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OUR SHAKSPEARIAN CORRESPONDENCE.
We have received from a valued and kind correspondent (not one of those emphatically good-natured friends so wittily described by Sheridan) the following temperate remonstrance against the tone which has distinguished several of our recent articles on Shakspeare:—
Shakspeare Suggestions (Vol. viii., pp. 124. 169.).—
"Most busy, when least I do."
I am grateful to A. E. B. for referring me to the article on "Shakspeare Criticism" in the last number of Blackwood's Magazine. It is a very able paper, and worthy of general attention.
I ought to add some few explanatory observations upon the subject of my former communication, but the tone of A. E. B.'s comments forbids me to proceed with the discussion; the more especially as my suggestion has been made a reason for introducing into your pages comments which seem to me to be altogether unwarrantable upon other portions of the article in Blackwood. Whoever may be the writer of that article—I do not know—he needs no other defence than a reference to his paper. It is not on his account that I venture to allude to this subject; it is rather on yours, Mr. Editor, and with a view to the welfare of your paper. I cannot think that you or it will be benefited by converting conversational gossip about Shakspeare difficulties into "a duel in the form of a debate," seasoned with sarcasm, insinuation, and satiric point. This is not the kind of matter one expects to find in "N. & Q." neither do I think your pages should be made a vehicle for "showing up" such of "the herd of menstrual Aristarchi" as chance to differ in opinion from some of your smart and peremptory, but not unfrequently inaccurate and illiberal correspondents.
I know that you yourself are in this respect much in the power of your contributors. Probably you were as ignorant of the existence of the article in Blackwood as I was. It is now brought before your notice, and I invite you to look at it, and judge for yourself whether A. E. B. has treated you, your paper, or the writer of that very excellent article, with common fairness in the remarks to which I allude.
I make these observations on two grounds: first, as one who has many reasons for being anxious for the prosperity of "N. & Q.;" and secondly, because I know it to be the opinion of several of your earliest and warmest friends, that there is a tendency in some of your Shakspeare contributors to indulge in insinuation, imputation of motives, and many other things which ought never to appear in your pages. We lately observed, with deep regret, that you were misled (not by A. E. B.) into the insertion of unjustifiable insinuations, levelled against a gentleman whom we all know to be a man of the highest personal honour.
The questions which are mooted in your pages ought to be discussed with the mutual forbearance and enlarged liberality which are predominant in the general society of our metropolis; not with the keen and angry partizanship which distinguishes the petty squabbles of a country town....