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Of all the publishers, clandeftine or profeffed, their negligence and unfkilfulness has by the late revifers been fufficiently fhown. The faults of all are indeed numerous and grofs, and have not only corrupted many paffages perhaps beyond recovery, but have brought others into fufpicion, which are only obfcured by obfolete phrafeology, or by the writer's unfkilfulness and affectation. To alter is more eafy than to explain, and temerity is a more common quality than diligence. Those who faw that they must employ conjecture to a certain degree, were willing to indulge it a little further. Had the authour publifhed his own works, we should have fat quietly down to difentangle his intricacies, and clear his obfcurities; but now we tear what we cannot loofe, and eject what we happen not to understand.

The faults are more than could have happened without the concurrence of many caufes. The ftile of Shakespeare was in itself ungrammatical, perplexed and obfcure; his works were transcribed for the players by those who may be fuppofed to have feldom understood them; they were tranfmitted by copiers equally unfkilful, who ftill. multiplied errours; they were perhaps fometimes mutilated by the actors, for the fake of fhortening the fpeeches; and were at last printed without correction of the prefs.

In this ftate they remained, not as Dr. Warburton fuppofes, because they were unregarded, but because the editor's art was not yet applied to modern languages, and our ancestors were accustomed to fo

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much negligence of English printers, that they could very patiently endure it. At laft an edition was undertaken by Rowe; not becaufe a poet was to be publifhed by a poet, for Rowe feems to have thought very little on correction or explanation, but that our authour's works might appear like thofe of his fraternity, with the appendages of a life and recommendatory preface. Rowe has been clamorously blamed for not performing what he did not undertake, and it is time that juftice be done him, by confeffing, that though he feems to have had no thought of corruption beyond the printer's errours, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made before, which his fucceffors have received without acknowledgment, and which, if they had produced them, would have filled pages and pages with cenfures of the stupidity by which the faults were committed, with difplays of the abfurdities which they involved, with oftentatious expofitions of the new reading, and felf congratulations on the happiness of difcovering it.

Of Rowe, as of all the editors, I have preferved the preface, and have likewife retained the authour's life, though not written with much elegance or spirit; it relates however what is now to be known, and therefore deferves to pafs through all fucceeding publications.

The nation had been for many years content enough with Mr. Rowe's performance, when Mr. Pope made them acquainted with the true ftate of Shakespear's

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text, fhewed that it was extremely corrupt, and gave reafon to hope that there were means of reforming it. He collated the old copies, which none had thought to examine before, and restored many lines to their integrity; but, by a very compendious criticism, he rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of amputation than of cure.

I know not why he is commended by Dr. Warburton for distinguishing the genuine from the fpurious plays. In this choice he exerted no judgement of his own; the plays which he received, were given by Hemings and Condel, the firft editors; and thofe which he rejected, though, according to the licentiousness of the prefs in those times, they were printed during Shakespear's life, with his name, had been omitted by his friends, and were never added to his works before the edition of 1664, from which they were copied by the later printers.

This was a work which Pope feems to have thought unworthy of his abilities, being not able to fupprefs his contempt of the dull duty of an editor. He underftood but half his undertaking. The duty of a collator is indeed dull, yet, like other tedious tasks, is very neceffary; but an emendatory critick would ill dif charge his duty, without qualities very different from dulnefs. In perufing a corrupted piece, he must have before him all poffibilities of meaning, with all possibilities of expreffion. Such muft be his comprehenfion of thought, and fuch his copioufness of language. Out of many readings poffible, he must be able to

felect

felect that which beft fuits with the ftate, opinions, and modes of language prevailing in every age, and with his authour's particular caft of thought, and turn of expreffion. Such must be his knowledge, and fuch his taste. Conjectural criticifm demands more than humanity poffeffes, and he that exercifes it with most praise has very frequent need of indulgence. Let us now be told no more of the dull duty of an editor.

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Confidence is the common confequence of fuccefs. They whofe excellence of any kind has been loudly celebrated, are ready to conclude, that their powers are univerfal. Pope's edition fell below his own expectations, and he was fo much offended, when he was found to have left any thing for others to do, that he paft the latter part of his life in a ftate of hoftility with verbal criticism.

I have retained all his notes, that no fragment of fo great a writer may be loft; his preface, valuable alike for elegance of compofition and juftnefs of remark, and containing a general criticism on his authour, fo extensive that little can be added, and so exact, that little can be difputed, every editor has an intereft to fuppreis, but that every reader would demand its insertion.

Pope was fucceeded by Theobald, a man of narrow comprehenfion and fmall acquifitions, with no native and intrinfick fplendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning, but zealous for minute accuracy, and not negligent in purluing it. He col

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lated the ancient copies, and rectified many errors. A man fo anxiously fcrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he did was commonly right.

In his reports of copies and editions he is not to be trusted, without examination. He fpeaks fometimes indefinitely of copies, when he has only one. In his enumeration of editions, he mentions the two firft folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all others, and that the reft only deviate from it by the printer's negligence. Whoever has any of the folios has all, excepting those diversities which mere reiteration of editions will produce. I collated them all at the beginning, but afterwards used only the first.

Of his notes I have generally retained those which he retained himself in his fecond edition, except when they were confuted by subsequent annotators, or were too minute to merit prefervation. I have fometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inferting the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his atchievement. The exuberant excrefcence of diction I have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have fometimes suppressed, and his contemptible oftentation I have frequently concealed; but I have in fome places fhewn him, as he would have fhewn himself, for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of fome notes may juftify or excuse the contraction of the rest.

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