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Notes
"The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention," Selected Studies in Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979), p. 337. All quotations from, and parenthetic references to, this essay are to this edition and not to its original publication in Studies in Bibliography, 29 (1976), 167-211.
The Works of the Author of Night-Thoughts in Four Volumes (London: D. Browne, et al., 1757); both poems are in volume I. There is no external information about the revision of either poem for this edition. The printer's copy for both was an annotated copy of the corrupt Works 1741, printed by Edmund Curll.
The folios, entitled The Universal Passion and printed for James Roberts, were published from January 1725 to February 1728. The revised second-edition octavo was published by Jacob Tonson in March 1728. On substantive revisions in Love of Fame 1728, see my "A Critical Reader's Edition of Edward Young's Satiric Poetry: Love of Fame and Two Epistles to Mr. Pope," Diss. Maryland, 1981), pp. 103-108, and, on revised accidentals, see my "The Authority of Accidental Variants in the Tonson Second Edition of Edward Young's Love of Fame," Studies in Bibliography, 37 (1984), 187-197. Publication and bibliographical information about these and other editions of Love of Fame and Two Epistles to Mr. Pope can be found in the Textual Introduction and the Description of Editions Collated of my "Critical Reader's Edition." In several respects, this essay represents a rethinking of editorial decisions in that edition.
The following readings in Love of Fame 1728 were omitted from Works 1757: The sentence "If they like not the fashion . . . of his aim" (sig. A3r); Satire II.109-110; III.63-64, 209-214, and 259-260; IV.205-206; VI.63-64, 547-548, and 591-610; and The Last (VII), 11. 155-158. Three variant phrases in Works 1757 that may be authorial occur in the Preface (on sig. A2v of the 1728 text) and at II.232 and III.114 (see the textual footnotes to my edition). Throughout this essay, quotations and line numbers derive from the Tonson 1728 edition of Love of Fame, unless otherwise noted.
"Edward Young's Satires: Materials for an Edition of Love of Fame," Diss. Princeton, 1939, p. 53.
The following lines in the 1730 edition of Two Epistles, printed for Lawton Gilliver by John Wright and published in January 1730, were omitted in Works 1757: from Epistle I, lines 133-140, 269-276, and 327-332, and from Epistle II, lines 11-12, 59-70, 99-102, 167-68, 201-206, 213-214, and 225-244. Throughout this essay, all quotations are from and all line numbers are to the Gilliver edition of 1730.
Of Young's early poems reprinted in Works 1757, only A Paraphrase on a Part of the Book of Job (1719) did not lose lines. A Poem on the Last Day (1713), revised thoroughly in 1715, lost 84 lines when revised for Works 1757. Young deleted digressive and panegyrical passages and also several with imprecise and obscure language. In addition, one passage seems to have been struck on doctrinal grounds and another as redundant. The Force of Religion (1714), when first revised in 1757, lost 48 lines, involving panegyrics addressed to contemporaries, a moral digression and a lengthy comparison which slow narrative progression, and three passages with obscure phrasing. In both Last Day and The Force of Religion no lines were added for Works 1757, and Young's primary concern, apart from removing obsolete eulogy, was structural coherence.
Passages with primarily formal conceptions take their excellence, or derive their satisfaction, from the completion of generic and stylistic patterns or forms, as when Young closely imitates topics in Horace's or Juvenal's satires. Passages with primarily expressive conceptions seek fulfillment in the exposition of thought and feeling. The two halves of this theoretical distinction are more or less evident in formulations of the doctrine of imitation between the Renaissance and the Age of Johnson.
Young's programmatic design to write an Horatian satire is evident at Satire I.45-46 and within the Preface (sig. A4r); he speaks of adopting Juvenal's morality and manner in the Preface (sigs. A4r-A4r), where he invites comparison to Boileau by slighting his satires for excessive severity and repetition. The envoy published with Satire VI also compares Young's satires to Juvenal's and Boileau's; there, although he raises these poets above him, he also insists that his satire "cuts herself a track, to you unknown" (VI.607). Within the poem, passages with primarily formal intentions include the self-conscious gestures in the envoy or in apostrophes to the muse and the apologies for satire, which frequently contain apostrophes (as Satire III.251-264).
Young's preface argues the superiority of Horatian satire over Juvenalian on therapeutic grounds (sigs. A3r-A4r). Both Frank (pp. 144ff.) and Bruce Wilson ("Studies in the Formal Verse Satires of Edward Young 1683-1765," Diss. Minnesota, 1971, p. 70) have argued that Young's thesis was conceived to be a structural frame allowing diverse satiric victims.
Curll's key was published in Works 1741 on sigs. U1r-U2v of volume I. Walpole's copy is now at the British Library, catalogued as C.45.c.8, and his marginalia on Satire V are conveniently cited in the notes to that poem in Sherard Vines' Georgian Satirists (London: Wishart, 1934), pp. 193-195.
