Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/76

64 remediis laboratur. And indeed, where mere conjecture is to be ued, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipius, notwithtanding their wonderful agacity and erudition, are often vague and diputable, like mine or Theobald’s.

Perhaps I may not be more cenured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raiing in the publick expectations, which at lat I have not anwered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to atisfy thoe who know not what to demand, or thoe who demand by deign what they think impoible to be done. I have indeed diappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my tak with no light olicitude. Not a ingle paage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to retore; or obcure, which I have not endeavoured to illutrate. In many I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confeed the repule. I have not paed over, with affected uperiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myelf, but where I could not intruct him, have owned my ignorance. I might eaily have accumulated a mas of eeming learning upon eay cenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that, where nothing was neceary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have aid enough, I have aid no more.

Notes are often neceary, but they are neceary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers