of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to fatisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impoffible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no flight folicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate. In many I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confeffed the repulse. I have not passed over, with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that, where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have faid enough, I have faid no more.

Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who defires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and Pope. Let him read on through brightness and

d 3

and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preferve his comprehenfion of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness; and read the commentators.

Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he fufpects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehenfion of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is difcerned no longer.

It is not very grateful to confider how little the fucceffion of editors has added to this authour's power of pleasing. He was read, admired, studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allufions understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce that Shakespeare was the man, "who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, " had the largest and most comprehenfive foul. All "the images of nature were still present to him, " and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : "When he describes any thing, you more than fee

" it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to " have wanted learning, give him the greater com"mendation: he was naturally learned: he needed " not the spectacles of books to read nature; he " looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot

say he is every where alike; were he so, I should "do him injury to compare him with the greatest " of mankind. He is many times flat and infipid; " his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his fe"rious swelling into bombast. But he is always

great, when some great occasion is presented to "him: No man can say, he ever had a fit subject " for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high "above the rest of poets,

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Quantum lenta folent inter viburna cupreffi."

It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary; that his language should become obfolete, or his fentiments obfcure. But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by accident and time; and more than has been fuffered by any other writer fince the use of types, has been fuffered by him through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that fuperiority of mind, which despised its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preferved, which the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining.

Among these candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I should feel little solicitude about the fentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.

AND

INCOMPARABLE PAIRE

OF BRETHREN,

WILLIAM

Earle of PEMBROKE, &c. Lord Chamberlaine to the King's most excellent Majestie.

AND

PHILIP

Earle of MONTGOMERY, &c. Gentleman of his Majesty's Bed-Chamber. Both Knights of the most Noble Order of the Garter, and our fingular good LORDS.

Right Honourable,

HILST we study to be thankful in our received from your L. L. we are falne upon the ill fortune, to mingle two the most divers things that can be, feare, and rashoesse; rasinesse in the enterprize, and feare of the successe. For, when we value the places your H. H. fustaine, wee cannot but know their dignity greater, than to descend to the reading of these trifles: and, while we name them trifles, we have depriv'd ourselves of the Defence of our Dedication. But since your L. L. have been pleas'd to thinke these trifles fomething, heretofore; and have profequuted both them, and their Author living, with so much favour: we hope, (that they out-living him, and he not having the fate, common

W particular, for the many favors we have