carriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every page wit struggling with its own sophistry, and learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was disposseffing their emendations, how foon 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.

"Criticks I faw, that other's names efface,
"And fix their own, with labour, in the place;
"Their own, like others, foon their place resign'd,
"Or disappear'd, and left the first behind." POPE.

That a conjectural critick should often be miftaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others, or himself, if it be confidered, that in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates fubordinate positions. His chance of error is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a flight misapprehenfion of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts 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 confider what objections may rise againft it.

Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world; nor is it my intention to

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depreciate a study, that has exercised so many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the Bishop of Aleria 5 to English Bentley. The criticks on ancient authors have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the editor of Shakspeare is condemned to want. They are employed upon grammatical and fettled languages, whose construction contributes so much to perfpicuity, that Homer has fewer passages unintelligible than Chaucer. The words have not only a known regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and confine the choice. There are commonly more manuscripts than one; and they do not often conspire in the fame mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to Salmafius how little fatisfaction his emendations gave him. Illudunt nobis conjecturæ, quarum nos pudet, pofteaquam in meliores codices incidimus. And Lipfius could complain, that criticks were making faults, by trying to remove them, Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur. And indeed, when mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipfius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity 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

publick expectations, which at last I have not anfwered. 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 design what they think impoffible to be done. I have indeed difappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no flight folicitude. Not a single passage 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 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 faid enough, I have said no more.

Notes are often neceffary, but they are neceffary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakspeare, 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 floop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obfcurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preferve his comprehenfion of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceafed, let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators.

Particular paffages 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 fufpects 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 in its true proportions; a close approach shows the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is difcerned no longer.

It is not very grateful to confider how little the fucceffion 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 accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allufions understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce, " that Shakspeare 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 he drew them not laborioufly, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those, 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 compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and infipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his ferious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occafion 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 cupreffi."

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 must happen to all, has happened to Shakspeare, 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 these candidates of inferior fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the publick; and with 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.

6

Of what has been performed in this revisal, an • This paragraph relates to the edition published in 1773, by George Steevens, Esq. MALONE.