and vanity catches small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous train of invective and contempt, more eager and venomous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politics against those whom he is hired to defame.

Perhaps the lightness of the matter may conduce to the vehemence of the agency; when the truth to be investigated is so near to inexistence, as to escape attention, its bulk is to be enlarged by rage and exclamation that to which all would be indifferent in its original state, may attract notice when the fate of a name is appended to it. A commentator has indeed great temptations to supply by turbulence what he wants of dignity, to beat his little gold to a spacious surface, to work that to foam which no art or diligence can exalt to spirit.

The notes which I have borrowed or written are either illustrative, by which difficulties are explained; or judicial, by which faults and beauties are remarked; or emendatory, by which depravations are corrected. The explanations transcribed from others, if I do not subjoin any other interpretation, I suppose commonly to be right, at least I intend by acquiescence to confess, that I have nothing better to propose.

The poetical beauties or defects I have not been very diligent to observe. Some plays have more, and some fewer judicial observations, not in propor.. tion to their difference of merit, but because I give this part of my design to chance and to caprice. The reader, I believe, is seldom pleased to find his opinion anticipated; it is natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we receive. Judgment, like other faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table book. Some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit: I have there. fore shewn so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover the rest.

To the end of most plays I have added short strictures, containing a general censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which I know not how much I have concurred with the current of opinion; but I have not, by any affectation of singularity, deviated from it. Nothing is minutely and particularly examined, and therefore it is to be supposed, that in the plays which are condemned there is much to be praised, and in those which are praised much to be condemned.

The part of criticism in which the whole succession After the labours of all the editors, I found many of editors has laboured with the greatest diligence, passages which appeared to me likely to obstruct the which has occasioned the most arrogant ostentation, greater number of readers, and thought it my duty to and excited the keenest acrimony, is the emendation facilitate their passage. It is impossible for an ex- of corrupted passages, to which the public attention positor not to write too little for some, and too much having been first drawn by the violence of the confor others. He can only judge what is necessary by tention between Pope and Theobald, has been conhis own experience; and how long soever he may de-tinued by the persecution, which, with a kind of conliberate, will at last explain many lines which the spiracy, has been since raised against all the publearned will think impossible to be mistaken, and lishers of Shakspeare. omit many for which the ignorant will want his help. These are censures merely relative, and must be quietly endured. I have endeavoured to be neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and hope that I have made my author's meaning accessible to many who before were frightened from perusing him, and contributed something to the public, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure.

That many passages have passed in a state of depravation through all the editions is indubitably certain; of these, the restoration is only to be attempted by collation of copies, or sagacity of conjecture. The collator's province is safe and easy, the conjecturer's perilous and difficult. Yet as the greater part of the plays are extant only in one copy, the peril must not be avoided, nor the difficulty refused.

Of the readings which this emulation of amendment has hitherto produced, some from the labours of every publisher I have advanced into the text; those are to be considered as in my opinion sufficiently supported; some I have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous; some I have left in the notes without censure or approbation, as resting in equipoise between objection and defence; and some, which seemed specious but not right, I have inserted with a subsequent animadversion.

Having classed the observations of others, I was at last to try what I could substitute for their mistakes, and how I could supply their omissions. I collated such copies as I could procure, and wished for more, but have not found the collectors of these rarities very communicative. Of the editions which chance or kindness put into my hands I have given an enumeration, that I may not be blamed for neglecting what I had not the power to do.

The complete explanation of an author not systematic and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are suppressed, must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs, too minute to attract the notice of law, such as modes of dress, formalities of conversation, rules of visits, disposition of furniture, and practices of ceremony, which naturally find places in familiar dialogue, are so fugitive and unsubstantial, that they are not easily retained or recovered. What can be known will be collected by chance, from the recesses of obscure and obsolete papers, perused commonly with some other view. Of this knowledge every man has some, and none has much; but when an author has engaged the public attention, those who can add any thing to his illustration, communicate their dis coveries, and time produces what had eluded diligence. To time I have been obliged to resign many pas- By examining the old copies, I soon found that sages, which, though I did not understand them, will the latter publishers, with all their boasts of diligence, perhaps hereafter be explained, having, I hope, illus-suffered many passages to stand unauthorized, and trated some, which others have neglected or mistaken, contented themselves with Rowe's regulation of the sometimes by short remarks, or marginal directions, such as every editor has added at his will, and often by comments more laborious than the matter will seem to deserve; but that which is most difficult is not always most important, and to an editor nothing is a trifle by which his author is obscure.

text, even where they knew it to be arbitrary, and with a little consideration might have found it to be wrong. Some of these alterations are only the ejection of a word for one that appeared to him more elegant or more intelligible. These corruptions I have often silently rectified; for the history of our lan

eye steadily fixed upon evanescent atoms, or a discursive mind upon evanescent truth.

