ing Pope for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this undertaking. So willingly does the world support those who folicite favour, against those who comm. nd reverence; and fo eafily is he praised, whom no man can envy.

Our author fell then into the hands of Sir Thomas Hanmer, the Oxford editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by natur. for such studies. He had, what is the first requifite to emendatory criticifm, that intuition by which the poet's intention is immediately difcovered, aud that dexterity of intellect which dispatches its work by the cafieft means. He had undoubtedly read much; his acquaintance with cuftoms, opinions, and traditions, feems to have been large; and he is often learned without shew. He feldom paffes what he does not understand, without an attempt to find or to make a meaning, and fometimes haftily makes what a little more attention would have found. He is folicitous to reduce to gramm ar, what he could not be fure that his authour intended to be gr.mmatical. Shakespeare regarded more the feries of ideas, than of words; and his language, not being defigned for the reader's desk, was all that he defired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience.

Hanmer's care of the metre has been too violently cenfured. He found the measures reformed in fo many paffages, by the filent labours of fome editors, with the filent acquiefcence of the reft, that he thought himself allowed to extend a little further the license, which had already been carried fo far without reprehenfion; and of his corrections in general, it must be confeffed, that they are often juft, and made commonly with the leaft poffible violation of the text.

But, by inferting his emendations, whether invented or borrowed, into the page, without any notice of varying

copies, he has appropriated the labour of his predecessors, and made his own edition of little authority. His confidence indeed, both in himself and others, was too great; he fuppofes all to be right that was done by Pope and Theobald; he seems not to suspect a critick of fallibility, and it was but reasonable that he should claim what he fo liberally granted.

As he never writes without careful enquiry and diligent confideration, have received all his notes, and believe that

every reader will wish for more.

Of the laft editor it is more difficult to speak. Refpect is due to high place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration to genius and learning; but he cannot be justly offended at that liberty of which he has himself so frequently given an example, nor very folicitous what is thought of notes, which he ought never to have confidered as part of his ferious employments, and which, I fuppofe, fince the ardour of compofition is remitted, he no longer numbers among his happy effufions.

The original and predominant errour of his commentary, is acquiefcence in his first thoughts; that precipitation which is produced by consciousness of quick difcernment, and that confidence which prefumes to do, by furveying the surface, what labour only can perform, by penetrating the bottom. His notes exhibit fometimes perverse interpretations, and fometimes improbable conjectures; he at one time gives the authour more profoundity of meaning than the fentence admits, and at another discovers abfurdities, where the fenfe is plain to every other reader. But his emendations are likewife often happy and juft; and his interpretation of obfcure paffages learned and fagacious.

Of his notes, I have commonly rejected those, against which the general voice of the public has exclaimed, or

which their own incongruity immediately condemns, and which, I fuppofe, the authour himself would defire to be forgotten. Of the reft, to part I have given the highest approbation, by inferting the offered reading in the text; part I have left to the judgment of the reader, as doubtful, though specious; and part I have cenfured without reserve, but I am fure without bitterness of malice, and, I hope, without wantonness of infult..

It is no pleasure to me, in revifing my volumes, to obferve how much paper is wafted in confutation. Whoever confiders the revolutions of learning, and the various questions of greater or lefs importance, upon which wit and reafon have exercifed their powers, muft lament the unsuccessfulness of enquiry, and the flow advances of truth, when he reflects, that great part of the labour of every writer is only the deftruction of those that went before him. The first care of the builder of a new fyftem, is to demolish the fabricks which are ftanding. The chief defire of him that comments an authour, is to fhew how much other commentators have corrupted and obfcured him. The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controverfy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion without progrefs. Thus fometimes truth and errour, and fometimes contrarieties of errour, take each others place by reciprocal invafion. The tide of feeming knowledge which is poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the fudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to fhoot their beams into the regions of obfcurity, on a fudden withdraw their luftre, and leave mortals again to grope their way.

Thefe elevations and depreffions of renown, and the contradictions to which all improvers of knowledge muft for ever be expofed, fince they are not efcaped by the highest and brightest of mankind, may furely be endured with patience by criticks and annotators, who can rank themselves but as the fatellites of their authors. How canft thou beg for life, fays Achilles to his captive, when thou knowest that thou art now to fuffer only what must another day be fuffered by Achilles?

Dr. Warburton had a name fufficient to confer celebrity on those who could exalt themselves into antagonists, and his notes have raised a clamour too loud to be diftinct. His chief affailants are the authours of the Canons of criticism and of the Review of Shakespeare's text; of whom one ridicules his errours with airy petulance, fuitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an affaffin or incendiary. The one stings like a fly, fucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that girls with fits, and boys with ftones, fould flay bim in puny battle; when the other croffes my imagination, I remember the prodigy in Macbeth,

An eagle tow'ring in his pride of place,
Was by a moufing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.

Let me however do them justice. One is a wit, and one a fcholar. They have both fhewn acuteness sufficient to the discovery of faults, and have both advanced fome probable interpretations of obscure paffages; but when they aspire to conjecture and emendation, it appears how falfely we all efti

mate our own abilities, and the little which they have been able to perform might have taught them more candour to the endeavours of others.

Before Dr. Warburton's edition, Critical obfervations on Shakespeare had been published by Mr. Upton, a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who feems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste. Many of his explanations are curious and useful, but he likewife, though he profeffed to oppofe the licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill feconded by his fkill. Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a fuccessful experiment, fwells into a theorist, and the laborious collator at some unlucky moment frolicks in conjecture.

Critical, hiftorical and explanatory notes have been likewife published upon Shakespeare by Dr. Grey, whofe diligent perufal of the old English writers has enabled him to make fome useful obfervations. What he undertook he has well enough performed; but as he neither attempts judicial nor emendatory criticism, he employs rather his memory than his fagacity. It were to be wished that all would endeavour to imitate his modesty who have not been able to surpass his knowledge.

I can say with great fincerity of all my predeceffors, what I hope will hereafter be said of me, that not one has left Shakespeare without improvement, nor is there one to whom I have not been indebted for affiftance and information. Whatever I have taken from them it was my intention to refer to its original authour, and it is certain, that what I have not given to another, I believed when I wrote it to be my own. In fome perhaps I have been anticipated; but if I am ever found to encroach upon the remarks of any other