in an equal impuissance of fufpecting, or amending, the corrupted paffages: and though it be neither prudence to cenfure, or commend, what one does not understand, yet if a man must do one when he plays the critick, the latter is the more ridiculous office: and by that Shakespeare suffers moft. For the natural veneration which we have for him, makes us apt to swallow whatever is given us as bis, and set off with encomiums; and hence we quit all suspicions of depravity on the contrary, the cenfure of fo divine an author fets us upon his defence; and this produces an exact scrutiny and examination, which ends in finding out and difcriminating the true from the fpurious. It is not with any secret pleasure that I fo frequently animadvert on Mr. Pope as a critick; but there are provocati-. ons which a man can never quite forget. His libels have been thrown out, with so much inveteracy, that, not to dispute whether they should come from a Chriftian, they leave it a queftion whether they could come from a man. I fhould be loth to doubt, as Quintus Serenus did in a like case, Sive bomo, feu fimilis turpiffima beftia nobis, The indignation, perhaps, for being represented a blockbead, may be as ftrong in us as it is in the ladies for a reflexion on their beauties. It is certain, I am indebted to him for fome flagrant civilities; and I fhall willingly devote a part of my life to the honeft endeavour of quitting fcores: with this exception, however, that I will not return those civili. ties in his peculiar ftrain, but confine myself, at least, to the limits of common decency. I fhall ever think it better to want wit, than to want humanity: and impartial pofterity may, perhaps, be of my opinion. But, to return to my subject, which now calls upon me to enquire into thofe caufes, to which the depravations of my author may readily be affigned. We are to confider him as a writer, of whom no authentic manufcript was left extant; as a writer, whose pieces were difperfedly performed on the several stages then in being. And it was the custom of thofe days for the poets to take a price of the players for the pieces they from time to time furnished; and thereupon it was supposed, they had no farther right to print them without the consent of the players. As it was the interest of the companies to keep their plays unpublished, when any one fucceeded, there was a contest betwixt the curiofity of the town, who defired to see it in print, and the policy of the ftagers, who wished to fecrete it within their own walls. Hence many pieces were taken down in short-hand, and imperfectly copied by ear, from a representation: others were printed from piece-meal parts furreptitiously obtained from the theatres, uncorrect, and without the poet's knowledge. To fome of these causes we owe the train of blemishes, that deform thofe pieces which stole fingly into the world in our author's life-time. which may be fuppofed to When the players took upon There are ftill other reafons, have affected the whole fet. them to publish his works intire, every theatre was ranfacked to fupply the copy; and parts collected, which had gone through as many changes as performers, either from mutilations or additions made to them. Hence we derive many chafms and incoherences in the fenfe and matter, Scenes were frequently tranfpofed, and shuffled out of their place, to humour the caprice, or fuppofed convenience, of fome particular actor. Hence much confufion and impropriety has attended, and embarraffed the bufinefs and fable. VOL. I. g To these obvious caufes of corruption, it must be added, that our author has lain under the difadvantage of having his errors propagated and multiplied by time: because, for near a century, his works were published from the faulty copies, without the affiftance of any intelligent editor: which has been the cafe likewise of many a claffic writer. The nature of any distemper once found has generally been the immediate step to a cure. Shakespeare's cafe has in a great measure resembled that of a corrupt claffic; and, confequently, the method of cure was likewife to bear a refemblance. By what means, and with what fuccefs, this cure has been effected on ancient writers, is too well known, and needs no formal illuftration. The reputation, confequent on tasks of this nature, invited me to attempt the method here; with this view, the hopes of restoring to the publick their greatest poet in his original purity, after having fo long lain in a condition that was a difgrace to common fenfe. To this end I have ventured on a labour, that is the firft effay of the kind on any modern author whatsoever. For the late edition of Milton by the learned Dr. Bentley is, in the main, a performance of another fpecies. It is plain, it was the intention of that great man rather to correct and pare off the excrefcences of the Paradise Loft, in the manner that Tucca and Varius were employed to criticize the Aneis of Virgil, than to restore corrupted paffages. Hence, therefore, may be feen either the iniquity or ignorance of his cenfurers, who, from fome expreffions, would make us believe the Doctor every where gives us his corrections as the original text of the author' whereas the chief turn of his criticism is plainly to fhew the world, that if Milton did not write as he would have him, he ought to have wrote fo. I thought proper to premife this obfervation to the reader, as it will shew that the critic on Shakespeare is of a quite different kind. His genuine text is for the most part religiously adhered to, and the numerous faults and blemishes, purely his own, are left as they were found. Nothing is altered, but what by the cleareft reasoning can be proved a corruption of the true text; and the alteration, a real restoration of the genuine reading. Nay, so strictly have Į ftrove to give the true reading, though fometimes not to the advantage of my author, that I have been ridiculously ridiculed for it by thofe, who either were iniquitously for turning every thing to my disadvantage, or else were totally ignorant of the true duty of an editor. The fcience of criticifm, as far as it affects an editor, feems to be reduced to these three claffes; the emendation of corrupt paffages; the explanation of obfcure and difficult, ones; and an enquiry into the beauties and defects of compofition. This work is principally confined to the two former parts; though there are fome fpecimens interspersed of the latter kind, as feveral of the emendations were beft fupported, and feveral of the difficulties beft explained, by taking notice of the beauties and defects of the compofition peculiar to this immortal poet. But this was but occafional, and for the fake only of perfecting the two other parts, which were the proper objects of the editor's labour. The third lies open for every willing undertaker and I fhall be pleased to fee it the employment of a masterly pen. It must neceffarily happen, as I have formerly obferved, that where the affiftance of manufcripts is wanting to set an author's meaning right, and rescue him from those errors which have been tranfmitted down through a series of in correct editions, and a long intervention of time, many paffages must be desperate, and past a cure, and their true fenfe irretrievable either to care, or the fagacity of conjecture. But is there any reafon therefore to say, that because all cannot be retrieved, all ought to be left defperate? We fhould fhew very little honefty or wisdom to play the tyrants with an author's text; to raze, alter, innovate, and overturn, at all adventures, and to the utter detriment of his fenfe and meaning: but to be fo very referved and cautious, as to interpofe no relief or conjecture, where it manifeftly labours and cries out for affiftance, feems, on the other hand, an indolent abfurdity. As there are very few pages in Shakespeare, upon which fome fufpicions of depravity do not reasonably arife, I have thought it my duty, in the first place, by a diligent and laborious collation to take in the affiftances of all the older copies. In his biftorical plays, whenever our English chronicles, and in his tragedies, when Greek or Roman ftory, could give any light, no pains have been omitted to fet paffages right, by comparing my author with his originals: for, as I have frequently obferved, he was a close and accurate copier wherever his fable was founded on biftory. Wherever the author's fenfe is clear and discoverable, (though perchance low and trivial) I have not by any innovation tampered with his text, out of an oftentation of endeavouring to make him fpeak better than the old copies have done, Where, through all the former editions, a paffage has laboured under fat nonfenfe and invincible darkness, if, by the addition of a letter or two, or a tranfpofition in the pointing, I have restored to him both fenfe and fenti |