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most recondite parts of the sciences: and this was done not so much out of affectation, as the effect of admiration begot by novelty. Then, as to his Style and diction, we may much more justly apply to SHAKSPEARE, what a celebrated writer said of MILTON: Our language funk under him, and was unequal to that greatness of soul which furnished him with fuch glorious conceptions. He therefore frequently uses old words, to give his diction an air of folemnity; as he coins others, to express the novelty and variety of his ideas.

Upon every diftinct species of these obscurities, I have thought it my province to employ a note for the service of my author, and the entertainment of my readers. A few transient remarks too I have not scrupled to intermix, upon the poet's negligences and omissions in point of art; but I have done it always in such a manner, as will testify my deference and veneration for the immortal author. Some cenfurers of Shakspeare, and particularly Mr. Rymer, have taught me to diftinguish betwixt the railer and critich. The outrage of his quotations is so remarkably violent, so pushed beyond all bounds of decency and sober reasoning, that it quite carries over the mark at which it was levelled. Extravagant abuse throws off the edge of the intended disparagement, and turns the madman's weapon into his own bosom. In short, as to Rymer, this is my opinion of him from his criticisms on the tragedies of the last age. He writes with great vivacity, and appears to have been a scholar : but as for his knowledge of the art of poetry, I cannot perceive it was any deeper than his acquaintance with Bossu and Dacier, from whom he has transcribed many of his best reflections. The late Mr. Gildon was one attached to Rymer by a fimilar way of thinking and studies. They were both of that species of criticks who are defirous of displaying their powers rather in finding faults, than in consulting the improvement of the world; the hypercritical part of the science of criticism.

I had not mentioned the modest liberty I have here and there taken of animadverting on my author, but that I was willing to obviate in time the splenetick exaggerations of my adversaries on this head. From past experiments I have reason to be confcious, in what light this attempt may be placed : and that what I call a modest liberty will, by a little of their dexterity, be inverted into downright impudence. From a hundred mean and dishoneft artifices employed to difcredit this edition, and to cry down its editor, I have all the grounds in nature to beware of attacks. But though the malice of wit, joined to the smoothness of verfification, may furnish some ridicule; fact, I hope, will be able to stand its ground against banter and gaiety.

It has been my fate, it seems, as I thought it my duty, to discover some anachronisms in our author; which might have slept in obscurity but for this Restorer, as Mr. Pope is pleased affectionately to style me: as for instance, where Ariftotle is mentioned by Hector in Troilus and Cressida; and Galen, Cato, and Alexander the Great, in Coriolanus. These, in Mr. Pope's opinion, are blunders, which the illiteracy of the first publishers of his works has fathered upon the poet's memory : it not being at all credible, that these could be the errors of any man who had the leaft tincture of a school, or the leaft conversation with such as had. But I have sufficiently proved, in the course of my notes, that such anachronisms were the effect of poetick licence, rather than of ignorance in our poet. And if I may be permitted to ask a modest question by the way, why may not I restore an anachronism really made by our author, as well as Mr. Pope take the privilege to fix others upon him, which he never had it in his head to make; as I may venture to affirm he had not, in the instance of Sir Francis Drake, to which I have spoke in the proper place?

But who shall dare make any words about this freedom of Mr. Pope's towards Shakspeare, if it can be proved, that, in his fits of criticism, he makes no more ceremony with good Homer himself? To try, then, a criticism of his own advancing: in the 8th Book of The Odyssey, where Demodocus fings the episode of the loves of Mars and Venus; and that, upon their being taken in the net by Vulcan,

"

The god of arms

"Muft pay the penalty for lawless charms;"

Mr. Pope is so kind gravely to inform us, "That Homer in this, as in many other places, seems to allude to the laws of Athens, where death was the punishment of adultery." But how is this fignificant observation made out ? Why, who can poffibly object any thing to the contrary ? - Does not Paufanias relate that Draco, the lawgiver to the Athenians, granted impunity to any person that took revenge upon an adulterer ? And was it not also the institution of Solon, that if any one took an adulterer in the fact, he might use him as he pleased? These things are very true: and to fee what a good memory, and found judgment in conjunction, can achieve! though Homer's date is not determined down to a fingle year, yet it is pretty generally agreed that he lived above three hundred years before Draco and Solon: and that, it seems, has made him feem to allude to the very laws, which these two legiflators propounded above three hundred years after. If this inference be not fomething like an anachronism or prolepfis, I will look once more into my lexicons for the true meaning of the words. It appears to me, that fomebody befides Mars and Venus has been caught in a net by this episode: and I could call in other instances, to confirm what treacherous tackle this net-work is, if not cautioufly handled.

How just, notwithstanding, I have been in detecting the anachronisms of my author, and in defending him for the use of them, our late editor seems to think, they should rather have slept in obscurity: and the having discovered them is sneered at, as a fort of wrong-headed sagacity.

The numerous corrections which I have made of the poet's text in my SHAKSPEARE Restored, and which the publick have been so kind to think well of, are, in the appendix of Mr. Pope's last edition, flightingly called various readings, guesses, &c. He confefses to have inserted as many of them as he judged of any the least advantage to the poet; but says, that the whole amounted to about twenty five words: and pretends to have annexed a complete lift of the rest, which were not worth his embracing. Whoever has read my book will, at one glance, see how in both these points veracity is strained, so an injury might be done. Malus, etfi obeffe non pote, tamen cogitat.

Another expedient to make my work appear of a trifling nature, has been an attempt to depreciate literal criticism. To this end, and to pay a servile compliment to Mr. Pope, an anonymous writer has,

• David Mallet. See his poem Of Verbal Criticism, Vol. I. of his works, 12mo. 1759. REED.

like a Scotch pedlar in wit, unbraced his pack on the subject. But, that his virulence might not seem to be leyelled fingly at me, he has done me the honour to join Dr. Bentley in the libel. I was in hopes we should have been both abused with smartness of fatire at least, though not with solidity of argument; that it might have been worth some reply in defence of the science attacked. But I may fairly say of this author, as Falstaff does of Poins: Hang him, baboon! his wit is as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there is no more conceit in him, than is in a MALLET. If it be not a prophanation to set the opinion of the divine Longinus against such a fcribbler, he tells us expressly, "That to make a judgment upon words (and writings) is the most confummate fruit of much experience.” ἡ γαρ τῶν λόγων κρίσις πολλῆς ἔςι πείρας τελευταῖον ἐπιγένημα. Whenever words are depraved, the sense of course must be corrupted; and thence the reader is betrayed into a false meaning.

If the Latin and Greek languages have received the greatest advantages imaginable from the labours of the editors and criticks of the two last ages, by whose aid and assistance the grammarians have been enabled to write infinitely better in that art than even the preceding grammarians, who wrote when those tongues flourished as living languages; I should account it a peculiar happiness, that, by the faint essay I have made in this work, a path might be chalked out for abler hands, by which to derive the same advantages to our own tongue; a tongue, which, though it wants none of the fundamental qualities of an universal language, yet, as a noble writer says, lisps and stammers as in its cradle; and has produced little more towards its polishing than complaints of its barbarity.

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