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Notes

 
[1]

Full bibliographical descriptions of the editions referred to in this essay are available in my "Critical, Reader's Edition of Edward Young's Satiric Poetry: Love of Fame and Two Epistles to Mr. Pope" (Diss. Maryland, 1981), as is publication information, although much of the latter is more conveniently found in David Foxon's English Verse 1700-1750 (1975), I, 919-920. Collations of at least six copies of each of the folios and of the Tonson octavo of 1728 form the inductive basis of this study.

[2]

For instance, the ornament of a flower-basket flanked by perched birds (77 x 36.5 mm.) on the title pages of F's Satires I, II, and V occurs as the tail-piece to Satire III in O1.

[3]

The only editions subsequent to O1 but not derived from it are eclectic editions of Satires V and The Last, printed by Stephen Powell for George Ewing, Dublin, 1728, and of Satire I, also printed by Powell for Ewing, in 1731 (all three of which impose substantive changes from O1 upon F's accidentals), and the first satire of the Foulis edition of 1758, which descends from Powell's 1731 edition.

[4]

Charles E. Frank, "Edward Young's Satires: Materials for an Edition of Love of Fame (Diss. Princeton, 1939), pp. 42-43.

[5]

Bertrand Bronson, Printing as an Index of Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (1958), p. 16. This argument on the propriety of italics to sense, on which both Frank and Bronson entirely rely, perhaps underestimates the abilities of the premier printers that poets like Young engaged for important editions.

[6]

Foxon's English Verse 1700-1750 lists the 1730 and 1741 octavos as Y171 and Y173 (I, 921-922). These editions share many ornaments with O1; for instance, the heron headpiece of O1's Satire III recurs in O2's Satire I and O3's Preface and Satire II.

[7]

The following are the number of lines with accidental variants in each forme of O1 (formes Go [outer], Hi [inner], and Mo lack substantive variants): Bi, 57; Bo, 77; Ci, 46; Co, 58; Di, 51; Do, 39; Ei, 41; Eo, 42; Fi, 66; Fo, 59; Gi, 45; Go, 44; Hi, 38; Ho, 29; Ii, 18; Io, 22; Ki, 27; Ko, 20; Li, 8; Lo, 7; Mi, 61; Mo, 52. These 907 lines with accidental changes are distributed, with the exception of Satire VI, fairly evenly throughout the seven satires. About one-third to one-half of the lines in the other six satires are altered, as can be seen by comparing the total number of lines changed with the number of lines shared by F and O1 for each satire: Satire I has 171 of 286 lines altered, II has 112 of 290, III has 107 of 284, IV has 137 of 260, V has 189 of 574, VI has 65 of 606, and The Last has 116 of 234.

[8]

"Greg's 'Rationale of Copy-Text' Revisited," Studies in Bibliography, 31 (1978), 114-116.

[9]

The only accepted punctuation variant in O1's Satire VI is a parenthetic comma after 'uncontroul'd' in the lines: "By wealth unquench'd, by reason uncontroul'd, / For ever burns her sacred thirst of gold" (VI.289-290). Since Young did not make systematic comma changes, nor case changes, in Satire VI, it might be best accepted as an editorial emendation. However, four words italicized in lines 282 and 293 of O1 argue that he may well have introduced it.

[10]

A glance over the apparatus of the California Dryden shows that unauthorized reprints add a dozen end-line punctuation variants for each change within the line. In The Medal, for instance, where there are over half as many lines with internal marks as there are with external, several unrevised reprints introduced but four changes of syntactical punctuation within the 322-line text and over sixty changes at the line endings. (The Works of John Dryden, eds. H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., and Vinton Dearing [1972], II, 427-428). Also, the great majority of punctuation changes in O2 and O3 occur at the line ends.

[11]

For instance, a comma is inserted in O1 between the following verb and its infinitive of reason, as if to underline an implicit antithesis: "why will you starve, to be admired?" (IV.186).

[12]

The five parenthetic commas at the line ends that are inserted as part of a set occur at I.86, I.234-235, IV.181, VI.31-32, and V.173-74. The sixth, introduced singly, occurs at VI.289 and is discussed in footnote 9.

