Chapter THE LAST (6)

And was there so little vice and villany in the world in Swift’s time, or in Hogarth’s time, that it should have been allowed to escape? Party was virulent and merciless, and divided men, so that statesmen had no time to care for good public morals. To be a defeated minister was to be sent to the Tower, as Swift’s friend Harley was, and kept there two years. They were corrupt times--yahoo times. What says the sober historian, the narrator of facts, about 1717? There are accounts of the “Mug-houses,” when the Whig and Tory factions divided the nation. There was the attack on these Mug-houses, retaliations and riots, and there were “Mohocks,” of which we read too pleasantly now in the _Spectator_, who went about with drawn swords, and kept the city in terror. It is somewhere about the year 1730 of which the historian speaks thus:--“A great remissness of government prevailed at this time in England. Peace both at home and abroad continued to be the great object of the minister. Prosperity in commerce introduced luxury--hence necessities were created, and these drove the lower classes of people into the most abandoned wickedness. Averse to all penal and sanguinary measures, the minister gave not that encouragement to the ordinary magistrates that would enable them to give an effectual check to vice among the multitude. This produced a very pernicious effect among the higher class, so that almost universal degeneracy of manners prevailed. It was not safe to travel the roads or walk the streets; and often the civil officers themselves dared neither to repel the violences nor punish the crimes that were committed. A species of villains now started up, unknown to former times, who made it their business to write letters to men of substance, threatening to set fire to their houses in case they refused their demands; and sometimes their threats were carried into execution. In short, the peculiar depravity of the times became at length so alarming that the government was obliged to interpose, and a considerable reward was offered for discovering the ruffians concerned in such execrable practices.”[20]

If Swift’s miseries were so large as to make Archbishop King shed tears, and pronounce him the most unhappy man on earth, on the subject of whose wretchedness no question may be asked; and if, remembering this, we reflect upon his great and active doings, it will not be without admiration that we shall see how manfully he strove against being overwhelmed with inevitable calamities; and if we think him too much inclined to view mankind ill, we should reflect that he lived in such times as we have been describing, and had ill-treatment enough from mankind to render his best struggles for contentment at times hard, and that he preserved his friendships to the last.

The fortuitous disappointments of life may be borne with a humble patience, the virtue in misery; the disappointments which our fellow-creatures inflict by their falseness and wickedness, are apt in a degree to make generous natures misanthropic; but even then their best feelings do but retreat from their advanced posts--retire within, and cling with greater love and resolution to the home fortress, fortified and sustained by a little army of dear friends. So it was with Swift: out in the world he was the traveller Gulliver--but the best friendships made his world his home. Even in the strictest sense of _home_, such a home as Swift had, of so strange a home-love, we know not to what great degree we should look on that with pity. It is to be hoped, not one of his revilers have had his miseries--which even his friend was with tears requested not to look into.

