The The dulgence to my private sense or conjecture. method taken in this edition will shew itself. various readings are fairly put in the margin, so that every one may compare them; and those I have preferred into the text, are constantly ex fide codicum, upon authority. The alterations or additions which Shakespear himself made, are taken notice of as they occur. Some suspected passages which are excessively bad (and which seem interpolations, by being so inserted that one can entirely omit them without any chasm, or deficience in the context) are degraded to the bottom of the page; with an asterisk referring to the places of their insertion. The scenes are marked so distinctly, that every removal of place is specified; which is more necessary in this author than in any other, since he shifts them more frequently and sometimes without attending to this particular, the reader would have met with obscurities. The more obsolete or unusual words are explained, Some of the most shining passages are distinguished by commas in the margin: and where the beauty lay not in particulars, but in the whole, a star is prefixed to the scene. This seems to me a shorter and less ostentatious method of performing the better half of criticism (namely, the pointing out an author's excellences) than to fill a whole paper with citations of fine passages, with general applauses, or empty exclamations at the tail of them. There is also subjoined a catalogue of those first editions by which the greater part of the various readings and of the corrected passages are autho rised, most of which are such as carry their own evidence along with them. These editions now hold the place of originals, and are the only materials left to repair the deficiencies, or restore the corrupted sense, of the author: I can only wish that a greater number of them (if a greater were ever published) may yet be found, by a search more successful than mine, for the better accomplishment of this end. I will conclude by saying of Shakespear, that with all his faults, and with all the irregularity of his drama, one may look upon his works, in comparison of those that are more finished and regular, as upon an ancient majestic piece of Gothic architecture, compared with a neat modern building: the latter is more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and more solemn. ` It must be allowed, that in one of these there are materials enough to make many of the other. It has much the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments; though we are often conducted to them by dark, odd, and uncouth passages. Nor does the whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, illplaced, and unequal to its grandeur.* i * Of all the many eulogiums on the character of our inimitable old bard, that of Addison is perhaps the most beautiful and brilliant. "Shakespear was indeed born with all the seeds of poetry, and may be compared to the stone in Pyrrhus's ring, which, as Pliny tells us, had the figure of Apollo, and the nine muses in the veins of it, produced by the spontaneous hand of nature, without any help from art.” Warton. PREFACE ΤΟ HOMER'S ILIAD. HOMER is universally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any writer whatever. The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, and others may have their pretensions as to particular excellences; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the invention that, in different degrees, distinguishes all great geniuses: the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which master every thing besides, can never attain to this. It furnishes art with all her materials, and without it, judgment itself can at best but steal wisely: for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of nature. Whatever praises may be given to works of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them, to which the invention must not contribute. As in the most regular gardens, art can only reduce the beauties of nature to more regularity, and such a figure, which the common eye may better take in, and is therefore more entertained with. And perhaps |