That the propositions I have endeavored to establish have a direct
bearing in various ways upon the qualifications of whoever undertakes to
edit the works of Shakespeare will, I think, be apparent to those who
consider the matter. The hold which Shakespeare has acquired and
maintained upon minds so many and so various, in so many vital respects
utterly unsympathetic and even incapable of sympathy with his own, is one
of the most noteworthy phenomena in the history of literature. That he
has had the most inadequate of editors, that, as his own Falstaff was the
cause of the wit, so he has been the cause of the foolishness that was in
other men, (as where Malone ventured to discourse upon his metres, and
Dr. Johnson on his imagination,) must be apparent to every one,--and also
that his genius and its manifestations are so various, that there is no
commentator but has been able to illustrate him from his own peculiar
point of view or from the results of his own favorite studies. But to
show that he was a good common lawyer, that he understood the theory of
colors, that he was an accurate botanist, a master of the science of
medicine, especially in its relation to mental disease, a profound
metaphysician, and of great experience and insight in politics,--all
these, while they may very well form the staple of separate treatises,
and prove, that, whatever the extent of his learning, the range and
accuracy of his knowledge were beyond precedent or later parallel, are
really outside the province of an editor.
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