We should demand for a perfect
editor, then, first, a thorough glossological knowledge of the English
contemporary with Shakespeare; second, enough logical acuteness of mind
and metaphysical training to enable him to follow recondite processes of
thought; third, such a conviction of the supremacy of his author as
always to prefer his thought to any theory of his own; fourth, a feeling
for music, and so much knowledge of the practice of other poets as to
understand that Shakespeare's versification differs from theirs as often
in kind as in degree; fifth, an acquaintance with the world as well as
with books; and last, what is, perhaps, of more importance than all, so
great a familiarity with the working of the imaginative faculty in
general, and of its peculiar operation in the mind of Shakespeare, as
will prevent his thinking a passage dark with excess of light, and enable
him to understand fully that the Gothic Shakespeare often superimposed
upon the slender column of a single word, that seems to twist under it,
but does not,--like the quaint shafts in cloisters,--a weight of meaning
which the modern architects of sentences would consider wholly
unjustifiable by correct principle.
Many years ago, while yet Fancy claimed that right in me which Fact has
since, to my no small loss, so successfully disputed, I pleased myself
with imagining the play of Hamlet published under some _alias_, and as
the work of a new candidate in literature.
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