( 17 )
With reſpect to the other part of the charge, it is certainly true that while almoſt every page of the ſecond folio is disfigured by printer's blunders, and arbitrary and capricious deviations from the original copy, the editor of that book has in a few places corrected ſuch manifeſt errors of the preſs in the elder copy, as could not eſcape a perſon of the moſt ordinary capacity, who had been but one month converſant with a printing-houſe. Of theſe corrections, ſuch as they are, (to the knowledge of which the objector was led by my own notes,) a pompous liſt has been made from the late edition, for the purpoſe of ſhewing an inconſiſtency in the editor: but in the courſe which I have followed, when the matter is truly ſtated and examined, the ſmalleſt inconſiſtency will not be found.
To aſcertain whether the ſecond complete edition of our author's plays was authentick, which had never been attempted before, was, in forming the text of thoſe plays, of the higheſt conſequence. Hence it was that I employed a good deal of labour on that point, as may be ſeen by turning to my preface, where the examination of that queſtion takes up no leſs than twenty-three pages[1]; and I may ven-
ture
- ↑ Pref. pp. xix–xliii.
