castle, in whose hands they remain. They were lent to the late Duchess Dowager of Portland, and to Dr. Johnson while he was writing the Lives of the Poets; and have also passed through other hands. They are, Dr. Warton says very entertaining, and full of curious information.”
In issuing an edition of Shakspeare, Malone could not expect to escape the usual lot of the author and editorial race—contradiction and censure. Accordingly, there came out a pamphlet of a hundred pages early in 1792—Cursory Criticisms on the Edition of Shakspeare, by Edmond Malone. The writer was judged and proved to be, the unhappy Ritson, whose many eccentricities, literary and otherwise, added to morbid tendencies to find fault with all his brethren, terminated in insanity.
“A Letter to the Rev. Richard Farmer, D.D., &c.” in April 1792 with his name affixed, gives Malone’s reply. He is sufficiently triumphant; sometimes a little prone in return for ridicule and sarcasm, to charge his critic with the usual tricks of such a trade.—“Fraught with the usual materials of hypercriticism, that is, with unblushing cavil, false argument, and false quotation.” . . . .
“When my admiration of his (Shakspeare’s) innumerable beauties led me to undertake an edition of his works, I then thought it my duty to exert every faculty to make it as perfect as I could, and in order to ensure a genuine text, to collate word by word every line of his plays and poems with the original and authentick copies—a task equally new and arduous. By this laborious process I obtained