The animosities of Whigs and Tories were extreme. Swift declared himself a Whig in politics, a Tory as high-churchman. In the course of political experience, it is evident one of the principles must give way. Swift saw to what the Whig policy tended: the higher interests prevailed with him--he joined the Tories. Giant as he was, we are not surprised at the strong expressions of the essayist whom we have before quoted, “under Harley, Swift reigned, Swift was the Government, Swift was Queen, Lords, and Commons. There was tremendous work to do, and Swift did it all.” We do not mean to say Swift was not a thorough man of the world; nor that he did not look to his own interests, as men of the world do; but at the same time, it would be hard to show that he was profligate as to political principle. He may have changed his views, or political principles may have shifted themselves. We firmly believe him to have been honest. But he left the Whig ranks. Having done so, he was too great not to be feared, and so hated--and is it too much to say that this Whig hatred with regard to him has come down to our day, and unforgiving as it is, as it cannot persecute the man, persecutes his memory? It is next to impossible not to see that political rancour has directed and dipped into its own malignant gall the pen of Lord Jeffrey, who in that essay, which has now become cheap railway reading, heaps all possible abuse on Swift, ascribing to him all bad motives--is furiously wroth with him even now, because he abandoned the Whigs. It is the very burthen of his vituperative essay. He (Swift) is a political apostate, and a libeller of the Whigs against his conscience; and this Lord Jeffrey gathers from his letters. Indeed! and was it in Lord Jeffrey’s mind so dreadful an offence (if true) this writing against his conscience, and to be discovered in private letters, at supposed variance with published documents, by this said Dean? We fear Lord Jeffrey was not aware that he was passing a very severe censure upon his own conduct when he wrote thus of Swift; for we remember reading a letter by the said Lord Jeffrey in entire contradiction to that which, as Editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, he had given out to the world. In this private letter, published in his “Life,” he writes in perfect terror, and in the deepest despair of the nation, arising from the dangerous tendency of articles in that _Review_, with, as we conceive, a very poor apology, that he could not restrain his ardent writers. Party blinded him then, and thus he vents his rancour further, forgetful of the lampoons of the Whig Tom Moore, the _Twopenny Post-bag_, and a long list--and of the Whig Byron, and his doings in that line. “In all situations the Tories have been the greatest libellers, and, as is fitting, the great prosecutors of libels.” Lord Jeffrey, when he wrote this, was as forgetful of his own party as of himself in particular--of the many personalities in his own review, as of Whig writings. Unfortunately for them, they were not so gifted with wit as their opponents, but their malignity on that account was the greater. What is to be said of Lord Holland’s note-book? But Lord Jeffrey was not the one to condemn, however others might be justified in doing so, even personal libels, which, in his own case, as editor and political Whig agent, he justifies, and, more than that, sets up a principle to maintain his justification. It would appear that one of his contributors had been shocked at the personal libels in the _Edinburgh_, and had remonstrated. Jeffrey thus defends the practice: “To come, for instance, to the attacks on the person of the Sovereign. Many people, and I profess myself to be one, may think such a proceeding at variance with the dictates of good taste, of dangerous example, and repugnant to good feelings; and therefore will not themselves have recourse to it.” (Here his memory should have hinted--

“Qui facit per alium facit per se.”)

“Yet,” he continues, “it would be difficult to deny that it is, or may be, a lawful weapon to be employed in the great and eternal contest between the court and the country. Can there be any doubt that the personal influence and personal character of the Sovereign is an element, and a pretty important element, in the practical constitution of the government, and always forms part of the strength or weakness of the administration he employs? In the abstract, therefore, I cannot think that attempts to weaken that influence, to abate a dangerous popularity, or even to excite odium towards a corrupt and servile ministry, by making the prince, on whose favour they depend, generally contemptible or hateful, are absolutely to be interdicted or protested against. Excesses no doubt may be committed. But the system of attacking abuses of power, by attacking the person who instigates or carries them through by general popularity or personal influence, is lawful enough, I think, and may _form a large scheme of Whig opposition_--not the best or the noblest part, certainly, but one not without its use, and that may, on some occasions, be altogether indispensable.”--_Letter to Francis Horner, Esq., 12th March 1815._

The semi-apologetic qualifying expressions “against good taste and feeling,” only make one smile, as showing the clear sin against conscience, in thus falling into or recommending the large scheme of Whig opposition. One might imagine him to have been one of Mr Puff’s conspirators in his tragedy, who had manufactured from the play a particularly Whig party-prayer--a prayer to their god of battle, whoever he was,--certainly one a mighty assistant in such conspiracies.

“Behold thy votaries submissive beg,
That thou wilt deign to grant them all they ask;
Assist them to accomplish all their ends,
And sanctify whatever means they use
To gain them.”--_The Critic._

Every one will now agree, of course, with Lord Jeffrey, that the Tories have ever been the great libellers!!!

