m on his
authour, so extensive, that little can be added, and so exact, that
little can be disputed, every editor has an interest to suppress, but
that every reader would demand its insertion.

_Pope_ was succeeded by _Theobald_, a man of narrow comprehension and
small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius,
with little of the artificial light of learning, but zealous for
minute accuracy, and not negligent in pursuing it. He collated
the ancient copies, and rectified many errours. A man so anxiously
scrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he did
was commonly right.

In his report of copies and editions he is not to be trusted, without
examination. He speaks sometimes indefinitely of copies, when he has
only one. In his enumeration of editions, he mentions the two first
folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle authority; but
the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all others, and that the
rest only deviate from it by the printer's negligence. Whoever has
any of the folios has all, excepting those diversities which mere
reiteration of editions will produce. I collated them all at the
beginning, but afterwards used only the first.

Of his notes I have generally retained those which he retained himself
in his second edition, except when they were confuted by subsequent
annotators, or were too minute to merit preservation. I have sometimes
adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting the panegyrick
in which he celebrated himself for his atchievement. The exuberant
excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, his triumphant
exultations over _Pope_ and _Rowe_ I have sometimes suppressed, and
his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but I have
in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself, for the
reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may
justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.

_Theobald_, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and faithless, thus
petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having _Pope_ for his
enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this
undertaking. So willingly does the world support those who solicite
favour, against those who command reverence; and so easily is he
praised, whom no man can envy.

Our authour fell then into the hands of Sir _Thomas Hanmer,_ the
_Oxford_ editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature
for such studies.