Page:A letter to the Rev. Richard Farmer.djvu/24

( 18 )  to ay, without any fear of being refuted, that I have proved, not by dogmatical aertion, but by a minute enumeration of particular paages, that book to be of no authority whatoever. How o wild a notion as that it was of any authority, hould ever have been entertained by any one but the writer whoe mirepreentations I am now expoing, is perfectly unaccountable. The econd edition of a printed book can only derive authority from its being printed with the author's lat correctons, or from ome more correct manucript of his work than that from which the firt edition was printed. From whence hould the authority of the econd folio be derived? We know that Shakpeare did not correct his manucripts for the pres, even for the firt edition which was publihed in 1623:—where then were the corrections which were made in the econd, found? Can it be believed, that the printer or editor, who did not, as I have proved incontrovertibly, examine one of the quarto printed plays, which were then common in every hand, hould have hunted after the manucripts from which the firt folio was in ome caes printed,