Was it ever known that Tom Moore, or even the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, were prosecuted!! We do not justify Swift in all his libels--some bad enough. They were strange times, and of no common licence; and who was more licentiously attacked than Swift himself? And he knew how to retaliate, and he did it terribly and effectually. Many badly-written things were ascribed to Swift which he did not write. But we must not take the code of manners of one age, and a more refined age, and utterly condemn, by reference to them, the manners of another, as a chargeable offence against an individual. Much that Swift wrote could not be written now; much that was written by Mr Thackeray’s other “Humourists” could not be written now; and yet the objections are on the score of manners wanting in refinement, and not that morals were offended. In Swift’s time, both in literature and politics, men wrote coarsely, and acted somewhat coarsely too; for they wrote in disgust, which was scarcely lessened by a fear of the pillory. Retaliations were severe. De Foe, who knew well what political prosecution was, wrote thus on Lord Haversham’s speech: “But fate, that makes footballs of men, kicks some up stairs and some down; some are advanced without honour, others suppressed without infamy; some are raised without merit, some are crushed without crime; and no man knows, by the beginning of things, whether his course shall issue in a peerage or a pillory”--in most witty and satiric allusion to Lord Haversham’s and his own condition. Swift’s “_Account of the Court and Empire of Japan_,” written in 1728, is no untrue representation of the factions and ministerial profligacy of that period. The Dean, as an Irish patriot--for he heartily took up the cause of Ireland--was persecuted, and a reward of £300 offered for the discovery of the author of one of the Drapier’s Letters. The anecdote told on this occasion is very characteristic of Swift. He was too proud to live in fear of any man. His butler, whom alone he trusted, conveyed these letters to the printer. When the proclamation of reward came out, this servant strolled from the house, and staid out all night and part of next day. It was feared he had betrayed his master. When he returned, the Dean ordered him instantly to strip himself of his livery, and ordered him to leave the house; “For,” says he, “I know my life is in your power, and I will not bear, out of fear, either your insolence or negligence.” The man was, however, honest and humble, and even desired to be confined till the danger should be over. But his master turned him out. The sequel should be told. When the time of information had expired, he received the butler again; and “soon afterwards ordered him and the rest of the servants into his presence, without telling his intentions, and bade them take notice that their fellow-servant was no longer Robert the butler, but that his integrity had made him Mr Blakeney, Verger of St Patrick’s, whose income was between thirty and forty pounds a-year.” As it has fallen in the way to give this narrative of his conduct to a deserving servant, it may not be amiss, in this place, to offer a pendant; and it may be given the more readily, as those who wish to view him as a misanthropic brute, and they who would commend him for his humanity, may make it their text for their praise or their abuse. “A poor old woman brought a petition to the deanery; the servant read the petition, and turned her about her business. Swift saw it, and had the woman brought in, warmed and comforted with bread and wine, and dismissed the man for his inhumanity.”

To revert, however, to his political course. When the Tory Ministry was broken up, he never swerved from his friendships, nor did he court one probable future minister at the expense of the other. Indeed, at the beginning of the break-up, he clung the more closely to Harley, the dismissed minister. But even this conduct has been misrepresented, by those who viewed all his actions upside down, as a deep policy, that he might be sure of a friend at court whichever side might ultimately win.

That he might appear wanting in no _possible impossible_ vice, avarice has been added to the number adduced. Even Johnson charges his economy upon his “love of a shilling.” This does appear to us, after much examination of data, a very gratuitous accusation. His early habits were necessarily those of a poor man; he never was a rich one; and he was far above the meanness of enlarging his means at the expense of his deanery, its present interests, or of his successor, by any selfish regard to fines. Due economy is often taken to be avarice. Nor does it follow that reasonable parsimony, when constantly practised for a worthy purpose, _is_ avarice. Such avarice is at least not uncommon in great and good minds. Swift so often made it known that he had a good object, and which he fulfilled, that it seems quite malicious to forget his motives, and to ascribe his by no means large accumulations to a miserly disposition. He did not in fact, after all, leave a very ample endowment for his hospital for the insane. The first £500 which he could call his own he devoted to loans, in small sums, to poor yet industrious men. Had he been avaricious, he might have accumulated a fortune by his writings. A very small sum (we believe for his _Gulliver_) was the only payment received for all his writings. Had he been naturally avaricious, he would not have returned, with marked displeasure, a donation sent him by Harley. There was a sturdy manliness in his pride which forbade him to incur serious debt; and this pride caused him to measure nicely, or rather say frugally, his expenditure. He had, indeed, a “love of a shilling,” as he ought to have had, for he knew for what purpose he husbanded it. We know an instance of seeming parsimony that originated in, and was itself, an admirable virtue. It was in rather humble life. The man had given up his little patrimony--his all--to the maintenance of two sisters, whom he truly loved; and when he went out into the world, trusting to his industry alone, he made a vow to himself that the half of every shilling he could save should go to his sisters. This man drove hard bargains; by habit he came to think that what he spent idly was a half robbery. Many a hard name, doubtless, was cast at this tender-hearted man in his progress through little-knowing and ill-judging society.

