Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/153

 endeavouring to make him speak better than the old copies have done.

Where, through all the former editions, a passage has laboured under fiat nonsense and invincible darkness, if, by the addition or alteration of a letter or two, or a transposition in the pointing, I have restored to him both sense and sentiment; such corrections, I am persuaded, will need no indulgence.

And whenever I have taken a greater latitude and liberty in amending, I have constantly endeavoured to support my corrections and conjectures by parallel passages and authorities from himself, the surest means of expounding any author whatsoever. Cette voïe d'interpreter un autheurauteur [sic] par lui-même est plus sure que tous les commentaires, says a very learned French critick.

As to my notes (from which the common and learned readers of our author, I hope, will derive some satisfaction) I have endeavoured to give them a variety in some proportion to their number. Wherever I have ventured at a emendation, a note is constantly subjoined to justify and assert the reason of it. Where I only offer a conjecture, and do not disturb the text, I fairly set forth my grounds for such conjecture, and submit it to judgment. Some remarks are spent in explaining passages, where the wit or satire depends on an obscure point of history: others, where allusions are to divinity, philosophy, or other branches of science. Some are added to shew, where there is a suspicion of our author having borrowed from the ancients: others, to shew where he is rallying his contemporaries; or where he himself is rallied by them. And some are necessarily thrown in, to explain an obscure and obsolete term, phrase, or idea. I once intended to have added a complete and copious glossary; but as I have been importuned, and am prepared to give a correct edition of our author’s, (in which many terms occur that are not to be met with in his plays) I thought a glossary to all Shakespeare’s works more proper to attend that volume.

In reforming an infinite number of passages in the pointing, where the sense was before quite lost, I have frequently subjoined notes to shew the depraved, and to prove the reformed, pointing: a part of labour in this work which I could very willingly have spared myself. May it not be objected, why then have you burdened us with these notes? The answer is obvious, and, if I mistake not, very ma-