[13]

For instance, the printer Philip Luckombe wrote that italic type should "be used for such purposes as it was designed for; viz. . . . for words, terms, or expressions . . . by which they [authors] intend to convey to the reader either instructing, satyriżing, admiring, or other hints and remarks" (my italics; A Concise History of the Origin and Progress of Printing [1770], p. 235). The satirists of the period make frequent use of italics. James Bramston italicized 100 common names in the first 243 lines of The Art of Politics (1729) and James Miller italicized 328 in the first 400 lines of his Harlequin-Horace (1731). Bramston's use of italics is proportional to Young's in Two Epistles to Mr. Pope, where 195 common names are italicized in 628 lines, and Miller's use is proportional to Young's in Love of Fame (O1), where two words are italicized for every three lines. Irony, so prevalent in satire and troublesome to many eighteenth-century readers, seems to have particularly required italics. Jacob Viner has noted that Edward Capell, in the Preface to Prolusions; or, Select Pieces of Antient Poetry (1760), urged that dots be placed above ironic passages for greater clarity, arguing, "there seem'd to be much want of a particular note of punctuation to distinguish irony, which is often so delicately couch'd as to escape the notice of even the attentive reader" (The Augustan Milieu, ed. H. K. Miller et al. [1970], p. 81).

[14]

Consider the effect of italics in the following lines:

That makes the Banquet poignant, and polite (VI.44)
And the last word is her eternal right. (V.82)
In the first case a trochaic and the second a pyrrhic foot are created by stressing the emphatic words, but, as Paul Fussell has noted, the elocutionary art of the day preferred to impose stress regularity even to the neglect of the sense. After quoting Richard Bentley's placement of a stress over 'with' in Milton's line "Thus Belial with words clothed in Reason's garb," Fussell remarked: "A scholar like Bentley, one of the most learned men of his time, in his anxiety to behold evidence of temporal regularity where it does not necessarily exist, is here to be seen paying almost no attention to the meaning of Milton's lines, and laying a strong stress on a word which almost never takes it in English" (Theory of Prosody in Eighteenth-Century England [1966], p. 19).

[15]

Maynard Mack reprints "An Essay on Pastoral" in "Pope's Pastoral," The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, 12 (1980), 85-161; see p. 102 where the word 'Italic' is written in the margin next to underlined words. See also Earl H. Wasserman's Pope's 'Epistle to Bathurst': A Critical Reading with an Edition of the Manuscript (1960), pp. 76-77, and Robert M. Schmitz's Pope's 'Essay on Criticism' 1709: A Study of the Bodleian Manuscript Text with Facsimiles, Transcripts, and Variants (1962).

[16]

One poem is a dedication of the satires to the Duke of Chandos, and the other, reprinted from the Monthly Magazine of 1 April 1816, is Young's revision of The Foreign Address; see The Correspondence of Edward Young, ed. Henry Pettit (1971), pp. 59-60 and 426-428. Accentual italics are rare but do occur in other poetic holographs reprinted by Pettit on pp. 16-17, 140 and 154.

[17]

In N. Blandford's second-edition reprinting (O1) of the Roberts folio (F) of Winter, there are both italic and substantive changes. While the second-edition O1 preserves all the italics of F, it places ten old words and introduces 32 new words in italics. Then, in O5 (1728), also by Blandford, new lines are added and 73 words italicized in F and O1 are romanized. When O5 is reprinted with lines added in the subscription quarto (Q1) and an octavo (O6) in 1730, none of O5's words are newly italicized or romanized. If we attribute the increase in italics in O1 and, paradoxically, their decrease in O5 to Blandford's compositor, how can we explain the identical use of italics in lines shared by O5, O6, and Q1?

[18]

Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calender of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath, III (1908), 454; on Prior's care for his accidentals, see also pp. 455 and 459-460. On Spears and Wright's choice of copy-text, see The Literary Works of Matthew Prior (1959), I, xlviii-xlix; and Wright's "Ideal Copy and Authoritative Text: The Problem of Prior's Poems on Several Occasions (1718)," Modern Philology, 49 (1952), 234-235.

