Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

corrupting it. The word 'berry' does not mean a burrow, but a collection of burrows or warren. It still has that sense in Dryden's own county, and in this place is a much more appropriate word. This, at any rate, is not one of those modernizings of which, according to Dr. Saintsbury, Dryden would have approved. That he would have approved of some cannot in face of the Preface to the Fables lightly be denied. Still, it must be remembered that a pious adherence to Dryden's wishes is not always possible. It would, in face of the same Preface, have prevented Dr. Saintsbury from republishing some of the Plays. The reader is entitled to know what Dryden passed in the press. Moreover, with a simplified spelling, some of his forms may return into use. Some of them are more rational and phonetic than our own. We write 'her sex's arts', thus pretending to have dropt a vowel which we in fact pronounce. Dryden's 'her Sexes Arts is better, but he does not always observe this use. Nor does he always keep such better spellings as woolf', 'mold', 'sute', scepter, sheckle. His indew'd' is nearer to speech than our endued'. It is true that some of his spellings leave the sense ambiguous, but here editors have not always improved matters by making a choice. Thus Dryden printed

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

6

'Old as I am, for Ladies Love unfit.

Here Warton printed 'Ladies'' and Christie 'Lady's'. Since Dryden undoubtedly had in mind a line of Horace, it is certain that here Christie is wrong, but there are cases where there well may be a doubt. Again, Dryden sometimes uses the apostrophe not only in the genitive singular but also, where it is etymologically no less correct, in the nominative plural. He writes it especially in words that end in 'a', whether English or foreign. Thus we have 'Sea's ', ' Epocha's', and 'Idea's', all as nominatives. There seems no valid reason for altering these forms. There is certainly none where the changed spelling obscures a rhyme or a scansion. In the Epilogue to Tyrannick Love, the editors make Dryden rhyme slattern' with 'Catherine', though he printed neither of these words in this form. In this edition no spelling has been altered except in the case of undoubted misprints, nor then without a note.

Most editors have taken on themselves to correct Dryden's Greek, changing for instance his cupeka into nuрnka. But with this form the line will not, as we pronounce Greek, scan as Dryden scanned it, The truth is that Dryden's master, the great Busby,

mistook, like some good people of our own times, the mark of accent for a mark of stress. Like a modern Greek, and unlike an ancient Greek, he made no difference in pronunciation between Evρekа and nuрηκа. In proper names Dryden is not consistent in his use, falling sometimes under the influence of Latin. On the line

But Iphigenia is the Ladies care

Dr. Saintsbury has a note to express his hope that Dryden did not
scan the name as Iphigenia, and adds that it is not impossible '.
Clearly the implication is that Dryden was guilty of a false
quantity. That he did so scan the name is not only possible but
certain, but his fault was no mistake of the quantity, but adherence
to a mistaken theory. It is characteristic of the want of thought
displayed by Dryden's editors that they should either never have
noticed that he said Cleomenes and Hippodamia, or else not have
asked themselves why he did so. And so the poor poet has
to answer for his editors' errors as well as for his own.
wrote and printed :

Aëtions Heir, who on the Woody Plain
Of Hippoplacus did in Thebe reign,

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Thus he

but Dr. Saintsbury takes on himself to print Ætion's', saying in a note that Aetion's' would be a better form, but that Dryden probably meant to write Ætion's'. But, if Dryden meant what is wrong, why was he at the pains to print what is right? Why should a false diphthong be foisted on him, when he took trouble to print the mark of diaeresis? It is true that Dryden's Greek was not unexceptionable. His 'Hippoplacus involves no less than three errors. His editors by printing 'Hypoplacus' get rid of one, and seem to show that they have not noticed the other two. One cannot blame an editor who changes Dryden's 'Caledonian' into 'Calydonian', but if in an incorrect text of Ovid Dryden found 'Alyxothoe', there seems no reason for printing the correct form. Dryden wrote, as he had a right to do, 'Perithous,' a form of as sound Latin as the Pirithous', upon which his editors insist. On his faults in this kind his editors have been severe, but, as they have failed to perceive some of them, they have turned their barbs against themselves. When Dryden erred not from the acceptance of a wrong theory, nor, if that be an error, from the desire to put his Greek names into an English dress, but from sheer ignorance,

[ocr errors]

his editors for the same reason have failed to correct him.

There is an ugly and glaring example in his quotation of the first line of the Iliad. He wrote μnviv, and unvw it is in all the editions. He would not mind much if his errors were pointed out to him, but he would rather his editors corrected him when he was wrong than when he was not.

Again, most editors have robbed Dryden of his italics. His employment of them, apart from the habitual use in proper names, is not perhaps always happy, but the reader should be allowed to know what he printed. His italics are used sometimes for emphasis, sometimes to show, as in the case of Omen and Parterre, that a word was not fully naturalized. There is an interesting and exceptional case in Palamon and Arcite, where he

wrote

A Virgin-Widow and a Mourning Bride.

