printed without correction of
the press[18].

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 author'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 acknowledgment, 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.

As of the other editors I have preserved the prefaces, I have likewise
borrowed the author's life from Howe, 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, showed that it was extremely corrupt, and gave
reason to hope that there were means of reforming it. He collated the
old copies, which none had thought to examine before, and restored many
lines to their integrity; but, by a very compendious criticism, he
rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of amputation than of
cure.

I know not why he is commended by Dr. Warburton for distinguishing the
genuine from the spurious plays. In this choice he exerted no judgment
of his own; the plays which he received were given by Hemings and
Condel, the first editors; and those which he rejected, though,
according to the licentiousness of the press in those times, they were
printed during Shakespeare's life, with his name, had been omitted by
his fri