The same liberty has been taken with a few particles, or other words of slight effect. I have sometimes inserted or omitted them without notice. I have done that sometimes which the other editors have done always, and which indeed the state of the text may sufficiently justify.

The greater part of readers, instead of blaming us

guage, and the true force of our words, can only be preserved, by keeping the text of authors free from adulteration. Others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that some liberties may be easily permitted. But this practice I have not suffered to proceed far, hav-for passing trifles, will wonder that on mere trifles ing restored the primitive diction wherever it could so much labour is expended, with such importance for any reason be preferred. of debate, and such solemnity of diction. To these The emendations, which comparison of copies sup-I answer with confidence, that they are judging of an plied, I have inserted in the text; sometimes, where the improvement was slight, without notice, and sometimes with an account of the reasons of the change. Conjecture, though it be sometimes unavoidable, I have not wantonly nor licentiously indulged. It has been my settled principle, that the reading of the ancient books is probably true, and therefore is not to be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity, or mere improvement of the sense. For though much credit is not due to the fidelity, nor any to the judgment of the first publishers, yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to read it night, than we who read it only by imagination. But it is evident that they have often made strange mistakes by ignorance or negligence, and that therefore something may be properly attempted by criticism, keeping the middle way between presumption and timidity.

Such criticism I have attempted to practise, and where any passage appeared inextricably perplexed, have endeavoured to discover how it may be recalled to sense, with least violence. But my first labour is, always to turn the old text on every side, and try if there be any interstice, through which light can find its way; nor would Huetius himself condemn me, as refusing the trouble of research, for the ambition of alteration. In this modest industry, I have not been unsuccessful. I have rescued many lines from the violations of temerity, and secured many scenes from the inroads of correction. I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honourable to save a citizen, than to kill an enemy, and have been more careful to protect than to attack.

art which they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism, more useful, happier, or wiser.

As I practised conjecture more, I learned to trust it less; and after I had printed a few plays, resolved to insert none of my own readings in the text. Upon this caution I now congratulate myself, for every day increases my doubt of my emendation.

Since I have confined my imagination to the margin, it must not be considered as very reprehensible, if I have suffered it to play some freaks in its own dominion. There is no danger in conjecture, if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those changes may be safely offered, which are not considered even by him that offers them as necessary or safe.

If my readings are of little value, they have not been ostentatiously displayed or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer notes, for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment. The work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence, ignorance, and asinine tastelessness of the former editors, shewing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing something, which to superficial readers would seem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the true reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding with loud acclamations on the discovery, and a sober wish for the advancement and prosperity of genuine criticism.

All this may be done, and perhaps done sometimes without impropriety. But I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right. The justness of a happy restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied to criticism, quod dubitas ne feceris.

I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts, though I believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority. Some of those which are divided in the later editions have no division in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no division in the preceding copies. The settled mode of the theatre requires four intervals in the play, but few, if any, of our author's compositions can be properly distributed in that manner. An act is so To dread the shore which he sees spread with much of the drama as passes without intervention of wrecks, is natural to the sailor. I had before my eye, time, or change of place. A pause makes a new act. so many critical adventures ended in miscarriage, that In every real, and therefore in every imitative action, caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every the intervals may be more or fewer, the restriction of page wit struggling with its own sophistry, and learnfive acts being accidental and arbitrary. This Shak-ing confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was speare knew, and this he practised; his plays were written, and at first printed in one unbroken continuity, and ought now to be exhibited with short pauses, interposed as often as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to pass. This method would at once quell a thousand absurdities.

In restoring the author's works to their integrity, 1 have considered the punctuation as wholly in my power; for what could be their care of colons and commas, who corrupted words and sentences? Whatever could be done by adjusting points, is therefore silently performed, in some plays with much diligence, in others with less; it is hard to keep a busy

forced to censure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossessing their emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may be by some other editor defended and established.

