ton's preface some years later exasperated Edwards, so Pope's empty bragging and easy patronage aroused from his lair the Porson of Shakespearian criticism, Lewis Theobald. Men such as Rowe and Pope were obviously editors chosen by booksellers on no other ground than that of bearing the best known names among the writers of their day. upon the hundreds of copies of the First Folio which have in the process of 300 years been lost to observation we have little doubt but that we should be able to accumulate a sum total of emendations far eclipsing those of Rowe and Pope in value. The suggestions in the margin of one of the extant copies made by some private reader of the seventeenth century were communicated by Mr. Sidney Lee to the Athenæum in an interesting paper of August 19, 1899, and show an understanding and sympathy with Shakespeare beyond the range of our two "Augustan" poets. The following, in the speech of Hamlet to his mother, is a favorable example of these marginalia:

Could we but lay hands

For in the fatness of this pursie time Virtue itself of vice must pardon begge Yea courb and woe for leave to do him good.

Against courb in the margin the unknown commentator wrote "couch.” The meaning in either case is the same, or nearly the same, couch meaning to cringe (as in Cæsar's phrase "these couchings and these lowly courtesies") and courb, presumbably from the French courber, to bow. But couch is used elsewhere in Shakespeare in this sense, whereas courb is what Cowper calls a ne plus. This may thus fairly be taken as a good example of a useful, though neither brilliant nor conclusive, emendation.

For specimens of both these species we go naturally to Theobald, who, in

his "Shakespeare Restored" of 1725, stood up as the champion of trained students and Shakespeare lovers against the réclame of such editors as Rowe and Pope, thus inaugurating the first of the Punic wars of Shakespearian criticism. It is a fact insufficiently remembered that the most famous of all Shakespeare emendations was due in the first place to the marginal note of some private reader. Against the dying words of Falstaff as narrated by Mrs. Quickly in Henry V. according to the letter of the First Folio, "His nose was as sharp as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields," he had penned the note "Query, and a talk't of greene fields." Theobald saw this, and by a rapid inspiration converted the emendation into "and a babled of green fields." If not the most convincing, this is probably the most brilliant guess in the whole field of Shakespearian emendation. In the quality of conclusiveness it is surpassed by several of Theobald's unaided efforts, such as the substitution of autumn for "Antonie," as printed in the folios, in Cleopatra's panegyric of her paramour's bounty

There was no winter in't; an autumn t'was

That grew the more by reaping,

a conjecture (as unerring as "Antonie" is obviously corrupt) which has been universally adopted; or the subtler yet equally felicitous substitution of window-lawne for the unmeaning "window-Barne" of the folios in the passage in Timon describing

those milk-paps That through the window-lawne bore at men's eyes.

The manifest lack of authorized "copy" or editorial supervision of Shakespeare's printed work furnished some excuse for the presumption of Warburton, but no such extenuation is

possible in the case of Dr. Bentley's amazing outrages upon the text of Paradise Lost. It was certainly in a most unhappy hour of 1732 that the great scholar, at the request of Queen Caroline, was rash enough to consent to bring out such an edition. He understood neither the language nor the rhythm of Milton, and his conjecture that passages had been interpolated by a fraudulent editor taking advantage of the poet's blindness was as groundless as his critical emendations are pre.posterous. These last are as frequent as those of Warburton and not less inept. It is at best possible to call them senile where we should term Warburton's grotesque; and, even then, it is by no means certain that the harsher term should not be applied to such pointless meddling as that which would have substituted "the wealth of Hermus and of Tage" for "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind," "four sturdy cherubim" for "four speedy cherubim" (on the ground that speed was not needed in a trumpeter), "a crue of Hell-hounds" for "a cry of Hellhounds," and "no light but rather a transpicuous gloom" for "no light but rather darkness visible." Had the same venom been engendered by Miltonic study that marks every stage of Shakespearian controversy Bentley's last days would have been embittered by the learned Dr. Zachary Pearce's "Review" of his Text. But Pearce, with a combination of qualities sufficiently rare in a critic, knew how to be scathing and respectful at the same time. His "Review" succeeded in convincing posterity that Milton was not a schoolboy whose verses needed the drastic corrections of a college tutor. His verse needs not correction but collation, and not too much of that. A suspicion that they may have been over collated is, indeed, the only fault that could be adduced against the best

