operation. If there are qualities in literature which are above price, these are also to be found in the world of manufacture and finance in that huge pyramid of loyalty which is modern industry, and that vast network of fidelity which is modern commerce. Yet iron-founders and cotton-brokers do not, in discussing the operations of their profoundly beneficent trades, express themselves wholly in terms of genius and virtue.
The later history of Johnson’s Shakespeare is soon told. It was received, says Boswell, ‘with high approbation by the publick,’ and after passing into a second edition, was in 1773 republished by George Steevens, ‘a gentleman not only deeply skilled in ancient learning, and of very extensive reading in English literature, especially the early writers, but at the same time of acute discernment and elegant taste.’ Dr. Birkbeck Hill throws some doubt on Steevens’ claims to taste. It was Steevens who praised Garrick for producing Hamlet with alterations, ‘rescuing that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act;’ and who recommended that the condemned passages should be presented, as a kind of epilogue, in a farce to be entitled The Grave-Diggers; with the pleasant Humours of Osric, the Danish Macaroni. But Steevens deserves praise for his antiquarian industry and knowledge. To procure all possible assistance Johnson wrote letters to Dr. Farmer of Emmanuel College and to both the Wartons. He was frequently consulted by Steevens, but the extent of his own contributions is best stated by himself in his letter to Farmer: ‘I have done very little to the book.’ He never took kindly to the labours of revision; and his first edition remains the authoritative text of his criticism.
