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to in either cafe. Should our language ever be recalled to a ftrict examination, and the fashion become general of ftriving to maintain our old acquifitions, instead of gaining new ones, which we shall be at last obliged to give up, or be incumbered with their weight; it will then be lamented that no regular collection was ever formed of the old English books; from which, as from ancient repofitories, we might recover words and phrases as often as caprice or wantonnels fhould call for variety; instead of thinking it necessary to adopt new ones, or barter solid strength for feeble splendour, which no language has long admitted, and retained its purity.

We wonder that, before the time of Shakespeare, we find the stage in a state so barren of productions, but forget that we have hardly any acquaintance with the authors of that period, though fome few of their dramatick pieces may remain. The fame might be almost faid of the interval between that age and the age of Dryden, the performances of which, not being preferved in fets, or diffufed as now, by the greater number printed, muft lapfe apace into the fame obfcurity.

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And yet we are contented, from a few fpecimens only, to form our opinions of the genius of ages gone before us. Even while we are blaming the tafte of that audience which received with applaufe the worft plays in the reign of Charles the Second, we fhould confider that the few in poffeffion of our theatre, which would never have been heard a fecond time had they been written now, were probably the best of hundreds which had been difmiffed with general cenfure. The collection of plays, interludes, &c. made by Mr. Garrick, with an intent to depofit them hereafter in fome publick library, will be confidered as a valuable acquifition; for pamphlets have never yet been examined with a proper regard to pofterity. Moft of the obfolete pieces will be found on enquiry to have been introduced into libraries but fome few years fince; and yet thofe of the prefent age, which may one time or other prove as ufeful, are still entirely neglected. I fhould be remifs, I am fure, were I to forget my acknowledgments to the gentleman I have juft mentioned, to whofe benevolence I owe the use of several of the fcarceft quartos,

which I could not otherwise have obtained; though I advertifed for them, with fufficient offers, as I thought, either to tempt the cafual owner to fell, or the curious to communicate them; but Mr. Garrick's zeal would not permit him to with-hold any thing that might ever fo remotely tend to thew the perfections of that author who could only have enabled him to display his own.

It is not merely to obtain juftice to Shakespeare, that I have made this collection, and advife others to be made. The general intereft of English literature, and the attention due to our own language and history, require that our ancient writings should be diligently reviewed. There is no age which has not produced fome works that deferved to be remembered; and as words and phrases are only understood by comparing them in different places, the lower writers must be read for the explanation of the higheft. No language can be afcertained and fettled, but by deducing its words from their original fources, and tracing them through their fucceffive varieties of fignification; and this deduction can only be performed by confulting the earliest and intermediate authors.

Enough has been already done to encourage us to do more. Dr. Hickes, by reviving the ftudy of the Saxon language, feems to have excited a ftronger curiofity after old English writers, than ever had appeared before. Many volumes which were mouldering in duft have been collected; many authors which were forgotten have been revived; many laborious catalogues have been formed; and many judicious gloffaries compiled: the literary tranfactions of the darker ages are now open to difcovery; and the language in its intermediate gradations, from the Conqueft to the Restoration, is better underftood than in any former time.

To incite the continuance, and encourage the extenfion of this domeftick curiofity, is one of the purposes of the prefent publication. In the plays it contains, the poet's first thoughts as well as words are preferved; the additions made in fubfequent impreffions diftinguished in Italicks, and the performances themselves make their appearance with every typographical error, fuch as they were before they fell into the hands of the player-editors. The various readings, which can only be attributed to chance, are fet down among the reft, as I did not choose arbitrarily to determine for others which were ufelefs, or which were valuable. And many

words

words differing only by the spelling, or ferving merely to fhew the difficulties which they to whofe lot it first fell to disentangle their perplexities must have encountered, are exhibited with the reft. I must acknowledge that fome few readings have flipped in by mistake, which can pretend to ferve no purpose of illuftration, but were introduced by confining myself to note the minuteft variations of the copies, which foon convinced me that the oldeft were in general the moft correct. Though no proof can be given that the poet fuperintended the publication of any one of thefe himself, yet we have little reason to fuppofe that he who wrote at the command of Elizabeth, and under the patronage of Southampton, was fo very negligent of his fame, as to permit the most incompetent judges, fuch as the players were, to vary at their pleafure what he had fet down for the first fingle editions; and we have better grounds for a fufpicion that his works did materially suffer from their prefumptuous corrections after his death.

