e author published his own works, we should have sat quietly down
to disentangle his intricacies, and clear his obscurities; but now we
tear what we cannot loose, and eject what we happen not to understand.

The faults are more than could have happened without the
concurrence of many causes. The stile of _Shakespeare_ was in itself
ungrammatical, perplexed and obscure; his works were transcribed for
the players by those who may be supposed to have seldom understood
them; they were transmitted by copiers equally unskilful, who still
multiplied errours; they were perhaps sometimes mutilated by the
actors, for the sake of shortening the speeches; and were at last
printed without correction of the press.

In this state they remained, not as Dr. _Warburton_ supposes, because
they were unregarded, but because the editor's art was not yet applied
to modern languages, and our ancestors were accustomed to so much
negligence of _English_ printers, that they could very patiently
endure it. At last an edition was undertaken by _Rowe_; not because a
poet was to be published by a poet, for _Rowe_ seems to have thought
very little on correction or explanation, but that our authour's works
might appear like those of his fraternity, with the appendages of a
life and recommendatory preface. _Rowe_ has been clamorously blamed
for not performing what he did not undertake, and it is time that
justice be done him, by confessing, that though he seems to have had
no thought of corruption beyond the printer's errours, yet he has made
many emendations, if they were not made before, which his successors
have received without acknowledgement, and which, if they had produced
them, would have filled pages and pages with censures of the stupidity
by which the faults were committed, with displays of the absurdities
which they involved, with ostentatious expositions of the new reading,
and self congratulations on the happiness of discovering it.

Of _Rowe_, as of all the editors, I have preserved the preface, and
have likewise retained the authour's life, though not written with
much elegance or spirit; it relates however what is now to be known,
and therefore deserves to pass through all succeeding publications.

The nation had been for many years content enough with Mr. _Rowe's_
performance, when Mr. _Pope_ made them acquainted with the true state
of _Shakespeare's_ text, shewed that it was extremely corrupt, and
gave reason to hope that there wer