is unfortunate that he should have used a phrase which well might be, and actually has been, misunderstood. He has been taken to mean that he had throughout collated his text with the original editions. This was not the case. It must be clear to one who really has made the collation that Dr. Saintsbury cannot have meant more than that he had verified the corrections which Christie mentioned in his notes. It follows that, where Scott and Christie agree in an error, that error, however monstrous and palpable, is usually reproduced by Dr. Saintsbury. A few instances will suffice. In Stanza 23 of Annus Mirabilis, Dryden wrote and printed:

So reverently Men quit the open air,

When Thunder speaks the angry Gods abroad.

This remained the text in both the editions published in Dryden's lifetime. After his death the first word of the second line was corrupted into 'Where', much to the detriment of the text, and Where' it remained for two hundred years. It is Where' in Christie's text, and consequently it is 'Where' in Dr. Saintsbury's. The error was the more unpardonable that Dryden was proud enough of his simile to reproduce it in his contemporary play of The Maiden Queen:

As, when it thunders,

Men reverently quit the open air

Because the angry gods are then abroad.

Here Dr. Saintsbury prints his text correctly with no corruption of 'then' into 'there'. The same poem presents us with an error infinitely worse. In Stanza 224, Dryden, after picturing the ghosts of traitors as descending from London Bridge and dancing round the Fire of London, goes on thus:

Our Guardian Angel saw them where he sate
Above the Palace of our slumbring King.

In the Miscellany Poems, published after Dryden's death, he' was turned into 'they', and this piece of egregious nonsense figures in all subsequent English editions, even in Christie's and consequently in Dr. Saintsbury's. It appears even where special care should have been taken to secure sense, in Mr. Humphry Ward's English Poets. The editors did not stay to ask themselves why the ghosts should have mounted to the roof of Whitehall, how they could dance in a place so unfit for the exercise, or by

what supernatural duplicity they could at the same moment sit on the ridge of the Palace and dance round the Fire.

Another curious error may be quoted from Cymon and Iphigenia. The poet, in describing the effect of Love upon one whom he calls a Man-Beast', a human being

Above, but just above, the Brutal kind,

declares that

Love made an active Progress through his Mind,
The dusky Parts he clear'd, the gross refin'd,
The drowsy wak'd; and as he went impress'd
The Maker's Image on the human Beast.

So the lines appear in the first and only contemporary edition. The last word was afterwards corrupted into 'Breast'. This piece of nonsense with its absurd suggestion of tattooing is printed in Christie's text and consequently in Dr. Saintsbury's.

Since Christie did not print Dryden's translations from the ancient poets, Dr. Saintsbury had here no help from his predecessors. He does indeed remark that liberties have been taken with the text and implies that he has taken pains 'to note them singly'. That he has done so I cannot perceive except in one instance, and even there he leaves the error in his text. Of the errors which he has not corrected some are very unfortunate. Thus Ovid has a passage which Dryden correctly rendered:

Nor cou'd thy Form, O Cyllarus, foreslow
Thy Fate; (if Form to Monsters Men allow.)

The regret that qualities, mental or physical, do not save one from death is a commonplace of ancient poetry. Yet here the editors unanimously change foreslow' into foreshow'. What sense the lines might then have would certainly not have been known to Dryden or to Ovid. In one of the versions from Lucretius there is a line which points the contrast between the brief life of Homer and the eternity of his Iliad. As Dryden wrote and printed it, the line ran :

Th' immortal Work remains, the mortal author's gone. Will it be believed that the English editors print 'immortal' instead of mortal'?

Since the English editors have ignored Dryden's own texts, it can hardly be expected that they should have consulted the

originals of his translations. Nor have they. They have so changed the text as to display their ignorance both of their poet and of his authorities. Dryden translated the Twenty-ninth Ode of the Third Book of Horace, and prefixt to it the correct title. His English editors, one and all, change 'third' into 'first'. One only remarks that 'first' ought to be third, and even he leaves the error in his text because he supposed it was Dryden's. When Juvenal wrote

veniet cum signatoribus auspex,

and Dryden wrote and printed

The Publick Notaries and Auspex wait,

the English editors print Haruspex', an emendation which makes the scansion harsh in Dryden and impossible in Juvenal. They seem to have desired to display their learning, since at a Roman marriage in Juvenal's time the augur did not use birds for divination. But their learning goes astray, for, as often happens, the old name outlived the change.

