known textbook, certain marginalia written by Coleridge in a copy of Descartes' Opera Philosophica have never, I believe, been the subject of any comment. They are, however, of considerable interest, aside from that of a sentimental kind, for of four notations—one a mere reference for later transcription—two have relationship, hitherto unnoticed as far as I am aware, with a paragraph in the Biographia Literaria, and the reference is to a passage part of which was quoted as a volume motto in The Friend.

Spenser's Muiopotmos has provoked much ingenious speculation, but no general agreement as to its meaning has been reached. One school of critics in fact warns us against seeking too precise a meaning. Selincourt in the one-volume Oxford edition of Spenser's Works, says:

The main object of this study is to vindicate Spenser of the implied charge of pedantry in one of the most brilliant of his episodes. His Odyssean voyage during the last decade and more among the pages of scholarly journals has left him cast now on the shores of simple Lucretian materialism, now in the bog of abstruse Neo-Platonism. He has even been observed steering a consciously charted course between opposing rocks of dilemma, to say nothing of having sought refuge and instruction among the pre-Socratic Greeks. It is hoped that he may be returned to native English shores. Should the conclusions of this article be epitomized in the statement that Spenser was a second-rate philosopher, that he was a popularizer of already popularized material, no great loss is suffered. His metaphysical poetry may still be read, its simple and direct message gathered, and its charm enjoyed without a ruinous gloss ranging from Empedocles to the refiners of Platonism. Another advantage of simplifying the doctrines of a poet who meant them to be simple and direct is that, when considered in the light of Spenser's naïvete, they lack that inconsistency and puzzling quality so often discerned by commentators. So viewed, the Garden of Adonis, besides losing its character as a technical history of philosophy, may perhaps be regarded no longer as a catalogue of fallacies.

When we remember the subtle irregularity of Milton's rhymes in Lycidas, and the frequency with which he introduces rhyme into the blank verse of Comus and Samson Agonistes, it is less surprising that there should be rhymes in Paradise Lost than that they should not have been noticed. That they are deliberate rhymes needs little proof, for it is obvious that an ear as fine as Milton's must have heard any rhyme which can be heard by the ordinary reader, and this examination grew out of the vague impression of rhyme given by certain passages in Paradise Lost, and the presence of a few obvious rhymes, such as:

Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound
Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a Temple, where Pilasters round (i. 711–713)
This horror will grow milde, this darkness light,
Besides what hope the never-ending flight (ii. 220–221)
Allegeance to th'acknowledg'd Power supream?
And thou sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seam, (iv. 956–957)
That slumberd, wakes the bitter memorie
Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.
Some times towards Eden which now in his view (iv. 24–27)

The early thinking of both Wordsworth and Coleridge centered about one idea which was, if not the psychological origin, at least the logical culmination of their humanitarian, esthetic, and religious doctrines. This notion we may designate as the theory of imaginative love. We find this hidden in the allegory of the Ancient Mariner and more clearly stated in the philosophical passages of The Prelude. It contains the explanation which Wordsworth offers of the spiritual efficacy of “natural piety” and of his mystical love of beauty. It is, in short, the keystone of that heroic system of natural religion which the two poets constructed during the period of mutually inspiring companionship when they walked together upon “Quantock's airy ridge.” They believed that creative and appreciative imagination engenders a love of nature and a love of man, and they did not hesitate to affirm that this love is a profoundly religious experience which owes its power to the mystical communion with a cosmic spirit. This last belief was essentially a faith in an animate Nature and it served them both as the justification of their worship of woodlands and hillsides from which they drew such spiritual strength. This idea, however, was not by any means a mere doctrine with which they defended their peculiar religious position; it hovered over their thinking, “a master o'er a slave,” and found expression again and again in their most successful utterances.

Vanbrugh's position in the history of drama has never been adequately defined. He and his successor, Farquhar, have suffered more than any other dramatists of their period from the ill effects of biassed criticism, which has viewed their work solely in the light of a particular tradition, the Comedy of Manners; and the resulting deformity, caused by the failure of their work to fit the mould, is condemned by the very critics who have produced it. They have recognized that the work of Vanbrugh is no longer typically of the Comedy of Manners genre, but they have neglected to analyze the difference in an individual study, and have contented themselves with regarding as inferior any divergences or deviations from the accepted Comedy of Manners norm. These deviations, moreover, have been taken to point toward sentimental comedy, and Vanbrugh, having been dubbed a “transition” figure, has suffered the penalty of “not belonging.”

