Page:Appreciations of Horace Howard Furness.djvu/32

 24 with vital conceptions of humanity, embalmed in imperishable verse.

The first volume of the new Variorum, Romeo and Juliet, was published in 1871. Dr. Furness confessed that he chose the play because he loved it, and because he thought it probable that he would never edit another,—an anticipation happily unfulfilled. As he worked, he saw more and more clearly the imperative nature of his task; and, in his preface to Romeo and Juliet, while giving ample praise to Boswell's Variorum of 1821, he states simply and seriously the causes which make it inadequate to-day. Even the Cambridge edition of 1863, which Dr. Furness held to have created an era in Shakespearean literature, and to have put all students of Shakespearean text in debt to the learned and laborious editors, lacks one important detail. There is no word to note the adoption or rejection of contested readings by various students and commentators. This Dr. Furness considered a grave omission. 'In disputed passages,' he wrote, 'it is of great interest to see at a glance on which side lies the weight of authority.'

To read the fourteen prefaces which have enriched the fourteen plays included in the new Variorum, is to follow delicately and surely the intellectual life of a great scholar. There was an expansion of spirit as the work advanced. From being absolutely impersonal, an unseen editor,