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lations of temerity, and secured many scenes from the inroads of correction. I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honourable to fave a citizen, than to kill an enemy, and have been more careful to protect than to attack.

I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts, though I believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority. Some of those which are divided in the later editions have no division in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no divifion in the preceding copies. The fettled mode of the theatre requires four intervals in the play, but few, if any, of our authour's compofitions can be properly diftributed in that manner. An act is fo much of the drama as passes without intervention of time or change of place. A pause makes a new act. In every real, and therefore in every imitative action, the intervals may be more or fewer, the restriction of five acts being accidental and arbitrary. This ShakeSpeare knew, and this he practised; his plays were written, and at first printed in one unbroken continuity, and ought now to be exhibited with short pauses, interpofed as often as the scene is changed, or any confiderable time is required to pass. This method would at once quell a thousand absurdities.

In restoring the authour's works to their integrity, I have confidered the punctuation as wholly in my power for what could be their care of colons and commas, who corrupted words and fentences. Whatever could be done by adjusting points is therefore filently

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filently performed, in some plays with much diligence, in others with less; it is hard to keep a bufy eye steadily fixed upon evanefcent atoms, or a discursive mind upon evanefcent truth.

The fame liberty has been taken with a few particles, or other words of flight effect. I have sometimes inserted or omitted them without notice. I have done that sometimes, which the other editors have done always, and which indeed the state of the text may sufficiently justify.

The greater part of readers, instead of blaming us for passing trifles, will wonder that on mere trifles so much labour is expended, with such importance of debate, and fuch folemnity of diction. To these I answer with confidence, that they are judging of an art which they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism, more useful, happier or wifer.

As I practised conjecture more, I learned to trust it less; and after I had printed a few plays, resolved to infert none of my own readings in the text. Upon this caution I now congratulate myself, for every day encreases my doubt of my emendations.

Since I have confined my imagination to the mar gin, it must not be confidered as very reprehensible, if I have suffered it to play some freaks in its own dominion. There is no danger in conjecture, if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those changes may be safely offered, which VOL. I.

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are not confidered even by him that offers them as neceffary or fafe.

If my readings are of little value, they have not been oftentatioufly displayed or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer notes, for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment. The work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence, ignorance, and asinine tastelessiness of the former editors, and shewing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing something, which to superficial readers would feem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the true reading, with a long paraphrafe, and concluding with loud acclamations on the discovery, and a fober wish for the advancement and profperity of genuine criticifm.

All this may be done, and perhaps done fometimes without impropriety. But I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right. The juftness of a happy restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied to criticifm, quod dubitas ne feceris.

To dread the shore which he fees spread with wrecks, is natural to the failor. I had before my eye, so many critical adventures ended in miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every page Wit struggling with its own fophiftry, and Learning

Learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossessing their emendations, how foon the fame fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may be by some other editor defended and established.

Criticks, I faw, that other's names efface,

And fix their own, with labour, in the place;
Their own, like others, foon their place resign'd,
Or disappear'd, and left the first bebind.

POPE.

That a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others or himself, if it be confidered, that in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a flight misapprehenfion of a phrafe, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculoufly; and when he succeeds beft, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests' another will always be able to difpute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The allurements 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 confider what objections may rise against it.

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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 perfpicuity, 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 manufcripts than one; and they do not often conspire in the fame mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to Salmafius how little fatisfaction his emendations gave him. Illudunt nobis conjecturæ noftræ, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices incidimus. And Lipfius could complain, that criticks were making faults, by trying to remove them, Ut clim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur. And indeed, where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipfius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often vague and difputable, 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

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