[19]

On the piece-work wages of compositors during the handpress period, see Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (1972), pp. 54-55 and 172-173.

[20]

Both the old orthodoxy and the emerging position are reflected in Bronson's remark, "I have seen no evidence to support Geoffrey Tillotson's hypothesis that in the time of Pope capitalization was even loosely—still less 'rigorously'—dependent upon format" (Printing as an Index of Taste, p. 17). That the increase of italics in O1 is not due to format convention can be seen from the fidelity of Dublin and Edinburgh octavo reprintings of F. In the first Edinburgh editions of Satires I-IV and The Last (Foxon's Y138, Y140, Y142, Y144, and Y146 [English Verse 1700-1750, I, 920]), there are but seven words changed to roman and none to italic. No italics are introduced in the many Dublin editions from 1725-27 (Foxon's Y149-54, Y156-58, Y160-61, Y163, and Y165).

[21]

In reviewing these lectures, Nicolas Barker remarked that "It is fascinating to discover Pope using the 'simpler' mode [that with less typographical emphasis] for the Homer subscribers' text (who were assumed to be cognoscenti) while using a fuller range for the popular editions; evidently Pope felt the vulgar needed such help to grasp every nuance" of his text ("Pope and his Publishers," TLS, 3 September 1976, p. 1085). See also Foxon's suggestion that Pope's revision of accidentals for revised reprints may have been a practice so common among poets that "In cases like those of Cowley and Crabbe, where second editions add stress either by capitalizing selected nouns or by the use of italic," the "changes should be considered authorial unless proved otherwise" (Greg's 'Rationale' and the Editing of Pope," The Library, 5th ser., 33 [1978], 123).

[22]

Phyllis J. Guskin, "Intentional Accidentals: Typography and Audience in Swift's Drapier's Letters," Eighteenth-Century Life, VI, NS 1 (October, 1980), 81. Guskin does not study revised editions but notes that works intended for different audiences were issued with different degrees of italicization.

[23]

The Works of the Reverend Edward Young, LL.D., 4 vols. (1765); the accidental texture of this edition derives from O1 through O2 (Tonson, 1730), Works 1741 (Curll, et al.), Works 1752 (a duodecimo "London"), and Robert Urie's duodecimo, issued in a Works and singly (Glasgow, 1755).

[24]

An octavo printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis (Glasgow, 1750) and an octavo "Printed for J. WATTS," probably a Scottish piracy ("London," 1750), have no italic type in the Preface or the satires. An octavo of 1753 (n.p.), which follows the Foulis' readings, and an octavo printed for J. James (London, 1762), which follows Watts', necessarily lack O1's italic, nor do they introduce any on their own initiative.

[25]

In O1 new words in italics are substituted for old words in roman at I.251, II.140, II.144, III.143, III.163, IV.110, V.126, V.404 (two new words italicized for two old), VI.531, VII.148, and VII.237. Italicized words also occur in new lines added: IV.65-66, IV.247-248, VI.389-390, VI.393-394, and VII.155-158.

[26]

Bronson wrote that in O1 Young "avoids unnecessary capitals but, to even matters, indulges in a rhetorically rib-nudging, eyebrow-raising, winking-and-blinking use of italics to a degree seldom seen" (Printing as an Index of Taste, p. 16).

[27]

Two poems Young published in 1726-27 offer parallel evidence that he was moving toward greater use of italics for emphasis. The Instalment (printed for J. Walthoe, 1726) is full of italics for rhetorical emphasis: a total of 103 words on 70 of the poem's 160 lines are italicized. And Cynthio (printed for J. Roberts, 1727) has 151 common names italicized on 97 of the 184 lines of the poem.

[28]

See "The Rationale of Copy-Text," SB, 3 (1950-51), 22.

[29]

Greg's phrase is taken from his discussion of the intermingling of old and newly-revised accidentals in the folio of Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour ("The Rationale of Copy-Text," p. 35).