Page:An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.djvu/129

Rh sends his Errata to be printed, and annexed to his play; and desires, that instead of shutting you would read opening; which, it seems, was the printer's fault. I wonder at his modesty, that he did not rather say it was Seneca's, or mine; and that in some authors, reserare was to shut as well as to open, as the word barach, say the learned, is both to bless and curse.

Well, since it was the printer, he was a naughty man to commit the same mistake twice in six lines: I warrant you delectus verborum for placing of words was his mistake too, though the author forgot to tell him of it: if it were my book, I assure you I should. For those rascals ought to be the proxies of every gentleman author, and to be chastised for him, when he is not pleased to own an errour. Yet since he has given the Errata, I wish he would have inlarged them only a few sheets more, and then he would have spared me the labour of an answer: for this cursed printer is so given to mistakes, that there is scarce a sentence in the Preface without some false grammar or hard sense in it; which will all be charged upon the poet, because he is so good-natured as to lay but three errours to the printer's account, and to take the rest upon himself, who is better able to support them. But he needs not apprehend that I should strictly examine those little faults, except I am called upon to do it: I shall return therefore to that quotation of Seneca, and answer, not to what he writes, but to what he means. I never intended it as an argument, but only as an illustration of what I had said before