Page:The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare (1790) - Vol. 1a.djvu/27

Rh maimed and imperfect, and frequently from a late, instead of the earliest, edition; in some instances with additions and alterations of their own. Thus therefore the first folio, as far as respects the plays above enumerated, labours under the disadvantage of being at least a second, and in some cases a third, edition of these quartos. I do not however mean to say, that many valuable corrections of passages undoubtedly corrupt in the quartos are not found in the folio copy; or that a single line of these plays should be printed by a careful editor without a minute examination, and collation of both copies; but those quartos were in general the basis on which the folio editors built, and are entitled to our particular attention and examination as first editions.

It is well known to those who are conversant with the business of the prefs, that, (unless when the authour corrects and revises his own works,) as editions of books are multiplied, their errours are multiplied also; and that consequently every fuch edition is more or less correct, as it approaches nearer to or is more distant from the first. A few instances of the gradual progress of corruption will fully evince the truth of this assertion.

In the original copy of K. Richard II. 4to. 1597, Act II. sc. ii. are these lines:

"You promis’d, when you parted with the king,

"To lay aside life-harming heaviness."

In a subsequent quarto, printed in 1608, instead of life-harming we find HALF-harming; which being perceived by the editor of the folio to be nonsense, he substituted, instead of it,—SELF-harming heaviness.