emendations and puzzled out explanations: he had not
set to work seriously on the complete text. Since 1740, when he published
the _Vindication of the Essay on Man_, his critical and polemical talents
had been devoted to the service of Pope. To judge from what he says in his
Preface, his project of an edition of Shakespeare might have been
abandoned had not Pope persuaded him to proceed with it by the offer of
making it appear their joint work. Pope had nothing to do with it, for it
was not begun till after his death. But it was a cruel fate that what
professed to be a new edition of his "Shakespeare" should really be
founded on Theobald's. The knowledge of Theobald's use of the Quartos and
Folios led Warburton to commit a detestable quibble on his title-page.
There is said to be no evidence that Warburton himself had consulted them.
Yet the statement that his text is "collated with all the former editions"
is not absolutely without the bounds of truth: Theobald had consulted
them, and Warburton does not say that he had consulted them himself. What
Warburton did was to give full play to his talent for emendation, and to
indulge what Johnson called his rage for saying something when there is
nothing to be said. Yet we are too prone to depreciate Warburton. He has
prejudiced his reputation by his arrogance and his contemptuous malignity;
but we do him an injustice if we endeavour to gauge his merit only by
comparing his edition with those of his immediate predecessors. No early
editor of Shakespeare has gained more than Theobald and suffered more than
Warburton by the custom of attributing the whole merit of an edition to
him whose name is on the title page. When we read their correspondence and
see their editions in the making, it is not difficult to realise what
Johnson meant when he said that Warburton as a critic would make "two and
fifty Theobalds, cut into slices."

Samuel Johnson.

Johnson's Preface is here reprinted from the edition of 1777, the last to
appear in his lifetime. The more important of the few alterations made on
the original Preface of 1765 are pointed out in the notes.

In 1745 Johnson had published his _Miscellaneous Observations on the
Tragedy of Macbeth: with Remarks on Sir Thomas Hanmer's Edition of
Shakespeare. To which is affixed Proposals for a new Edition of
Shakespeare, with a Specimen._ As Warburton's edition was expected, this
anonymous scheme met with no encouragement, and Johnson