Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/74

62 that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without o much labour appear to be right. The jutnes of a happy retoration trikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied to criticim, quod dubitas ne eceris.

To dread the hore which he ees pread with wrecks, is natural to the ailor. I had before my eye, o many critical adventures ended in micarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every page wit truggling with its own ophitry, and learning confued by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to cenure thoe whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dipoeing their emendations, how oon the ame fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may be by ome other editor defended and etablihed.

That a conjectural critick hould often be mitaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others or himelf, if it be conidered, that in his art there is no ytem, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates ubordinate poitions. His chance of error is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the paage, a light miapprehenion of a phrae, a caual inattention to the parts connected, is ufficient to make him