We do not attempt a delineation of Swift’s character. We are conscious that it was too great for our pen. It must be a deep philosophy that is able to search into such a mind, and bring all the seeming contradictions into order, and sift his best qualities, from their mixtures of eccentricities, from a real or imaginary insanity. This part of the subject has been ably treated, and with medical discrimination, by Mr Wilde in his _Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life_, from whose work we gladly quote some just animadversions upon his vituperators.

“To the slights thrown upon his memory by the Jeffreys, Broughams, Macaulays, De Quinceys, and other modern _literati_, answers and refutations have been already given. Of these attacks, which exhibit all the bitterness of contemporary and personal enmity, it is only necessary to request a careful analysis, when they will be found to be gross exaggerations of some trivial circumstances, but written in all the unbecoming spirit of partisanship; while the opinions of his contemporaries, Harley, Bolingbroke, Pope, Arbuthnot, Delany, &c., are a sufficient guarantee for the opinion which was entertained of Swift by those who knew him best and longest.”

It was well said, with reference to Jeffrey’s article in the _Edinburgh Review_, “But Swift is dead, as Jeffrey well knew when he reviewed his works.” If men of mark will be so unjust, unscrupulous, uncharitable, as to apply “base perfidy” to such a man as Swift, no wonder if the small fry of revilers, whose lower minds could never by any possibility rise to the conception of such a character as Swift, should lift their shrieking voices to the same notes, as if they would claim a vain consequence by seeming to belong to the pack. Mr Howitt odiously alludes to the discarded story which we have noticed, the slander at Kilroot, and grounds upon it a charge of “dissipated habits” in his youth. This writer, lacking the ability and influence of the superior libellers, as is common with such men, yelps his shrill vulgarities the louder in such expressions as “selfish tyranny,” “wretched shuffler,” “contemptible fellow.”

It is a vile thing, this vice of modern times--this love of pulling down the names of great men of a past age--of blotting and slurring over every decent epitaph written in men’s hearts about them. That men of note themselves should fall into it, is but a sad proof that rivalry and partisanship in politics make the judgment unjust. We remember the reproof Canning gave to Sir Samuel Romilly, no common man, who indeed acknowledged Mr Pitt’s talents, but denied that he was a great man. “Heroic times are these we live in,” said Canning, “with men at our elbow of such gigantic qualities as to render those of Pitt ordinary in the comparison. Ah! who is there living, in this house or out of it, who, taking measure of his own mind or that of his coevals, can be justified in pronouncing that William Pitt was not a great man?” Of all our modern revilers of Swift, the pullers to pieces of his fame and character, is there any that might not shrink from putting his own measure of either to the comparison? Political hatred lasts too long--it reverses the law of canonisation: if there is to be worship, it must be immediate. A century destroys it; but enmity survives.

“Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone,
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him,
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on,” &c.

We commenced with the intention of reviewing Mr Thackeray’s Lectures, but have stopped short at his life of Swift, and yet feel that we have but touched upon the subject-matter relating to that great man; and hope to refer to it, with some notice and extracts from his works, at a future time.

And what is Swift? What is any dead man that we should defend his name, which is nothing but a name--and not that to _him_? What is Swift to us, more than “Hecuba” to the poor player, or “he to Hecuba,” that we should rise with indignation to plead his cause? Praise or blame to the man dead a century and more, is nothing for him, no, nor to any one of his race (for affections of that kind are lost in a wide distribution). Shakespeare makes even honour of a shorter date. “What is honour to him who died o’ Wednesday?” Very soon individual man melts away from his individuality, and merges into the general character; he becomes quite an undistinguishable part of the whole generation; his appearance unknown. Could the great and the small visit us from the dead--they who “rode on white asses,” and they who were gibbeted--they whom the “king delighted to honour,” and they whom the hangman handled--there is no “usher of black rod” that could call them out by their names. Their individualities are gone--their names must go in search of them in vain--they will fasten nowhere with certainty--none know which is which. Let Cæsar come with his murderers, and who shall tell which is Cæsar? After a generation, there is no one on earth to grieve for the guilty or unfortunate, unless in a fiction or tale. We laugh at the weeping lady who puts her tears to the account of the “anniversary of the death of poor dear Queen Elizabeth.” Feelings and affections of past ages are all gone, and become but a cold history, that the poet or the romance-writer may warm again in their sport. They no longer belong to those who had them. While memory and affection lasts there is a kind of vitality, but it soon goes. “Non omnis moriar” is a motto to be translated elsewhere. The atmosphere of fame, for this earth, rises, like that we breathe, but a little way above it, and is ever shifting.

