he will not allow to be great enough to be rank'd with him; and challenges the names of Sophocles, Euripides, and Æschylus, nay all Greece and Rome at once, to equal him: And (which is very particular) exprefly vindicates him from the imputation of wanting Art, not enduring that all his excellencies shou'd be attributed to Nature. It is remarkable too, that the praise he gives him in his Discoveries seems to proceed from a personal kindness; he tells us that he lov'd the man, as well as honoured his memory; celebrates the honesty, openness, and frankness of his temper; and only diftinguishes, as he reasonably ought, between the real merit of the Author, and the filly and derogatory applauses of the Players. Ben Johnson might indeed be sparing in his Commendations (tho' certainly he is not so in this instance) partly from his own nature, and partly from judgment. For men of judgment think they do any man more service in praising him justly,than lavishly. I say, I would fain believe they were Friends, tho' the violence and illbreeding of their Followers and Flatterers were enough to give rise to the contrary report. I would hope that it may be with Parties, both in Wit and State, as with those Monsters described by the Poets; and that their Heads at least may have something fomething humane, tho' their Bodies and Tails are wild beasts and ferpents.

As I believe that what I have mentioned gave rise to the opinion of Shakespear's want of learning; so what has continued it down to us may have been the many blunders and illiteracies of the first Publishers of his works. In these Editions their ignorance shines almost in every page; nothing is more common than Actus tertia, Exit Omnes, Enter three Witches folus: Their French is as bad as their Latin, both in conftruction and spelling: Their very Welsh is false. Nothing is more likely than that those palpable blunders of Hector's quoting Aristotle, with others of that grofs kind, sprung from the same root. It not being at all credible that these could be the errors of any man who had the least tincture of a School, or the least conversation with such as had. Ben Johnson (whom they will not think partial to him) allows him at at least to have had some Latin; which is utterly inconsistent with mistakes like these. Nay the constant blunders in proper names of persons and places, are such as must have proceeded from a man, who had not fo much as read any history, in any language: fo could not be Shakespear's.

I shall now lay before the reader fome of those almost innumerable Errors, which have risen from one fource, the ignorance

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of the Players, both as his actors, and as his editors. When the nature and kinds of these are enumerated and confidered, I dare to fay that not Shakespear only, but Aristotle or Cicero, had their works undergone the fame fate, might have appear'd to want sense as well as learning.

It is not certain that any one of his Plays was published by himself. During the time of his employment in the Theatre, several of his pieces were printed separately in Quarto. What makes me think that most of these were not published by him, is the exceffive carelessness of the press: every page is so scandalously false spelled, and almost all the learned or unusual words so intolerably mangled, that it's plain there either was no Corrector to the press at all, or one totally illiterate If any were fupervised by himself, I should fancy the two parts of Henry the ath, and Midsummer-Night's Dream might have been fo: because I find no other printed with any exactness; and (contrary to the rest) there is very little variation in all the subsequent editions of them. There are extant two Prefaces, to the first quarto edition of Troilus and Creffida in 1609, and to that of Othello; by which it appears, that the first was publish'd without his knowledge or consent, and even before it was acted, so late as seven or eight years before he died: and that the lat

ter

ter was not printed 'till after his death. The whole number of genuine plays which we have been able to find printed in his life-time, amounts but to eleven. And of some of these, we meet with two or more editions by different printers, each of which has whole heaps of trash different from the other: which I should fancy was occafion'd by their being taken from different copies, belonging to different Play-houses.

The folio edition (in which all the plays we now receive as his, were first collected) was published by two Players, Heming and Condell, in 1623, seven years after his decease. They declare, that all the other editions were stolen and furreptitious, and affirm theirs to be purged from the errors of the former. This is true as to the literal errors, and no other; for in all respects else it is far worse than the Quarto's:

First, because the additions of trifling and bombast passages are in this edition far more numerous. For whatever had been added, fince those Quarto's, by the actors, or had stolen from their mouths into the written parts, were from thence conveyed into the printed text, and all stand charged upon the Author. He himself complained of this usage in Hamlet, where he wishes that those who play the Clowns wou'd speak no more than is fet down for them. (Act. 3. Sc. 4.) Sc. 4.) But as a proof that he could not escape it, in the old editions of Romeo and Juliet there is no hint of a great number of the mean conceits and ribaldries now to be found there. In others, the low scenes of Mobs, Plebeians and Clowns, are vastly shorter than at present: And I have seen one in particular (which feems to have belonged to the play-house, by having the parts divided with lines, and the Actors names in the margin) where several of those very passages were added in a written hand, which are fince to be found in the folio.

In the next place, a number of beautiful passages which are extant in the first single editions, are omitted in this: as it seems, without any other reason, than their willingness to shorten fome scenes: These men (as it was faid of Procrustes) either lopping, or stretching an Author, to make him just fit for their Stage.

This edition is said to be printed from the Original Copies; I believe they meant thofe which had lain ever fince the Author's days in the play-house, and had from time to time been cut, or added to, arbitrarily. It appears that this edition, as well as the Quarto's, was printed (at least partly) from no better copies than the Prompter's Book, or Piece-meal Parts written out for the use of the actors: For in some places their very