The English editors print without capitals or italics. It might be thought that they had never heard of Congreve. At any rate, they deprive the dramatist of the compliment which Dryden meant to pay him. It may be that as literature the line is better without the allusion, but, as Dr. Saintsbury, better in his theory than in his practice, once remarks, we are entitled to read what Dryden wrote and not what some forgotten pedant thought that Dryden should have written'. Of Dryden's poems some few of those which were prefixed to plays or other works were printed in italics. In this case the italicized words, if we may so call them, were printed in the roman type.

Again, Dryden is entitled to his marks of elision. Dr. Saintsbury drops them on the ground that they are a conventional form, now disused, of indicating what Dryden calls "synalaepha and not affecting the actual scansion'. But it is pretty clear that, unlike Milton, and probably unlike the ancient Greeks, Dryden actually did in speech drop the elided vowel. Dr. Saintsbury holds that 'slurring, not elision, is proper to English'. That may be so, but, if so, Dryden did what is not proper to English, and the reader is entitled to know what Dryden wrote, and not what Dr. Saintsbury thinks that Dryden should have written'.

In the matter of punctuation Dryden was often very careless, though it is clear that he was by no means indifferent. Of the first edition of Annus Mirabilis, he complains that false stops 'confounded the sense'. Of another poem he complained that the printer had served him ill, and to the printer he seems often

to have left his punctuation, the more that he was often pressed for time in correcting the press. To find his principles of punctuation we must take some work to which he gave special care. Such a work is the Epistle to John Driden, of which he was greatly but not unduly proud. A comparison of the text below, with other editions, or with modern usage, will show what Dryden meant his stops to convey. If no poet in the highest sense of the word, he was at least a surpassing rhetorician, and his stops are a guide to reading aloud. They may not mark the logical divisions of a sentence, but they do indicate the places where a skilful reader would choose to pause. Thus in the third line Christie prints : Who, studying peace and shunning civil rage,

whereas Dryden printed:

Who studying Peace, and shunning Civil Rage, where the comma, if not logical, is the reader's guide. Again, where Christie gives

Even then industrious of the common good;

Dryden has

Ev'n then, industrious of the Common Good;

where the comma marks an emphasis and a consequent pause. Where there is evidence of careless proof-reading the stops in this edition have been altered, but not without a note.

In any case Dryden's English editors are the last people who can quarrel with the punctuation in this volume. Again and again they have so altered Dryden's stops as to deprive his lines of all sense. The opening lines of the Prologue to Tyrannick Love present us with an admirable contrast, and were printed by Dryden almost as we should print them to-day. The sole difference is the use of two parenthesis marks for two commas. the editors print them they appear thus :

Self-love, which, never rightly understood,
Makes poets still conclude their plays are good,
And malice in all critics reigns so high,
That for small errors they the whole decry.

[ocr errors]

As

In this form the lines have neither construction nor sense. Selflove' is a subject without a verb, and ' understood ' is a participle

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

without a meaning. Mr. Hooper and Dr. Saintsbury, even Christie no less, have not seen that understood' is a verb. The printer,' said Dryden on one occasion, is a beast.' To what would he have compared the editor? The printer, poor soul, had Dryden's handwriting to wrestle with, yet in this and in many other instances the printer was right until the editor came with his ineradicable predilection for absolute nonsense.

The English editors of Dryden, except Christie, who did not cover the whole ground, even of the poems, have always begun at the wrong end. Eager to annotate and criticize their author, they have been at no pains to ascertain what their author wrote. It follows that some of their efforts have been sadly beside the mark. Thus Scott wrote and Dr. Saintsbury repeated a note on a line in one of the translations from Horace, which, being based upon a false reading, is absolutely mistaken. Again, in one of the versions from Ovid, Scott, by accidentally omitting a line, has given cause to some amusing or exasperating futility. Dr. Saintsbury, instead of referring to the original text, assumes that Scott's was right, and finding a line with none to rhyme with it resorts to misplaced and impossible conjectures. He even complains that Dryden's version is so free that the original gives no help. This is not the fact, nor near the fact. Ovid's lines are

Et secum tenui suspirans murmura dicat,
Ut puto, non poteras ipsa referre vicem.
Tum de te narret, tum persuadentia verba
Addat, et insano iuret amore mori.

In Dr. Saintsbury's text this is represented by

And sighing make his mistress understand
She has the means of vengeance in her hand;
And swear thou languishest and diest for her.

It needs little scholarship to see that the English, which is at least as close as is usual in Dryden's version, has no representative of the third line in the Latin. The two phrases of that line are well represented by the line which Dr. Saintsbury omits,

Then naming thee thy humble suit prefer.

It would be hard to name a more serious fault in a textual critic than that which Dr. Saintsbury has here committed.

Another case where a misprint has led to misplaced annotation

« AnteriorContinuar »