The question of the First Edition is not limited to any era of literary history and production, and the call for this class of book, at first (as usual) rather unreasoning, begins to be more critical and narrow. The author to be thus honoured by his posterity must have a certain bouquet and vogue. He must be a Shakespeare, a Jonson, a Herrick, a Burton, a Defoe, a Bunyan, a Burns, or (if we cross the sea) a Molière, a Montaigne, or a Cervantes.
With the first edition in some bibliographical schemes is associated the Best One. The possessor of both may pride himself on being able to show the earliest and latest state of the writer's mind, what he originally conceived, and what he decided to leave behind him as his ultimum vale. For the most part, however, first thoughts are treated as better than second, and it may actually be the case that, alike in ancient and modern books, the too fastidious and wavering ancient poet, or playwright, or essayist has done himself in maturer years an injustice by blotting the fresh impulses of his noviciate. It is a case, perhaps, where the public is entitled to intervene, and taking the two readings, deliver its award—always supposing that the text is that of a man worth the pains, and, again, that both versions are the language of the author, not that of the editor. It is obvious that, as a matter of literary and scientific or technical completeness, the last edition of a work is the most desirable; but it is particularly the case with volumes endeared by personal associations, such as Gilbert White's Selborne, that one prefers the text as the author left it, even if one has to be at the pains to consult a second publication for up-to-date knowledge. The present point is one to which I have adverted in an earlier place.
Apart from the collector, the first and the best impressions of writers of importance, whose texts underwent at their own hands more or less material changes, are necessarily an object of research to the editor or specialist who has dedicated his attention to such or such a study; and he is apt to pursue the matter still further than the amateur, who does not, as a rule, esteem the intermediate issues. It is this feeling and need which have led, since critical and comparative editions came into fashion, to the accumulation by their superintendents of an exhaustive array of titles and dates, with hints of the most remarkable various readings; and the cause of bibliography has gained, whether, in drawing together the series, the book-hunter or the literary worker be the pioneer. From the editorial and bibliographical points of view a complete sequence of the writings of our more distinguished and durable authors is generally practicable; but of excessively popular or favourite books, even of the Elizabethan era, it is imperfect. We refer to such cases as the so far unseen second impression of Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim and the ostensible disappearance of the original quarto of Love's Labor's Lost.
Two questions connected with the present part of the subject before us, now better understood and managed, were under the old system, so far as we can ascertain or judge, permitted to remain in a very loose and vague state. We allude to the law of copyright and the revision for the press. Prior to the institution of the Stationers' Company and the existence of a Register, the sole protection for authors and publishers was by the grant of a privilege or a monopoly for a term of years; yet even when registration had become compulsory, and was supposed to be effectual, spurious editions constantly found their way into the market, while books of which the writers might desire, on various grounds, to keep the MSS. in their own hands, found their way into print through some irregular channel. Such was the case with Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1603, and (in a somewhat different way) with the third edition of his Passionate Pilgrim, 1612; and we perceive that of Bacon's Essays during some years two parallel impressions were current without ostensible interference or warrant. There are frequent instances in which authors state that their motive in hastening into type was the rumour that a surreptitious and inaccurate text was threatened, as if there was no legal power to prevent such a class of piracy.
The correction of proofs by early writers, if we except books of reference, and those not without qualification, was evidently very lax and precarious. The entire body of popular literature, the drama included, offers the appearance, when we investigate examples, of having been left to the mercy of the typographers, and the faulty readings of old plays are more readily susceptible of explanation from the fact that we owe their survival in a printed form as often as not to the clandestine sale of the prompters' copies to the stationer. The editors of our dramatists have consequently found it an extremely laborious task to restore the sense of corrupt passages, and have sometimes abandoned the attempt in despair. Not a few of the pieces in the last edition of Dodsley come within this category; and we may signalise the unique tragedy of Appius and Virginia, 1575, as a prodigy of negligent and ignorant execution on the part of the original compositor. But to the same cause is due our still remaining uncertainty as to the true reading of numerous places in Shakespeare himself.
Our collectors, however, are not particularly solicitous to study the present aspect of the matter, and the hunter for First Editions is by no means likely to care an iota about the purity of the text, but may be more apt to congratulate himself on the ownership of the genuine old copy with all the errors of the press as vouchers for its character. Who would exchange a second Hamlet of 1604 for a first one of 1603, simply because the former happens to contain as much more, and the latter is little better than a torso?
The long uncertainty and insecurity of authors' rights, whatever may be thought of the present position of the matter, led at a very early date to the adoption of such safeguards against plagiarism as it was in the power of specialists, at all events, to impose. Some time after its original publication in 1530, we find John Palsgrave, compiler of the Eclaircissement de la Langue Françoise, prohibiting the printer from giving or selling copies to any one without his leave, lest his profits as a teacher of the language should be prejudicially affected; and so it was that preceptors often reserved the right of sale, and dealt direct with buyers, and in one case (only a sample) a treatise on Shorthand by Richard Weston (1770) is delivered to purchasers at eighteenpence on the express condition that they shall not allow the book to leave their own hands or premises.
