or other prove as useful, are ftill entirely neglected. I should be remifs, I am fure, were I to forget my acknowledgments to the gentleman I have just mentioned, to whose benevolence I owe the ufe of feveral of the fcarceft quartos, which I could not otherwise have obtained; though I advertised for them, with fufficient offers, as I thought, either to tempt the cafual owner to fell, or the curious to communicate them; but Mr. Garrick's zeal would not permit him to withhold any thing that might ever fo remotely tend to fhew the perfections of that author who could only have enabled him to difplay his own.

It is not merely to obtain juftice to Shakespeare, that I have made this collection, and advife others to be made. The general intereft of English literature, and the attention due to our own language and hiftory, require that our ancient writings fhould be diligently reviewed. There is no age which has not produced fome works that deferved to be remembered; and as words and phrases are only underftood by comparing them in different places, the lower writers must be read for the explanation of the higheft. No language can be afcertained and fettled, but by deducing its words from their original fources, and tracing them through their fucceffive varieties of fignification; and this deduction can only be performed by confulting the earliest and intermediate authors.

Enough has been already done to encourage us to do more. Dr. Hickes, by reviving the ftudy of the Saxon language, feems to have excited a stronger curiofity after old English writers, than ever had ap. peared before. Many volumes which were mouldering in duft have been collected; many authors which were forgotten have been revived; many laborious catalogues have been formed; and many judicious gloffaries compiled: the literary tranfactions of the darker ages are now open to difcovery; and the language in its intermediate gradations, from the Con

queft

queft to the Restoration, is better understood than in any former time.

To incite the continuance, and encourage the extenfion of this domestick curiofity, is one of the purposes of the prefent publication. In the plays it contains, the poet's firft thoughts as well as words are preferved; the additions made in fubfequent impreffions diftinguished in Italicks, and the performances themselves make their appearance with every typographical error, fuch as they were before they fell into the hands of the player-editors. The various readings, which can only be attributed to chance, are fet down among the reft, as I did not choofe arbitrarily to determine for others which were useless, or which were valuable. And many words differing only by the fpelling, or ferving merely to fhew the difficulties which they to whofe lot it firft fell to disentangle their perplexities must have encountered, are exhibited with the reft. I must acknowledge that some few readings have flipped in by mistake, which can pretend to ferve no purpose of illuftration, but were introduced by confining myself to note the minuteft variations of the copies, which foon convinced me that the oldest were in general the most correct. Though no proof can be given that the poet fuperintended the publication of any one of thefe himself, yet we have little reafon to fuppofe that he who wrote at the command of Elizabeth, and under the patronage of Southampton, was so very negligent of his fame, as to permit the most incompetent judges, fuch as the players were, to vary at their pleasure what he had fet down for the firft fingle editions; and we have better grounds for a fufpicion that his works did materially fuffer from their prefumptuous corrections after his death.

It is very well known, that before the time of Shakespeare, the art of making title-pages was practifed with as much, or perhaps more fuccefs than it has been fince. Accordingly, to all his plays we find

long

long and defcriptive ones, which, when they were first publifhed, were of great fervice to the venders of them. Pamphlets of every kind were hawked about the streets by a fet of people resembling his own Autolycus, who proclaimed aloud the qualities of what they offered to fale, and might draw in many a purchafer by the mirth he was taught to expect from the bumours of Corporal Nym, or the fwaggering vaine of Auncient Piftoll, who was not to be tempted by the representation of a fact merely hiftorical. The players, however, laid afide the whole of this garniture, not finding it fo neceffary to procure fuccefs to a bulky volume, when the author's reputation was established, as it had been to befpeak attention to a few ftraggling pamphlets while it was yet uncertain.

