We
should demand for a perfect editor, then, first, a thorough
glossological knowledge of the English contemporary with Shakspeare;
second, enough logical acuteness of mind and metaphysical training to
enable him to follow recondite processes of thought; third, such a
conviction of the supremacy of his author as always to prefer his
thought to any theory of his own; fourth, a feeling for music, and so
much knowledge of the practice of other poets as to understand that
Shakspeare's versification differs from theirs as often in kind as in
degree; fifth, an acquaintance with the world as well as with books;
and last, what is, perhaps, of more importance than all, so great a
familiarity with the working of the imaginative faculty in general, and
of its peculiar operation in the mind of Shakspeare, as will prevent
his thinking a passage dark with excess of light, and enable him to
understand folly that the Gothic Shakspeare often superimposed upon the
slender column of a single word, that seems to twist under it, but does
not,--like the quaint shafts in cloisters,--a weight of meaning which
the modern architects of sentences would consider wholly unjustifiable
by correct principle.
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