But if the individual thus melts away, not so the general character; that will remain--and in that the living are concerned. We deem it a part of a true philanthropy if we can pull out one name from the pit of defamation into which it has been unhandsomely thrust, and can place it upon the record of our general nature, that our common humanity may be raised, and, as much as may be, glorified thereby. Such has been our motive (for with this motive alone is Swift anything to us), and we hope we have succeeded in rescuing one of nature’s great men from unmerited obloquy.

We have spoken freely of Mr Thackeray’s Lectures, with reference to his character of Swift.

We believe that he has unfortunately followed a lead; and, in so doing, has been encouraged to a bias by his natural gift--satire. We say not this to his dispraise. Like other natural gifts, the satiric puts out ever its polyp feelers, and appropriates whatever comes within its reach, and promises nutriment. It is not indeed likely, in this our world, to be starved for lack of sustenance; nor would society be the better if it were. But we do doubt if it be quite the talent required in a biographer. We would not have Mr Thackeray abate one atom of the severity of his wit; and we believe him to have an abhorrence of everything vicious, mean, and degrading, and that his purpose in all his writings is to make vice odious. He habitually hunts that prey: having seen the hollowness of professions, he drives his merciless pen through it, and sticks the culprit upon its point, and draws him out upon the clean sheet, and blackens him, and laughs at the figure he has made of him. A writer of such a stamp ought to be considered, what he really is, a moralist--therefore a benefactor in our social system.

But with this power, let him touch the living vices till they shrink away cowed. The portraiture of the vices of men who lived a century or more ago, real or imaginary, may only serve to feed the too flagrant vice of the living--self-congratulating vanity. If then he must write, or lecture, on biography, we would earnestly recommend him to do it with a fear of himself. His other works have contributed many hours of delight to the days of most of us; and in the little volume before us, setting aside his lecture on Swift, there is much to amuse and to instruct. The sharp contrasting choice of his positions, and easy natural manner, not forcing but enticing the reader to reflection, must ever make Mr Thackeray a popular writer. Were he less sure of the public ear, and the public voice in his favour, we should not have endeavoured to rescue the character of Swift from his grasp; and we believe him to be of that generous nature to rejoice, if we have, as we hope, been successful in the attempt. We cannot speak too highly of Mr Thackeray as one most accomplished in his art: his style, eminently English, is unmistakably plain and energetic. It is original--so curt, yet so strong; there is never amplification without a purpose, nor without the charm of a new image. Thoughts are clad in the words that best suit them. With him, pauses speak; and often a full stop, unexpected in a passage, is eloquent. You think that he has not said all, because he has said so little: yet that little is all; and there is left suggestion for feelings which words would destroy. He is never redundant. So perfect is this his art that his very restraint seems an _abandon_. He knows when and how to gain the credit of forbearance, where in fact there is none. In his mastery over this his peculiar manner, he brings it to bear upon the pathetic or the ridiculous with equal effect; and, like a consummate satirist, makes even the tragic more tragic, more ghastly, by a slight connection with the light, the ridiculous, a certain air of indifference. We instance the passage of the death of Rawdon, in his _Vanity Fair_. Few are the words, but there is a history in them. The apparent carelessness in dismissing his hero reminds one of that in Richard the Third.

“The Lady Anne hath bade the world good night.”