See Tanselle's discussion of when revisions require the editing of separate versions, which relates Fredson Bowers' editorial solutions for several extensively revised texts (pp. 337-347).
As I have indicated in "The Authority of Accidental Variants in the Tonson Second Edition of Edward Young's Love of Fame," Young did revise certain classes of accidentals in 1728, but there are still advantages to using the first editions as copy-texts and emending them with the accidental revisions of 1728.
In view of the use of the corrupt Works 1741 in composing the 1757 texts of Love of Fame and Two Epistles and, especially, of Richardson's assistance in the composing and revision of Young's The Centaur Not Fabulous (1755) and Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), both of which he printed, we may be concerned whether Richardson had a hand in the 1757 revisions of both poems. Extant letters record Young's requesting and accepting his friend's suggestions for both prose works and Richardson's sending detailed advice (The Correspondence of Edward Young 1683-1765, ed. Henry Pettit [1971]; on The Centaur, see pp. 410-422, and, on Conjectures, see pp. 440-455 and 484-493). Young and Richardson could have collaborated on the revisions during one of their four known visits to each other's houses during the 15 months prior to the publication of Works 1757 (pp. 437, 438, 452, and 453 of Pettit record the visits; the Works was advertised in the June 1757 issue of The London Magazine and announced earlier on 21 May in the London Evening Post). That Richardson made or suggested revisions for the poems in Works 1757 is perhaps implied by Young's comment to him on 20 January 1757: "For the admirable addition to my last poetry all thanks are due" (Pettit, p. 452). If someone other than Richardson had printed the authorized works, we could be more confident that Young alone introduced the deletions in Love of Fame and Two Epistles.
The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, VI, ed. Norman Ault and John Butt (1954), 137-138. Joseph Spence, remarking that "Philips was a neat dresser and very vain," recorded an amusing repartee by Swift which glanced at Philips' foppish dress (Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn [1966], I, 340, item no. 844). Also, Philips had a reputation for physical temerity, evident in Young's remark to Thomas Tickell perhaps concerning Pope's "Macer": "Pope in his Part abuses Philips, very intrepidly since ye sea is between them" (Pettit, p. 56). Thus, what appears to be an allusion to Lico's vain dress, "His Figure bullies" (l. 136), could allude to another of Philips' traits.
Frank, noting a marginal comment to this effect in a copy of Works 1741, first suggested that Hilario referred to Jonathan Swift (pp. 51 and 177). However, the proud Dean, like the intrepid Philips, would never have silently tolerated a satiric character, and there is no evidence that Swift, who spoke well of Young's satires as late as 1732, suspected Young had criticized him. So, although Swift and Philips may have contributed hints for fictional characters, it seems unlikely that in either Hilario or Lico Young contradicted his expressed avoidance of particularized attacks (Love of Fame, sig. A2r), especially when the individuals, fellow poets, were neither vicious nor public nuisances. Nevertheless, Young could have removed the Lico portrait because readers, perhaps Philips himself, mistook the general for the particular.
Compare Horace's catalogue of his readers, also used as a justification for composing: 'It is enough that Plontinus and Varius approve of these Verses; let Maecenas, Virgil, and Valgius; let Octavius and Fuscus, best of men; and let but the Viscus brothers give their praise" (Ep. I, x, 83-85, Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library [1926; rpt. 1970].
Love of Fame (1763), pp. 27-43. Frank first called attention to the new readings in this edition (pp. 57-62), though he incorrectly supposed that the pre-publication manuscript formed the printer's copy for this edition of Satire II. See my "A Critical Reader's Edition," pp. 112-114, on the new readings in the 1763 edition and, pp. 99-102, on Young's dedications.
Sherard Vines, noting Mrs. Howard's name beside the panegyrical set piece (ll. 343-64) in Walpole's copy, suggested that her name also belonged at l. 11, where the poet defines the satire as indirect praise of a lady (Georgian Satirists, pp. 193-195). Young later wrote to her around 1730 to request that she argue his case for preferment to the King (Pettit, pp. 67-69); her influence with the King may explain Young's praise for her in Satire V. His office as chaplain to Princess Caroline (later Queen) may partly explain why the dedication, if it was to Mrs. Howard, remained silent.
On Two Epistles' relation to the war of the dunces, see my "A Critical Reader's Edition," pp. 13-15 and 85-88.
In denying final authority to some of Melville's last revisions to Typee, Tanselle characterizes them as "not part of a sustained and coherent reshaping" but "instances of sporadic tinkering" not consistent "with the spirit of the work" (p. 341). Here Tanselle seems to require the consideration of not only the revision's effect on the work but also the degree of the author's involvement in the revising.
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