who before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to
the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure.

The complete explanation of an author not systematick and consequential,
but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and light hints,
is not to be expected from any single scholiast. All personal reflections,
when names are suppressed, must be in a few years irrecoverably
obliterated; and customs, too minute to attract the notice of law, such as
modes of dress, formalities of conversation, rules of visits, disposition
of furniture, and practices of ceremony, which naturally find places in
familiar dialogue, are so fugitive and unsubstantial, that they are not
easily retained or recovered. What can be known will be collected by
chance, from the recesses of obscure and obsolete papers, perused commonly
with some other view. Of this knowledge every man has some, and none has
much; but when an author has engaged the publick attention, those who can
add any thing to his illustration, communicate their discoveries, and time
produces what had eluded diligence.

To time I have been obliged to resign many passages, which, though I did
not understand them, will perhaps hereafter be explained, having, I hope,
illustrated some, which others have neglected or mistaken, sometimes by
short remarks, or marginal directions, such as every editor has added at
his will, and often by comments more laborious than the matter will seem
to deserve; but that which is most difficult is not always most important,
and to an editor nothing is a trifle by which his author is obscured.

The poetical beauties or defects I have not been very diligent to observe.
Some plays have more, and some fewer judicial observations, not in
proportion to their difference of merit, but because I gave this part of
my design to chance and to caprice. The reader, I believe, is seldom
pleased to find his opinion anticipated; it is natural to delight more in
what we find or make, than in what we receive. Judgment, like other
faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by
submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use
of a table-book. Some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part
is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have therefore
shewn so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover the
rest.

To the end of most plays I have added sho