Page:A letter to the Rev. Richard Farmer.djvu/23

( 17 ) With repect to the other part of the charge, it is certainly true that while almot every page of the econd folio is disfigured by printer's blunders, and arbitrary and capricious deviations from the original copy, the editor of that book has in a few places corrected uch manifet errors of the pres in the elder copy, as could not ecape a peron of the mot ordinary capacity, who had been but one month converant with a printing-houe. Of thee corrections, uch as they are, (to the knowledge of which the objector was led by my own notes,) a pompous lit has been made from the late edition, for the purpoe of hewing an inconitency in the editor: but in the coure which I have followed, when the matter is truly tated and examined, the mallet inconitency will not be found.

To acertain whether the econd complete edition of our author's plays was authentick, which had never been attempted before, was, in forming the text of thoe plays, of the highet conequence. Hence it was that I employed a good deal of labour on that point, as may be een by turning to my preface, where the examination of that quetion takes up no les than twenty-three pages ; and I may ture