The fixteen plays, which are not in these volumes, remained unpublifhed till the folio in the year 1623, though the compiler of a work, called Theatrical Records, mentions different fingle editions of every one of them before that time. But as no one of the editors could ever meet with fuch, nor has any one elfe pretended to have feen them, I think myself at liberty to fuppofe the compiler fupplied the defects of the lift out of his own imagination; fince he must have had fingular good fortune to have been poffeffed of two or three different copies of all, when neither editors nor collectors, in the course of near fifty years, have been able so much as to obtain the fight of one of the number.

At the end of the laft volume I have added a tragedy of King Leir, published before that of Shakefpeare, which it is not improbable he might have feen, as the father kneeling to the daughter, when fhe kneels to afk his bleifing, is found in it; a circumstance two poets were not very likely to have hit on feparately; and which feems borrowed by the latter with his ufual judgment, it being the moft natural paffage in the old play; and is introduced in fuch a VOL. L manner,

[L]

manner, as to make it fairly his own. The ingenious editor of The Reliques of Ancient Poetry having never met with this play, and as it is not preserved in Mr. Garrick's collection, I thought it a curiofity worthy the notice of the publick.

I have likewife reprinted Shakespeare's Sonnets, from a copy published in 1609, by G. Eld, one of the printers of his plays; which, added to the confideration that they made their appearance with his name, and in his life-time, feems to be no flender proof of their authenticity. The fame evidence might operate in favour of feveral more plays which are omitted here, out of refpect to the judgment of thofe who had omitted them before 3.

It is to be wifhed, that fome method of publication moft favourable to the character of an author were once established; whether we are to fend into the world all his works without distinction, or arbitrarily to leave out what may be thought a difgrace to him. The firft editors, who rejected Pericles, retained Titus Andronicus; and Mr. Pope, without any reason, named The Winter's Tale, a play that bears the strongest marks of the hand of Shakespeare, among thofe which he fuppofed to be fpurious. Dr. Warburton has fixed a ftigma on the three parts of Henry the Sixth, and

fome others:

Inde Dolabella eft, atq; hinc Antonius,

and all have been willing to plunder Shakefpeare, or mix up a breed of barren metal with his pureft ore.

Joshua Barnes, the editor of Euripides, thought every fcrap of his author fo facred, that he has preferved with the name of one of his plays, the only

3 Locrine, 1595. Sir John Oldcastle, 1600. London Prodigal, 1605. Pericles Prince of Tyre, 1609. Puritan, 1600. Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1613. Yorkshire Tragedy, no date.

remaining

remaining word of it. The fame reafon indeed might be given in his favour, which caufed the prefervation of that valuable trifyllable; which is, that it cannot be found in any other place in the Greek language. But this does not feem to have been his only motive, as we find he has to the full as carefully published feveral detached and broken fentences, the gleanings from fcholiafts, which have no claim to merit of that kind; and yet the author's works might be reckoned by fome to be incomplete without them. If then this duty is expected from every editor of a Greek or Roman poet, why is not the fame infifted on in refpect of an English claffick? But if the cuftom of preferving all, whether worthy of it or not, be more bonoured in the breach than the obfervance, the fuppreffion at least should not be confidered as a fault. The publication of fuch things as Swift had written merely to raise a laugh among his friends, has added fomething to the bulk of his works, but very little to his character as a writer. The four volumes that came out fince Dr. Hawkefworth's edition, not to look on them as a tax levied on the publick (which I think one might without injuftice) contain not more than fufficient to have made one of real value; and there is a kind of difingenuity, not to give it a harfher title, in exhibiting what the author never meant fhould fee the light; for no motive, but a fordid one, can betray the furvivors to make that publick, which they themselves must be of opinion will be unfavourable to the memory of the dead.

Life does not often receive good unmixed with evil. The benefits of the art of printing are depraved by the facility with which fcandal may be diffufed, and fecrets revealed; and by the temptation by which traffick folicits avarice to betray the weakneffes of paffion, or the confidence of friendship. I cannot forbear to think thefe pofthumous publications injurious to fociety. A man conicious of [L 2]

literary