Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/96

92 emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right.’

Johnson’s treatment of his predecessors and rivals is uniformly generous; he never attempts to raise his own credit on their mistakes and extravagance. Once, when a lady at Miss Hannah More’s house talked of his preface to Shakespeare as superior to Pope’s: ‘I fear not, Madam,’ said he, ‘the little fellow has done wonders.’ Hanmer he speaks of as ‘a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature for such studies.’ Warburton was fated to suffer at his hands more than any other commentator, but it is plain from the Preface that he had a grateful remembrance of Warburton’s kindness to the early Observations on Macbeth. ‘He praised me,’ Johnson once said, ‘at a time when praise was of value to me.’ Such praise Johnson never forgot; but he did not allow it to bias his work as a critic. It may be said that he unduly exalts Warburton at the expense of Theobald (‘O, Sir, he’d make two-and-fifty Theobalds, cut into slices’), but it was not only personal gratitude which dictated that judgement. Theobald was, without doubt, a better scholar and a better editor than Warburton: there can be no question which of the two has done more for the text of Shakespeare. But Warburton was a man of large general powers, who wrote an easy and engaging style. His long, fantastic, unnecessary notes on Shakespeare are, almost without exception, good reading; which is more than can be said of Theobald’s. Johnson’s regard for the dignity of letters made him too severe on one who was destitute of the literary graces. Modern opinion has reinstated Theobald, and is inclined to adopt Foote’s, rather than