Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/95

Rh and after I had printed a few plays, resolved to insert none of my own readings in the text. Upon this caution I now congratulate myself, for every day encreases my doubt of my emendations.’ A good part of his work on the text consisted in restoring the original readings in place of the plausible conjectures of Pope and Warburton. Yet he sometimes pays to their readings a respect which he would not challenge for his own, and retains them in the text. He adopts Warburton’s famous reading in the speech of Hamlet to Polonius:—‘If the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion’—and remarks on it, ‘This is a noble emendation, which almost sets the critick on a level with the authour.’ Admiration for Warburton’s ingenuity caused him to break his own rule, which is sound, and should never be broken. The original reading—‘a good kissing carrion’—has a meaning; and therefore, on Johnson’s principle should stand. Its meaning, moreover, is better suited to Hamlet and to Shakespeare than the elaborate mythological argument implied in Warburton’s emendation. If the ‘good kissing carrion’ be understood by the common analogy of ‘good drinking water’ or ‘good eating apples,’ the grimness of the thought exactly falls in with Hamlet’s utter disaffection to humanity. ‘Conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive.’ To bring the amended reading into relation with Hamlet’s thought Warburton is compelled to write a most elaborate disquisition; and Johnson might have remembered and applied his own warning: ‘I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the