certain bales of thought so as to find them again, and for the present
threw them aside--knowing that by the marks he could recall the thoughts
they stood for, but not intending thereby to convey them to any reader.
I cannot, with evidence before me, incredible but through the eyes
themselves, of the illimitable scope of printers' blundering, believe
_all_ the confusion, unintelligibility, neglect of grammar,
construction, continuity, sense, attributable to them. In parts it is
more like a series of notes printed with the interlineations horribly
jumbled; while in other parts it looks as if it had been taken down from
the stage by an ear without a brain, and then yet more incorrectly
printed; parts, nevertheless, in which it most differs from the
authorized editions, are yet indubitably from the hand of Shakspere. I
greatly doubt if any ready-writer would have dared publish some of its
chaotic passages as taken down from the stage; nor do I believe the play
was ever presented in anything like such an unfinished state. I rather
think some fellow about the theatre, whether more rogue or fool we will
pay him the thankful tribute not to enquire, chancing upon the crude
embryonic mass in the poet's hand, traitorously pounced upon it, and
betrayed it to the printers--therein serving the poet such an evil turn
as if a sculptor's workman took a mould of the clay figure on which his
master had been but a few days employed, and published casts of it as
the sculptor's work.[1] To us not the less is the _corpus delicti_
precious--and that unspeakably--for it enables us to see something of
the creational development of the drama, besides serving occasionally to
cast light upon portions of it, yielding hints of the original intention
where the after work has less plainly presented it.

[Footnote 1: Shakspere has in this matter fared even worse than Sir
Thomas Browne, the first edition of whose _Religio Medici_, nowise
intended for the public, was printed without his knowledge.]