Page:A letter to the Rev. Richard Farmer.djvu/25

( 19 ) printed, and which it is highly probable were detroyed at the pres; or that any diligence hould at the end of nine years have recovered their oiled and mutilated fragments? Such a uppoition is as wild and chimerical, as many of that editor's arbitrary interpolations. This fancy hould eem to have originated from its having been thrown out in ome modern publication, the title of which I have forgotten, that Heminge and Condell, the editors of the firt folio, were probably likewie editors of the econd, which appeared in 1632; an aertion which, before the two books had been minutely examined and compared, and before the time of their repective deaths had been acertained, might pas current enough; but unluckily for this theory, after a long earch in the Prerogative Office, I dicovered the wills of both thee actors, and have hewn that Condell died in 1627, and Heminge in the year 1630 .—On this ubject, however, we are not obliged to have recoure to inferences from dates, or to conjecture, in order to prove that all the corrections, emendations, or interpolations of that copy (by whatever name they may be called) were arbitrary and capricious. The rous