Page:A study of Ben Jonson (IA studyofbenjonson00swinrich).pdf/128

 English, requires careful revision and correction; but indeed as much must be said of the text of Jonson's works in general. Gifford did very much for it, but he left not a little to be done. And the arrangement adopted in Colonel Cunningham's beautiful and serviceable edition of 1875 is the most extraordinary—at least, I hope and believe so—on record. All the misreadings of the edition of 1816 are retained in the text, where they stand not merely uncorrected but unremarked; so that the bewildered student must refer at random, on the even chance of disappointment, to an appendix in which he may find them irregularly registered, with some occasional comment on the previous editor's negligence and caprice: a method, to put it as mildly as possible, somewhat provocative of strong language on the part of a studious and belated reader—language for which it cannot rationally be imagined that it is he who will be registered by the recording angel as culpably responsible. What is wanted in the case of so great an English classic is of course nothing less than this: a careful and complete edition of all his extant writings, with all the various readings of the various editions published during his lifetime, This is the very least that should be exacted; and this