stinct. His chief assailants are the authors of
The Canons of Criticism, and of The Revisal of Shakespeare's Text; of
whom one ridicules his errours with airy petulance, suitable enough to
the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy
malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or incendiary.
The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter,
and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to
leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with
his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid
that "girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny
battle;" when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy
in Macbeth:

A falcon tow'ring in his pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.

Let me, however, do them justice. One is a wit, and one a scholar[20].
They have both shown acuteness sufficient in the discovery of faults,
and have both advanced some probable interpretations of obscure
passages; but when they aspire to conjecture and emendation, it appears
how falsely we all estimate our own abilities, and the little which they
have been able to perform might have taught them more candour to the
endeavours of others.

Before Dr. Warburton's edition, Critical Observations on Shakespeare had
been published by Mr. Upton[21], a man skilled in languages, and
acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of
genius or nicety of taste. Many of his explanations are curious and
useful, but he, likewise, though he professed to oppose the licentious
confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to
restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill seconded by
his skill. Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a
successful experiment, swells into a theorist, and the laborious
collator at some unlucky moment frolicks in conjecture.

Critical, historical, and explanatory notes have been, likewise,
published upon Shakespeare by Dr. Grey, whose diligent perusal of the
old English writers has enabled him to make some useful observations.
What he undertook he has well enough performed; but as he neither
attempts judicial or emendatory criticism, he employs rather his memory
than his sagacity. It were to be wished that all would endeavour to
imitate his modesty, who have not been able to surpass his knowledge.

I can say, w