In

Perilous indeed is the adventure of the commentator who undertakes by editorial labor to "improve" the text of such masters of their craft as Milton, Pope, Gray, Wordsworth, or Tennyson. The spelling and punctuation of Keats need attention; but, apart from this, perhaps the only two modern English poets who greatly repay the textual commentator are Shelley and Cowper. The text of Shelley suf fered exceptionally in two ways. many cases his poems were printed abroad, the strain upon the vigilance of the author revising for press being thereby increased fourfold. Or, again. they were published after the poet's death from varying, unpunctuated, and often very confused manuscripts. In writing to his friends or for press Shelley's handwriting, as a rule, was conspicuously neat and scholarly; but it was far otherwise when he was preparing the first drafts of his poems-usually in some desert place among the woods. Trelawny expressly says of one of his MS. ("Lines to a Lady. With a Guitar") that it was a frightful scrawl; "words smeared out with his finger and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together in a most admired disorder; it might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh, overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks." Many of the faults thus occasioned were silently

corrected by Mrs. Shelley in 1839 and later. In "The Cloud," for instance, which represents the most dazzling qualities of Shelley's technique, the printed text originally ran—

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet birds every one.

Much less satisfactory is the alteration made by the Clarendon Press editors in "Love's Philosophy"; no MS. authority will suffice to convince a lover of poetry that

What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me?

is wrong, and that the first line should read

What is all this sweet work worth.

Though the received text is often difficult, the extreme ideality of Shelley's epithets renders the task of emendation in his case a singularly elusive one. It is well nigh impossible to say what Shelley may not have meant, and, in the poetic cloudland through which he SO often soars, instinct seems four times out of five a better guide than reason. So great a Shelley-lover as "B.V." Thomson suggested that in "The Skylark" for "Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun” we should read "embodied joy"; but a joy incarnate was surely precisely what Shelley did not mean. Such minute analysis reveals, it may be, a good many flaws both in the thought and expression of a great poet, but it also poises us in such a manner that we are able to perceive hitherto undreamt of beauties. It. certainly does not lead us to minimize the difficulties of emendation. It leads us to shun the self-assurance of a critic often so acute as Mr. J. M. Robertson, who, after making alterations, rash to extremity, in one of the most delicate of

by

"Perfection" is accomplished changing "when" in line 3 to "who in," "knells" to "knellst," and "stain" to "strain." The first two changes are perfectly needless, and Shelley, we may be sure, would never have evicted a blemish (such as "stain") to make way for a commonplace.

Cowper polished his verse assiduously and corrected it for press himself. But he was not so accurate a corrector as the finish of his verse and his fondness for altering it would suggest. He wrote out slightly different versions of his pieces for various correspondents. Many of these MSS. are still extant, but it is often far from easy to decide which was the final version preferred by the poet. Cowper thoroughly enjoyed verse-making, which he regarded as a recreation just as he regarded his gardening and walking, the making of boxes, or the taming of hares; but, a great poet almost in his own despite, he was far too modest to think consciously of the final "text" of his poems. This his commentators and critics have had to do for him, and the result has been a school of editors, more jealous for the poet than the poet himself, who have refined the printed text very considerably. How well this process has repaid its more ardent votaries is well seen in the recent edition of "The Poems," by Mr. J. C. Bailey. Such emendation differs wholly in character

and requires different faculties from those demanded for the successful emendation of Shakespeare or Shelley. But, within its limits, it is more perfectly successful than either. As in the case of translation, the blessing of emendations is commonly to the emendator, but this is not always the case. For the study of emendation under a skilled practitioner is often not merely an incentive to a closer reperusal of a great poet, but an introduction to new methods of study and an enhanced appreciation of the finer issues of poetic The Times.

workmanship. Minuter acquaintance commonly engenders a closer affection, and closer affection almost invariably begets a sound conservatism in textual matters. Conservatism may be pushed too far, as some scholars are inclined to think it was in the case of two such admittedly great critics as Professor Conington and the late Alexandre Beljame. Yet, when all is said. where the better is so usually an enemy to the best, conservatism remains perhaps the least unamiable of all a textual critic's foibles.

To that "patient omnivore," as Huxley termed him, the general reader, the term "Opsonin" is not likely to be familiar. Truth to tell, it is a word which only of late days has come to be figured forth in scientific circles. It represents the outcome of a remarkable series of investigations such as may be destined to affect human welfare in no unimportant degree where the diagnosis and cure of disease are concerned. The story of "Opsonins" begins with a piece of physiological history which in itself is not only of high interest but proved to be of epoch-making nature.