"Critics I saw, that others' names efface,

And fix their own, with labour, in the place;
Their own, like others, soon their place resign'd,
Or disappear'd, and left the first behind."-POPE.

That a conjectural critic should often be mistaken,
cannot be wonderful, either to others, or himself,
it be considered, that in his art there is no system,
no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates

B

subordinate positions. His chance of error is renewed explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parties connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise against it.

let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theo bald and of Pope. Let him read on through bright ness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue, and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book which he has too diligently studied.

Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and in its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer.

Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world; nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised so many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the Bishop of Aleria to English Bentley. The critics on ancient authors have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the editor of It is not very grateful to consider how little the Shakspeare is condemned to want. They are em- succession of editors has added to this author's power ployed upon grammatical and settled languages, of pleasing. He was read, admired, studied, and whose construction contribute so much to perspi- imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the cuity, that Homer has fewer passages unintelligible improprieties which ignorance and neglect could acthan Chaucer. The words have not only a known cumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and rectified, nor his allusions understood; yet then did confine the choice. There are commonly more manu- Dryden pronounce, "that Shakspeare was the man, scripts than one; and they do not often conspire in who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the same mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Salmasius how little satisfaction his emendations images of nature were still present to him, and he gave him. Illudunt nobis conjecturæ nostræ, quarum drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he denos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices incidimus. scribes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it And Lipsius could complain, that critics were making too. Those, who accuse him to have wanted learn. faults, by trying to remove them, Ut olim vitiis, ita ing, give him the greater commendation; he was nanunc remediis laboratur. And indeed, when mere turally learned; he needed not the spectacles of conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found and Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful saga-her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; city and erudition, are often vague and disputable, like mine or Theobald's.

Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the pub lic expectations, which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight solicitude. Not a single pas. sage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate. In many I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not passed over, with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have said enough, I have said no more. Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or

were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'"

It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary; that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure. But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakspeare, by accident and time; and more than has been suffered by any other writer since the use of types, has been suffered by him through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that superiority of mind, which despised its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preserved, which the critics of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining.

Among these candidates of inferior fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the public: and wish that I could confidently produce my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I should feel little solicitude about the sentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.

Assurance, conveyance, deed. Bent, the utmost degree of any

Cast, to empty, as a pond, to
dismiss or reject.
Cast, cast up, reckoned.
Castilian, an opprobrious term.
Castiliano vulgo, a cant term
of contempt.,
Cataian, some kind of sharper.
Catling, a small lute-string.
made of catgut.
Cavaleroes, airy, gay fellows.
Caviare, a delicacy made of
the roe of sturgeon.
Cautelous, insidious, cautious.
Cease, decease, die, to stop.
Censure, judgment, opinion.
Censure, to judge.
Censured, sentenced, esti-
mated.

Centuries, companies of an
hundred men each.
Ceremonies, honorary orna-
ments, tokens of respect.
Ceremonious, superstitious.
Certes, certainly, in truth.
Cess, measure.

hace, a term at tennis.
Chair, throne.
Chamber, ancient name for
London.

Chamber, a species of great

fa

Clip, to embrace, to infold.
Closely, secretly, privately.
Clout, the white mark at which
archers take aim.
Clown, a licensed jester in
milies.
Clubs, a popular cry on
street-quarrel.
Clutched, grasped.
Coach-fellow, one who draws
with a confederate.
Coasting, conciliatory, invit-
ing.

a

Cobloaf, a crusty, uneven loaf.
Cock, cock-boat.
Cockle, a weed.
Cockled, inshelled like a
cockle.

Cock-shut-time, twilight.
Codling, anciently an imma-
ture apple.

Coffin, the cavity of a raised
pie.

Cog, to falsify, to lie, defraud.
Cognizance, badge or token.
Coigne, corner,
Coil, bustle, stir.
Cold, naked.

Collect, to assemble by obser-
vation.

Collection, corollary, conse

quence.

Collied, black, smutted with
coal.

deceits.

Collier, formerly a term of the
highest reproach.
Colour, pretence.
Colourable, specious.
Colours, appearances,
Colt, to fool, to trick.
Co-mart, a joint bargain.
Combinate, betrothed.
Combine, to bind.
Combined, bound by

ment.

Comforting, aiding.
Commence, to give a
Ding.

our.