One incident in the life of David Garrick—Shakespeare's Priest—has subsequently evoked the harshest kind of criticism even from his professed admirers, namely, his alteration of Hamlet. James Boaden, who prefaced an edition of the actor's letters in 1831 with a biographical sketch, wrote:

If there be any one act of his management which we should wish to blot out from these pages it is his rash violation of the whole scheme of Shakespeare's Hamlet … All the contrivances of Shakespeare by which he added absence from the scene to the melancholy irresolution of the character were rendered abortive. It became as much a monodrame as Timon; and the passive Hamlet was kept on the rack of perpetual exertion. His very speeches were trimmed up with startling exclamations and furious resolves: even Yoric himself was thrown out of the play to render the wit and pathos of Sterne inapplicable and unintelligible. It was an actor's mutilation of all parts but his own.

Mrs. Behn, like Alexander Pope, has almost succeeded in leaving for posterity an embellished and retouched portrait of herself. In her works, especially in Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt, she inserted a number of passages purporting to be autobiographical. These autobiographical bits deal almost exclusively with a period twenty years previous to the publication of the novels in 1688, a period long before Mrs. Behn had attained any literary reputation, so that a little judicious alteration of the details of her life had every chance of passing unnoticed.

(This is an exact reproduction of the particular copy of the 1747 text which Garrick used as a foundation for his alteration. All the lines marked by Garrick for elimination are put into the footnotes. All the lines indicated by a quotation mark for excision by Hughs and Wilks which remain in the present text were restored by Garrick. Other Garrick restorations and emendations are italicized.)

Scholarly biographers of James Thomson have shown a tendency to credit the statements made by Voltaire in the Preface to his tragedy, Socrate, which he represented to be a translation of an English original by Thomson given to the supposed translator, one “Mr. Fatema,” by “Mr. Littleton” when the latter was on a visit to Holland. Morel attempted to identify this play with a tragedy which was undertaken by Thomson in 1731: “Il se pourrait bien que ce fût cette même tragédie de ‘Socrate’ dont Rundle lui avait inspiré l'idée, et que plus tard d'autres amis, Mr. Pitt …, Mr. Lyttelton et Gilbert West lui conseillèrent d'abandonner.” Macaulay believes that Socrate was the drama “suggested by Mrs. Sandys” which Thomson referred to in a letter to Rundle in December, 1736. He admits that Voltaire's preface is a “piece of mystification”; but adds:

Specific study of the interesting critical dicta in Fielding's histories has been unreasonably neglected by scholars: Austin Dobson in his biography merely touches upon the author's general literary purpose as expressed in Joseph Andrews. G. M. Godden is content to take brief notice of Fielding's estimate of critics, and John C. Metcalf, in his essay “Henry Fielding, Critic,” is concerned almost exclusively with that phase of Fielding's opinion which is brought out in his dramas. In the monumental work of Cross, the subject as such is ignored, though Fielding's war with The Grub Street Journal receives ample exposition. Miss Thornbury's recent dissertation embodies a thorough commentary on Fielding's learning, and establishes him as a traditionalist in form, an artist practicing, in the light of reason always, established comic-epic rules. Yet such significant items as Fielding's quarrels with dogmatic critics, his convictions about travel books, plagiarism, and the essentials of a good writer, and his philosophy of character lie, in the main, outside the limits of her investigation. The only adequate approach to this subject has been that of F. O. Bissell, Jr., and it is perhaps not so thorough as might be wished, in spite of ample excerpts from the prefaces and digressional chapters of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.

From the notice in the Monthly Review in 1816 to the most recent investigations Alastor has remained an enigma to Shelley's critics. A century of criticism has done little to throw light on the mystery. The contemporary notice in the Monthly Review attributes the confusion of Alastor to the influence of Wordsworth:

In a recently published article, Mr. J. R. MacGillivray has announced the necessity for redating Wordsworth's play. By closely checking allusions in Wordworth's letters, he is able to show that it could not have been begun before March 7, 1796, and that the letter in which the poet tells Wrangham that the first draft of it is nearly finished must have been written “some time between the beginning of December 1796 and the end of February 1797.” The play, MacGillivray feels, would have been begun not long before October 24, when Dorothy reported her brother “now ardent in the composition of a tragedy.”

More than one critic has recalled the passage in Robertson's History of America which probably inspired the final simile of Keats's most famous sonnet. It was in September, 1513. Balboa and his men had been struggling for twenty days across the sixty miles of forest and mountain that made the isthmus of Darien, having been obliged to battle with the natives as well as with torrents, swamps, and precipices. Many of the men were sick and ready to give up.