It is very well known, that before the time of Shakespeare, the art of making title-pages was practifed with as much, or perhaps more fuccefs than it has been fince. Accordingly, to all his plays we find long and defcriptive ones, which, when they were first published, were of great fervice to the venders of them. Pamphlets of every kind were hawked about the ftreets by a fet of people refembling his own Autolycus, who proclaimed aloud the qualities of what they offered to fale, and might draw in many a purchafer by the mirth he was taught to expect from the humours of Corporal Nym, er the fwaggering vaine of Auncient Piftoll, who was not to be tempted by the reprefentation of a fact merely historical. The players, however, laid afide the whole of this garniture, not finding it fo neceffary to procure fuccefs to a bulky volume, when the author's reputation was established, as it had been to befpeak attention to a few ftraggling pamphlets while it was yet uncertain.

The fixteen plays, which are not in these volumes, remained unpublifhed till the folio in the year 1623, though the compiler of a work, called Theatrical Records, mentions different fingle editions of them all before that time. But as no one of the editors could ever meet with fuch, nor has any one else pretended to have feen them, I think myfelf at liberty to fuppofe the compiler fupplied the defects of the lift out of his own imagination; fince he must have had

fingular

fingular good fortune to have been poffeffed of two or three different copies of all, when neither editors nor collectors, in the courfe of near fifty years, have been able fo much as to obtain the fight of one of the number*.

At the end of the last volume I have added a tragedy of King Leir, published before that of Shakespeare, which it is not improbable he might have seen, as the father kneeling to the daughter, when the kneels to afk his bleffing is found in it; a circumftance two poets were not very likely to have hit on feparately; and which feems borrowed by the latter with his ufual judgment, it being the moft natural paffage in the whole play; and is introduced in fuch a manner, as to make it fairly his own. The ingenious editor of The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry having never met with this play, and as it is not preferved in Mr. Garrick's collection, I thought it a curiofity worthy the notice of the publick.

I have likewife reprinted Shakespeare's Sonnets, from a copy published in 1609, by G. Eld, one of the printers of his plays; which, added to the confideration that they made their appearance with his name, and in his life-time, feems to be no flender proof of their authenticity. The fame evi- . dence might operate in favour of feveral more plays which are omitted here, out of refpect to the judgment of those who had omitted them before †.

It is to be wished that fome method of publication moft favourable to the character of an author were once eftablished; whether we are to fend into the world all his

* It will be obvious to every one acquainted with the ancient English language, that in almost all the titles of plays in this catalogue of Mr. William Rufus Chetwood, the fpelling is conftantly overcharged with fuch a fuperfluity of letters as is not to be found in the writings of Shakespeare or his contemporaries. A more bungling attempt at a forgery was never obtruded on the public. See the British Theatre 1750, reprinted by Dodfley in 1756, under the title of Theatrical Records, or an Account of English Dramatic Authors, and their Works," where all that is faid concerning an advertisement at the end of Romeo and Juliet 1597 is equally falfe, no copy of that play having been ever published by Andrew Wife.

Locrine, 1595. Sir John Oldcastle, 1600. London Prodigal, 1605. Pericles Prince of Tyre, 1609. Puritan, 1600. Thomas Lord Cromwell, 1613. Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608.

works

works without diftinction, or arbitrarily to leave ont what may be thought a difgrace to him. The firft editors, who rejected Pericles, retained Titus Andronicus; and Mr. Pope, without any reafon, named The Winter's Tale, a play that bears the ftrongest marks of the hand of Shakespeare, among thofe which he fuppofed to be fpurious. Dr. Warburton has fixed a ftigma on the three parts of Henry the Sixth, and fome others:

Inde Dolabella eft, atque hinc Antonius;

and all have been willing to plunder Shakespeare, or mix up a breed of barren metal with his pureft ore.

Joshua Barnes, the editor of Euripides, thought every fcrap of his author fo facred, that he has preferved with the name of one of his plays, the only remaining word of it. The fame reafon indeed might be given in his favour, which caufed the preservation of that valuable trifyllable: which is, that it cannot be found in any other place in the Greek language. But this does not feem to have been his only motive, as we find he has to the full as carefully published feveral detached and broken fentences, the gleanings from fcholiafts, which have no claim to merit of that kind; and yet the author's works might be reckoned by fome to be incomplete without them. If then this duty is expected from every editor of a Greek or Roman poet, why is not the fame infifted on in refpect of an English claffick? But if the cuf tom of preferving all, whether worthy of it or not, be more bonoured in the breach than the obfervance, the fuppreffion at leaft fhould not be confidered as a fault. The publication of fuch things as Swift had written merely to raise a laugh among his friends, has added fomething to the bulk of his works, but very little to his character as a writer. The four volumes that came out fince Dr. Hawkefworth's edition, not to look on them as a tax levied on the publick (which I think one might without injuftice) contain not more than fufficient to have made one of real value; and there is a kind of difingenuity, not to give it a harfher title, in exhibiting what the author never meant fhould fee the light; for no motive, but a fordid one, can betray the furvivors to make that publick, which they themselves must be of opinion will be unfavourable to the memory of the

dead.

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