Page:A letter to the Rev. Richard Farmer.djvu/22

( 16 ) is, that in his preface he has proved the editor of the econd folio, printed in 1632, to have been entirely ignorant of Shakpeare's phraeology and metre, and the book itelf of no whatoever; yet mot trangely and inconitently he has adopted ome emendations of the text from that corrupted copy. To the firt part of this charge I plead guilty, but am at a los to know under what penal tatute it hould be claed. To this minute critic indeed, who alo publihed in 1783 ome remarks on Mr. Steevens's edition of Shakpeare, (in which that gentleman, Dr. Johnon, and others, were treated with jut as much decency and repect, as our late ingenious and learned friend Mr. Warton had been in another forgotten pamphlet,) to him it was a very erious grievance; for he appears to have et up for a hypercritick on Mr. Steevens, without a ingle quarto copy of our author's plays, and, I upect, without being poeed of the only authentick folio edition. If that was the cae, to depreciate the vitiated folio on which he was generally obliged to depend, was to rob him of the only tool with which he could carry on his trade, and to place him in the tate in which poor Paron Adams would have found himelf, if his hot had convinced him that his olitary half-guinea was a counterfeit. With