ments 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 consider what objections may
rise against it.

Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world;
nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised so
many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from
the Bishop of _Aleria_ to English _Bentley_. The criticks on ancient
authours have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances,
which the editor of _Shakespeare_ is condemned to want. They are
employed upon grammatical and settled languages, whose construction
contributes so much to perspicuity, 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 same mistakes. Yet _Scaliger_ could confess
to _Salmasius_ how little satisfaction his emendations gave him.
_Illudunt nobis conjectureae nostrae, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam
in meliores codices incidimus_. And _Lipsius_ could complain, that
criticks were making faults, by trying to remove them, _Ut olim
vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur_. And indeed, where mere
conjecture is to be used, the emendations of _Scaliger_ and _Lipsius_,
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 answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of
knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know
not what to demand, or those who demand by design 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 slight
solicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me
corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure, 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