Control, to confute.
Convent, to serve or agree.
Convented, cited, summoned.
Conversation, familiar inter-

course, conduct, behaviour.
Converse, interchange.
Conversion, change of condi-
tion.

Convertite, convert.
Convey, to perform slight of

hand, to manage artfully.
Conveyance, theft, fraud.
Convince, to overpower, sub-
due, convict.
Convicted, overpowered, baf-
fled.

Convive, to feast.

Cope, to encounter, to engage.
Cope, covering.
Copped, rising to a cop, or
head.

Copy, theme.
Coragio, an exclamation of en-
couragement.
Corinthian, a wencher.
Corky, dry, withered, husky.
Corners, by-places.
Corollary, surplus.
Coronet, a crown.
Corrigible, corrected.
Costard, the head.

agree-Coster-monger, meanly, mer

cenary.

Cote, to overtake.
begin-Coted, quoted, observed, or
regarded.

Commended, committed.
Commission, authority, power.
Commodity, interest, profit.
Commonty, a comedy.
Compact, made up of
Companion, fellow.
Company, companion.
Comparative, a dealer in com-
parisons.

Compare, comparison.
Compassed, round.
Compassionate, plaintive.
Competitors, confederates or

Cotsale, Cotswood in Glouces-
tershire.

Covered, hollow.

Count, to make account, to
reckon upon.

Count Confect, a specious
nobleman.
Countenance, false appearance,
hypocrisy.

Counterfeit, a likeness, a por-
trait.

Counterpoints, counterpanes.
County, count, earl.
Cower, to sink by bending the
hams.

Cowl-staff, a staff for carrying
a large tub.

Coy, to soothe or stroke.
Coyed, condescended unwil-
lingly.

Composition, contract or bar-Coystril, a coward cock, a
gain, consistency, concor-
dancy.

Composture, composition,com-
post.
Comptible, submissive.
Con, to know.
Conceit, fanciful conception,
thought.

Concent, connected harmony
in general.
Conclusion, determination, re-
solution.

Conclusions, experiments.
Concupy, concupiscence.
Condition, temper, character,
qualities, vocations or incli
nations.
Condolement, sorrow.
Conduct, conductor.
Coney-catched, deceived,
cheated.
Coney-catcher, a cheat, or
sharper.
Confession, profession.
Conject, conjecture.
Conjecture, suspicion.
Confound, to destroy, to ex-
pend, to consume.
Confounded, worn or wasted.

mean or drunken fellow.
Cozier, a tailor or botcher.
Crab, a wild apple.
Crack, dissolution.

Cursed, under the influence of a malediction.

crabbed,

Curst, petulant,
shrewdish, or mischievous,
severe, harsh, vehemently

angry.

Curstness, ill-humour.
Curtail, a cur of little value.
Curtal, a docked horse.
Curtle-ax, or cutlace, a broad-
sword.

Custard-coffin, the crust of a
custard or pie.
Customer, a common woman.
Cut, a horse.

Cyprus, a transparent stuff.
Daff or doff, to do off, to put
aside.

Dally, to play or trifle.
Damn, condemn.

Danger, reach or control.
Dank, wet, rotten.
Danskers, natives of Denmark.
Dare, to challenge or incite.
Dark-house, a house made
gloomy by discontent.
Darkling, in the dark.
Darraign, to arrange, put in
order.

Daub, to disguise.
Daubery, falsehood and impo

sition.

Day bed, a couch.
Day-light, broad-day.
Day-woman, dairy maid.
Dear, best, important, dire.
Dearn, lonely solitary.
Death-tokens, spots appearing
on those infected by the
plague.

Deboshed, debauched.
Decay, misfortunes.
Deceivable, deceptious.
Deck, to cover, a pack.
Decline, to run through fron
first to last.
Declined, the fallen.
Deem, opinion, surmise.
Defcat, destruction.
Defeatures, features, change of
features for the worse.
Defence, art of fencing.
Defend, to forbid.
Defensible, furnishing the
means of defence.
Defiance, refusal.
Deformed, deforming.
Deftly, dexterously, with
adroitness.

Defy, to refuse, to disdain.
Degrees, steps,.

Crack, a boy or child, a boy- Delay, to let slip.
child.
Cranks, windings.
Crants, chants.
Crare, a small trading vessel.
Craven, a degenerate, dispirit-
ed cock.

Craven, mean, cowardly, to
make cowardly.
Create, compounded, or made