facilitate their passage. It is impossible for an expofitor not to write too little for fome, and too much for others. He can only judge what is necessary by his own experience; and how long foever he may deliberate, will at last explain many lines which the learned will think impossible to be mistaken, and 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 fuperfluoufly copious, nor fcrupulously reserved, and hope that I have made my author's meaning acceffible to many, who before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure,

The complete explanation of an author not syste matick and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in cafual 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, fuch as modes of dress, formalities of conversation, rules of visits, difposition 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 obfcure and obsolete papers, perused commonly with fome other view. Of this knowledge every man has fome, and none has much; but when an author has engaged the publick attention, those who can add any thing to his illustration, communicate their discoveries, and time produces what had eluded diligence.

To time I have been obliged to resign many pafsages, which, though I did not understand them, will perhaps hereafter be explained, having, I hope, illustrated some, which others have neglected or miftaken, 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 feem 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 obfcured.

The poetical beauties or defects I have not been very diligent to observe. Some plays have more, and fome fewer judicial observations, not in proportion to their difference of merit, but because I gave 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 fubmiffion 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 therefore shewn so much as may enable the candidate of criticisin to discover the reft.

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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 opinion; but I have not, by any affectation of fingularity, 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 praifed, and in these which are praised much to be condemned.

The part of criticisin in which the whole fucceffion of editors has laboured with the greatest diligence, which has occafioned the most arrogant oftentation, and excited the keenest acrimony, is the emendation of corrupted passages, to which the publick attention having been first drawn by the violence of the contention between Pope and Theobald, has been continued by the perfecution, which, with a kind of confpiracy, has been fince raised against all the publishers of Shakespeare.

That many passages have passed in a state of de pravation through all the editions is indubitably certain; of these the restoration is only to be attempted by collation of copies, or fagacity 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, fome from the labours

of

of every publisher I have advanced into the text; those are to be confidered as in my opinion fufficiently supported; fome I have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous; some I have left in the notes without cenfure or approbation, as refting in equipoise between objection and defence; and fome, which seemed specious but not right, I have inferted with a fubfequent animadverfion.

Having classed the observations of others, I was at last to try what I could substitute for their mistakes, and how I could fupply their omiffions. 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.

By examining the old copies, I foon found that the later publishers, with all their boasts of diligence, fuffered many passages to stand unauthorized, and contented themselves with Rowe's regulation of the text, even where they knew it to be arbitrary, and with a little confideration 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 filently rectified; for the history of our language, and the true force of our words, can only be preferved, by keeping the text of authors free from adulteration. Others, and those very frequent, fmoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these

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these I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inferted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that fome liberties may be easily permitted. But this practice I have not fuffered to proceed far, having restored the primitive diction wherever it could for any reafon be preferred.

The emendations, which comparison of copies supplied, 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 fake 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 right, 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 fomething may be properly attempted by criticifm, keeping the middle way between prefumption and timidity.

Such criticism I have attempted to practise, and,

where any passage appeared inextricably perplexed, haye