Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/360

356 the "Plan of the Work," page 465, is this: "In this Edition the attempt is made to give, in the shape of Textual Notes, on the same page with the Text, all the Various Readings of Julius Cæsar, from the Second Folio down to the latest critical Edition of the play." Obviously, a variorum edition's distinguishing claim to usefulness and scholarly merit depends upon the accuracy of this elaborate textual apparatus: but, unless all my criteria for checking him up are at fault, it is just here that Mr. Furness is most frequently unreliable, and yet it is just here that he receives Mr. Tannenbaum's particular commendation, unhappily enough. It is well to recall the admirable moderation of the Cambridge Editors (VII, 252) in recording the vagaries of one of their predecessors: "In none of these cases does our copy of Rowe correspond with his statements." Similarly, in the following cases I can only record the divergences between Mr. Furness' statements and the readings of the Elizabethan Club Folios and Yale University Library copies of Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, Warburton, etc., leaving it to the reader to decide whether, in the light of all the various inaccuracies detailed above, these following discrepancies are to be explained away as unique typographical peculiarities in the Yale or Furness copies, or not rather, at least for the most part, to be accounted for as regrettable peculiarities in Mr. Furness' method of collation.

I, ii, 318, 333: Rowe i has "Mettel" (unrecorded). I, iii, 48, 49: One line Rowe et seq. (unrecorded). II, i, 200: Staunton's query is not "purgers called," which would ruin the metre (and metrical improvement is the sole point of his suggestion!), but "purgers call'd." II, i, 231 [should be 230, as noted above]: "flatterers: Pope et cet." is quite wrong, for this punctuation does not appear in Pope, Theobald, Warburton—or, in fact, in anyone but Hanmer and Capell, before the Variorum of 1778. II, iv, 49: "O Brutus, Brutus Pope, +, Cap. Ktly." should read, "OBrutus [sic]! Brutus! Pope, +, [Var. '73]. O Brutus, Brutus, Cap. Ktly." Ill, i, 38: "you're" for "you are," Rowe i (unrecorded). Ill, i, 84: "Cim. Rowe, +" should read "Cim. Rowe ii, +," for Rowe i has "Cm." Ill, i, 143: "[Kneeling. Pope," should be credited to "Rowe, +," and should refer to line 144. III, i, 156: "Through" appears in Pope i only,