Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/894

"And marted, sold: but that rude law is torne And disannuld, as too too inhumane." This should read— “Man man did hold in servile villanage; Poor brats were slaves (of bondmen that were born)”; and we hope that some American poet will one day be able to write in the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of his forefathers. We will give one more scrap of Mr. Halliwell’s text: — “Yfaith, why then, caprichious mirth, Skip light moriscoes, in our frolick blood, Flagg’d veines, sweete, plump with fresh-infused joyes!” which Marston, doubtless, wrote thus :— “I’faith, why then, capricious Mirth, Skip light moriscoes in our frolic blood! Flagged veins, swell plump with fresh-infused joys!” We have quoted only a few examples from among the scores that we had marked, and against such a style of “editing” we invoke the shade of Marston himself. In the Preface to the Second Edition of the “Fawn,” he says, “Reader, know, I have perused this copy; to make some satisfaction for the first fauly impression; yet so urgent hath been my business that some errors have styll passed, which thy discretion may amend.”

Literally, to be sure, Mr. Halliwell has availed himself of the permission of the poet in leaving all emendation to the reader; but certainly he has been false to the spirit of it in his self-assumed office of editor. The notes to explain up-pont and I um give us a kind of standard of the highest intelligence which Mr. Halliwell dares to take for granted in the ordinary reader. Supposing this nousometer of his to be a centigrade, in what hitherto unconceived depths of cold obstruction can he find his zero-point of entire idiocy? The expansive force of average wits cannot be reckoned upon, as we see, to drive them up as far as the temperate degree of misprints in one syllable, and those, too, in their native tongue. A fortiori, then, Mr. Halliwell is bound to lend us the aid of his great learning wherever his author has introduced foreign words and the old printers have made pie of them. In a single case he has accepted his responsibility as drago-man, and the amount of his success is not such as to give us any poignant regret that he has everywhere else left us to our own devices. On p. 119, Vol. II., Franciscan, a Dutchwoman, exclaims, “Lo, mine alderliever love.” Here is Mr. Halliwell’s note. “Alderliever.—This is the speaker's error for alder-liever, the best beloved by all.” Certainly not “the speaker's error,” for Marston was no such fool as intentionally to make a Dutchwoman blunder in her own language. But is it an error for olderliever? No, but for alderliefster. Mr. Halliwell might have found it in many an old Dutch song. For example, No. 96 of Hoffman von Fallersleben's “Niederländische Volkslieder” begins thus:— “Mijn hert ahijt heeft verlanghen Naer u, die alderli-fste mijn.” But does the word mean “best beloved by all”? No such thing, of course; but “best-beloved of all,”—that is, by the speaker. In “Antonio and Mellida” (Vol. I. pp. 50–51) occur some Italian verses, and here we hoped to fare better; for Mr. Halliwell (as we learn from the title-page of his Dictionary) is a member of the “Reale Accademia di Firenze,” This is the **Accademia della Crusca**, founded for the conservation of the Italian language in its purity, and it is rather a fatal symptom that Mr. Halliwell should indulge in the heresy of spelling Accademia with only one c. But let us see what our della Cruscan’s notions of conserving are. Here is a specimen:— “Bassiarmmi, coglier l’aura odoreta Che in sua neggia, in quello dolce labra, Dammmi propent del fuso gredlit amore.” It is clear enough that the first and third verses ought to read, “Lasciami coglier,—Dammi l’impero,” though we confess that we could make nothing of in sua neggia till an Italian friend suggested **in sua neggia**. But a Della Cruscan academician might at least have corrected by his dictionary the spelling of labra.

We think that we have sustained our indictment of Mr. Halliwell’s text with ample proof. The title of the book should have been, “The Works of John Marston, containing all the Misprints of the Original"