His strongest ridicule is made doubly ridiculous by the gravity he tacks to it. It sticks like a burr upon the habit of his unfortunate victim. He puts the rags of low motives upon seeming respectability, and makes presumption look beggarly--effecting that which the Latin satirist says real poverty does--_ridiculos homines facit_. Most severe in his indifference, his light playfulness is fearfully Dantesque; it is ever onward, as if sure of its catastrophe. We do not know any author who can say so much in few common words. These are characteristics of genius. It has often been said, and perhaps with truth, that the reader shuts the book uncomfortable, not very much in love with human nature: we are by no means sure that this is absolutely wrong; such is the feeling on looking at Hogarth’s pictures. It was the author’s intention, in both cases, to be a moral satirist, not a romance-writer. It has been objected that he allows the vicious too much success; but he may plead that so it is in life: even the Psalmist expressed his surprise at the prosperity of the wicked. There is truth to the life in this treatment; a certain seeming success tells not the whole. It is a more serious charge that he has made virtue and goodness insipid. We wish he could persuade himself that there is romance in real life, and that it is full of energies; its true portraiture would give a grace to his works. Cervantes and Le Sage were not all satire; their beautiful touches of romance hurt not the general character of their works; the fantastic frame-lines mar not the pathos of the picture. With this recommendation we close our article, with trust in the good sense and good feeling of Mr Thackeray, rejoiced to think that his powerful genius is in action: whatever vein he may be in, he will be sure to instruct and amuse, and accumulate fame to himself. If the virtues do not look their very best, when he ushers them into company, at least vice will never have to boast of gentle treatment--he will make it look as it deserves; and if he does not always thrust it out of doors in rags and penury, he will set upon it, and leave its further punishment for conjecture.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] It is curious this twofold character of Tiberius--surprising that historians should have credited this single existence of a civilised cannibal--this recorded “eater of human flesh, and drinker of human blood.” The learned writer of this volume on Tiberius, with truthful scrutiny, sifts every evidence, weighs testimony against testimony, and testimony of the same authority against itself, and after patient investigation concludes, as the reasonable solution of the historical enigma, that Tiberius was not only “of all kings or autocrats the most venerable,” but that he was, “in the fourteenth year of his reign, a believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ,” and, “during the last eight years of his reign, the nursing-father of the infant Catholic Church.” It will be readily perceived that the supposition of Tiberius being a Christian, at a time when Christianity was universally held to be an odious and justly-persecuted superstition, must have presented, through known facts and rumours, to the world at large, and to the philosophic minds of historians in particular, an idea of human character so novel and so confused, as to be, in the absence of a clue, and a test which they could not admit, altogether incomprehensible. What could they do with the sacramental fact--the eating human flesh and drinking human blood, by one known for his abstemiousness?

“Τοσαυτης δ’εν τοτε της καταζασεως εοης, και μηδ’ απαρνησασθαι τινος δυναμενε το μη ε και των σαρκων αυτε ηδεως εμφαγειν.”--DION. C.

“Fastidit vinum, quia jam bibit iste cruorem
Tam bibit hunc avide quam bibit iste merum.”--SUET.

The sacramental fact discovered, and undeniable, yet not known as the sacramental fact, must have made up a riddle of contradictions, which it was not in the power of that age to solve. In its ignorance it made a monster. Men are apt to see more than nature ever exhibits.

[20] RUSSELL’S _History of England_.

NOTE TO THE ARTICLE ON THE NEW READINGS IN SHAKESPEARE.

We have received, although only at the eleventh hour, a copy of _Notes and Queries_ (September 17, 1853), in which ICON animadverts with proper severity on the unwarrantable conduct of A. E. B. in attacking our harmless selves in the manner he did. He also compliments our article in a strain which makes us blush even deeper than we did when the “gnat” stung us. We thank both him and the editor for the handsome apology which has been made to us--for such we consider it--in the name of _Notes and Queries_; and we confess that, had we been aware of their friendly disposition sooner, we might have modified some of the remarks made at the opening of this paper. Let the excellent concern, however, take our remarks as kindly as we did theirs; and let all who are connected with it consider, that when a man is struck at in the dark, he must defend himself in the dark, fall his blows where they may. The worthy editor seems to be much more pestered by the fussiness and irritability of his little tribe of correspondents than we are. He complains of this very sorely. He will perhaps find that we have given them a lesson how to behave; and if he passes the remainder of his days in peace and quiet, untormented by the small hornets whom he has in charge, he will know whom he has to thank for it, and will feel grateful accordingly. May _Notes and Queries_ go on and prosper; for, when it commits a mistake, it has the manliness and good sense to avow it, and to make all suitable reparation.

_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._

Transcriber’s Note:

Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged. Eight misspelled words were corrected.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the article. Missing anchors to Footnotes were added where they may have belonged.

Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Missing or duplicate punctuation was corrected.

Changed:

“scene” to “Scene” in Shakespeare references
added space to “i. e.” for consistency