Professor Metchnikoff of Paris, so closely associated with Pasteur, and head of the laboratory named after that celebrated scientist, announced years ago his discovery that the white corpuscles of the blood of animals possessed a singular power of attacking and destroying germs which had gained admittance to their bodies. We might profitably go back in the story to 1843 or thereabouts, because it was then that Dr. Augustus Waller announced to the world his discovery that special movements of white blood-corpuscles could be witnessed when the

blood-vessels in the web of the frog's foot were observed under the microscope. The corpuscles were seen by him gradually to push their soft living bodies through the walls of the fine blood-vessels, and to escape into the surrounding tissues. He further noted that under certain circumstances, a literal rush of corpuscles took place. though the meaning of this increased activity was not then appreciated. To this migration of white blood-corpuscles from the blood-stream into the tissues, Dr. Waller gave the name of "diapedesis." There can be no doubt of the correctness of his observations. The process can be watched by any expert microscopist, and it tallies with all we know regarding the history of the white blood-corpuscles themselves. Looking through the clear body of a water-flea which has been invaded by microscopic green plants common in fresh water, the battle between the white cells of its blood and the plants can be witnessed with ease. Here it is a case of a veritable fight for life; for, if the blood corpuscles succeed in conquering the plants, the water-flea survives, but if the plants increase too... rapidly, the white corpuscles are de

give the water-flea a chance or advantage in respect of the struggle, by removing it to clearer water devoid of its plant foes, the white blood-corpuscles soon make a clearance of the enemy.

This discovery of Dr. Waller's introduces us to that of Metchnikoff, already mentioned. The latter carried

the matter a step beyond that at which Dr. Waller halted. In the day of the latter, little or nothing was known of germs or microbes as the causes of disease, so that it was left for an aftergeneration to build a very notable superstructure on the Wallerian foundation. Metchnikoff demonstrated that the real cause of the movements and migrations of the white blood-corpuscles is the curious instinct which leads them to give battle to microbes which have invaded the animal body. In higher animals, as in the water-flea, they act as a veritable sanitary police force called into action by any circumstance which threatens the welfare of the body. In order to understand this latter point more readily, it is necessary to glance at the constitution of the blood itself. Blood consists of a fluid part-the real blood-which is as clear as water, and is called the "serum" or "plasma," and of solid parts, the "corpuscles," or as they are often popularly but erroneously named, the "globules." Leaving certain nice distinctions out of sight, we find the blood-corpuscles to present us with two varieties, red and white. With the red ones we have no concern. They are the gas-carriers of the blood, conveying pure oxygen for the body's nutrition, and carrying back the waste carbonic-acid gas to the lungs to be breathed out of the frame. The white corpuscles are very different things. Each measures on an average the one two-thousand-five-hundredth part of an inch in diameter.

It is essentially a

minute living being, for its body consists of a speck of protoplasm, and it really represents as typical a unit of the bodily commonwealth as, for example, a cell of the liver or one of the brain. If we watch the behavior of a white corpuscle on a specially prepared microscopic slide, we can see it move across the field of vision by contractions and expansions of its protoplasm, so that it might be legitimately described as literally flowing from one shape to another, never at one moment presenting exactly the same shape it showed the moment before. Now, if a small solid particle fall in its way, the corpuscle can be seen to surround it with its soft body, to engulf it, and to devour it. This is its manner of nourishing itself. So closely does it resemble in these respects the way of certain animalcules of the ditches, that its movements have been called "amoboid movements," because the Amaba, a well-known microscopic organism, exhibits them in typical fashion.

If we transfer the white blood-corpuscle to its native surroundings, and suppose it living in the blood-fluid, we can easily imagine how it discharges the functions Waller and Metchnikoff describe as its natural duties. It is in virtue of its living nature that it can push its way through the yielding walls of the finer blood-vessels, and by reason of the same quality that it can attack, surround, and devour microbes as its food. Curious is it to think that cells which in very low animals perform the natural process of digestion should find their representativesone might even say their direct descendants-in the shape of the millions of white blood-corpuscles contained in a single higher body repeating an ancestral duty, but one modified in the direction of protecting their owner from the attack of disease-producing microbes.

Metchnikoff made many and impor