Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/54

42 players by thoe who may be uppoed to have eldom undertood them; they were tranmitted by copiers equally unkilful, who till multiplied errors; they were perhaps ometimes mutilated by the actors, for the fake of hortening the peeches; and were at lat printed without correction of the pres.

In this tate they remained, not as Dr. Warburton uppoes, becaue they were unregarded, but becaue the editor’s art was not yet applied to modern languages, and our ancetors were accutomed to o much negligence of Englih printers, that they could very patiently endure it. At lat an edition was undertaken by Rowe; not becaue a poet was to be publihed by a poet, for Rowe eems to have thought very little on correction or explanation, but that our author’s works might appear like thoe of his fraternity, with the appendages of a life and recommendatory preface. Rowe has been clamorouly blamed for not performing what he did not undertake, and it is time that jutice be done him, by confeing, that though he eems to have had no thought of corruption beyond the printer’s errors, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made before, which his ucceors have received without acknowledgment, and which, if they had produced them, would have filled pages and pages with cenures of the tupidity by which the faults were committed, with diplays of the aburdities which they involved, with otentatious expoitions of the new reading, and elf-congratulations on the happines of dicovering it. As