Perhaps I may not be more cenfured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the publick expectations, which at laft I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to fatisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by defign 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 flight folicitude. Not a single pafsage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore: or obfcure, 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 confeffed the repulse. I have not passed over, with affected fuperiority, 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 neceffary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have faid enough, I have faid no more. Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who defires 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 explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehenfion 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 furveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehenfion of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is difcerned no longer. It is not very grateful to confider how little the succession of editors has added to this author's power of pleasing. He was read, admired, studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could ac cumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce, " that Shakespeare was the man, " who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, " had the largest and most comprehenfive foul. All "the images of nature were still present to him, and VOL. I. " he [E] " he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when " he describes any thing, you more than see it, you "feel it too. Thofe, who accuse him to have wanted " learning, give him the greater commendation : he "was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles " of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and " found her there. I cannot say he is every where "alike; were he so, I should do him injury to com pare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and infipid; his comick wit de. ""generating into clenches, his serious swelling into " bombaft. But he is always great, when some great "occafion is presented to him: no man can fay, he " ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then " raise himself as high above the rest of poets, - Quantum lenta folent inter viburna cuprefssi.” It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary; that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obfcure. But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which muft happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by accident and time; and more than has been fuffered by any other writer fince the use of types, has been fuffered by him through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that fuperiority of mind, which despised its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preserved, which the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining. Among Among these candidates of inferior fame, I am now to ftand the judgment of the publick; 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 folicitude about the fentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned. Of what has been performed in this revifal, an account is given in the following pages by Mr. Steevens, who might have spoken both of his own diligence and sagacity, in terms of greater self-approbation, without deviating from modesty or truth. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE EADER. T : HE want of adherence to the old copies, which has been complained of, in the text of every modern republication of Shakespeare, is fairly deducible from Mr. Rowe's inattention to one of the first duties of an editor. Mr. Rowe did not print from the earliest and most correct, but from the most remote and inaccurate of the four folios. Between the years 1623 and 1685 (the dates of the first and last) the errors in every play, at leaft, were trebled. Several pages in each of these ancient editions have been examined, that the affertion might come more fully supported. It may be added, that as every fresh editor continued to make the text of his predeceffor the ground-work of his own (never collating but where difficulties occurred) some deviations from the originals had been handed down, the number of which are leffened in the impression before us, as it has been constantly compared with the most authentic copies, whether collation was absolutely necessary for the recovery of fenfe, or not. The person who undertook this task may have failed by |