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The Dramatic Works of John Dryden, Volume 1 With a Life of the Author By: Walter Scott (1771-1832) |
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DRAMATIC WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN WITH A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. EDITED BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY VOL. I.
EDINBURGH: WILLIAM PATERSON 1882 [Illustration: M' John Dryden. ]
THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF JOHN DRYDEN
EDITOR'S PREFACE. The best edited book in the English language is, according to Southey,
Wilkin's edition of Sir Thomas Browne. If Sir Walter Scott's "Dryden"
cannot challenge this highest position, it certainly deserves the credit
of being one of the best edited books on a great scale in English, save
in one particular, the revision of the text. In reading it long ago,
with no other object than to make acquaintance with Dryden; again, more
recently and more minutely, for the purpose of a course of lectures
which I was asked to deliver at the Royal Institution; and
again, more recently and more minutely still, for the purposes of a
monograph on the same subject in Mr. Morley's series of English
Men of Letters , I have had tolerably ample opportunities of
recognising its merits. It was therefore with pleasure that I found,
on being consulted by the publisher of these volumes as to a re issue of
it, that Mr. Paterson was as averse as I was myself to any attempt to
efface or to mutilate Scott's work. Neither the number, the order, nor
the contents of Scott's eighteen volumes will be altered in any way. The
task which I propose to myself is a sufficiently modest one, that of
re editing Scott's "Dryden," as putting differences of ability out of
question he might have re edited it himself had he been alive to day;
that is to say, to set right errors into which he fell either by
inadvertence or deficiency of information, to correct the text in
accordance with modern requirements, and to add the results of the
students of Dryden during the last three quarters of a century in matter
of text as well as of comment. The first part of the plan requires no further remarks, and the last not
much. No literary work of Dryden's of any great importance has been
discovered since Scott's edition appeared. A few letters will have to be
added, though I am sorry to say that I cannot promise my readers the
satisfaction which Dryden students chiefly desire, the satisfaction of
reading, or at least knowing the contents of, the Knole correspondence.
In reply to a request of mine, Lord Sackville has positively, though
very courteously, refused to lift the embargo which his predecessors
have placed on this, nor have my inquiries succeeded as yet in
discovering any hitherto unpublished letters, though the present
collection will for the first time present those which have been
published in a complete form. I think that it may not be uninteresting
for readers to have an opportunity of comparing with the undoubted work
two plays, "The Mistaken Husband," and "The Modish Lovers," which good
authorities have suspected to be possibly Dryden's. These will
accordingly be given in the last volume of the plays. A bibliography of
Dryden, and writers on Dryden, and a certain number of pieces
justificatives of various kinds, will also be added, as well as
notes, and where the subject seems to demand them, appendices on points
of importance. These additional notes and appendices will be bracketed
and signed ED., Dryden's own notes, which are rare, will be indicated by
a D., and Scott's will stand without indication. The principles upon which I have proceeded in re editing the text
require somewhat fuller explanation. Dryden never superintended any
complete edition of his works, but on the other hand there is evidence
in his letters that he bestowed considerable pains on them when they
first passed through the press. The first editions have therefore in
every case been followed, though they have been corrected in case of
need by the later ones. But the adoption of this standard leaves
unsettled the problem of orthography, punctuation, etc. I have adopted a
solution of this which will not, I fear, be wholly agreeable to some of
my friends... Continue reading book >>
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