Occasionally Dr. Saintsbury following Scott, who himself followed a bad text, has printed a reading other than Christie's. His variations are sometimes for the worse. Thus in the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, when Monmouth suggests that Shaftesbury's motives are self-interested, the Earl replies in effect that, if this be so, there is all the more reason why Monmouth should trust him, since his interest lies all in Monmouth's advancement.

Royal Youth, fix here,

Let Int'rest be the Star by which I Steer.
Hence to repose your Trust in Me was wise,
Whose Int'rest most in your Advancement lies.

The lines may be Tate's but were at least passed by Dryden. Here it is plain that 'let' is used in the sense of ' assume'. An edition published after the deaths of both authors changed 'I' into 'you', taking 'let' in a hortative sense. This illogical reading is deliberately preferred by Dr. Saintsbury.

In some forms used by Dryden his editors have made changes without system and without justification. He uses according to the sense and the sound either' them' or ''em'. The latter has sometimes been allowed to stand, and has sometimes been altered. It may be that Dryden was not always careful in his use, but there are clear cases where his choice was deliberate. He was doubtless

not aware that the two words are etymologically different, but his choice must be respected. A line in the Epistle to John Driden is thus printed by most editors :

Who, while thou shar'st their lustre, lend'st them thine. This is not what Dryden wrote, nor could he have been guilty of such a cacophony. Again, he chose to write 'ev'n', but Mr. Hooper invariably prints 'e'en '.

These restorations of the text are such as Dryden's editors might with reasonable industry have succeeded in making. There is, however, one problem of which they never suspected the existence. My friend, Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, discovered that what profess to be copies of the first edition of Absalom and Achitophel differ from one another. His discovery led me to the solution of a point which had much puzzled me. In Stanza 105 of Annus Mirabilis, the copy of the first edition which I first collated gave a text which has escaped the notice of all editors. An examination of other copies showed me why, for these copies Idid not give it. Moreover, these copies had a list of errata which the other had not. What must have happened is this. When Dryden came back from Wiltshire after the publication of the poem, he saw for himself, or was told by others, that his lines would give great offence and might even be accused of blasphemy. In those copies which had not been sold he was at the charge of cancelling a sheet in order to give an inoffensive version of the lines. Observing that there was a blank page at the end of the Preface, he printed on it a list of such errors as 'by mistaken words have corrupted' the text. Something of the same kind must have happened in the case of other poems, but it is obviously impossible to collate all existing copies.

After the copy of the present text, together with the first draft of this Introduction, was in the hands of the press, there appeared at Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first scholarly edition of the poems. The editor, Dr. George Noyes, has made a complete collation of the original texts, and has removed by far the larger number of the defacing errors. Most of the cases in which he has overlooked an error are of small importance, as when in the line

What is't to thee if he neglect thy Urn?

he prints' neglects' for 'neglect ', or when in the line The Fiend, thy Sire, has sent thee from below,

he prints' hath' for 'has'. There are, however, cases in which he has followed our predecessors in altering the original text without, as it seems to me, just cause. It may be that this deviation has not been intentional. Thus, when Dryden printed

Not all the Wealth of Eastern Kings, said she,
Have Pow'r to part my plighted Love and me:

the Cambridge editor prints 'Has' for 'Have'. Here the assumption of a misprint seems highly improbable. The irregular construction, called by Dr. Abbott 'the confusion of proximity', is common and natural. It is paralleled by the taunt thrown at Antony by Cassius in Shakespeare's play :

The posture of your blows are yet unknown.

Another case in which a misprint has been unduly assumed occurs in Baucis and Philemon:

Heav'ns Pow'r is infinite: Earth, Air, and Sea,
The Manufacture Mass, the making Pow'r obey.

The change of 'Manufacture' into 'Manufactur'd' may seem plausible, but before it can be accepted there must be some evidence that the verb or participle was used precisely in this sense. The New English Dictionary supplies no such evidence. The verb was new in Dryden's time, but the noun had been in use for some time, and sometimes had the sense, now obsolete, of handicraft. Its attributive use in the present passage may be harsh, but it can be justified by analogy, and in all probability the original text is right.

Again, there are instances in the Translations where a reference to the translated work shows that the editor's silent alterations of the original text are mistaken. Thus when Dryden printed

More grateful to the sight than goodly Planes,

a reference to Ovid's platano conspectior alta' shows that the alteration of Planes' into 'plains' is a clear error. Nor is it easy to see what sense the Cambridge editor attaches to a passage in Persius when in Dryden's

There boast thy Horse's Trappings, and thy own:

he substitutes' Their ' for 'There'. This line is, as it happens, given correctly in most of the English editions.