Note 175 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

These critical extravaganzas are scarcely to be paralleled by “Bentley’s Notes on Milton.” How Warburton turned “an allegorical mermaid” into “the Queen of Scots;”—showed how Shakspeare, in one word, and with one epithet “the majestic world,” described the Orbis Romanus, alluded to the Olympic Games, &c.; yet, after all this discovery, seems rather to allude to a story about Alexander, which Warburton happened to recollect at that moment;—and how he illustrated Octavia’s idea of the fatal consequences of a civil war between Cæsar and Antony, who said it would “cleave the world,” by the story of Curtius leaping into the chasm;—how he rejected “allowed, with absolute power,” as not English, and read “hallowed,” on the authority of the Roman Tribuneship being called Sacro-sancta Potestas; how his emendations often rose from puns; as for instance, when, in Romeo and Juliet, it is said of the Friar, that “the city is much obliged to him,” our new critic consents to the sound of the word, but not to the spelling, and reads hymn; that is, to laud, to praise! These, and more extraordinary instances of perverting ingenuity and abused erudition, would form an uncommon specimen of criticism, which may be justly ridiculed, but which none, except an exuberant genius, could have produced. The most amusing work possible would be a real Warburton’s Shakspeare, which would contain not a single thought, and scarcely an expression, of Shakspeare’s!