the surest Means of expounding any Author whatsoever. _Cette voïe
d’interpreter un Autheur par lui-même est plus sure que tous les
Commentaires_, says a very learned _French_ Critick.

As to my _Notes_, (from which the common and learned Readers of our
Author, I hope, will derive some Pleasure;) I have endeavour’d to
give them a Variety in some Proportion to their Number. Where-ever
I have ventur’d at an Emendation, a _Note_ is constantly subjoin’d
to justify and assert the Reason of it. Where I only offer a
Conjecture, and do not disturb the Text, I fairly set forth my
Grounds for such Conjecture, and submit it to Judgment. Some Remarks
are spent in explaining Passages, Where the Wit or Satire depends
on an obscure Point of History: Others, where Allusions are to
Divinity, Philosophy, or other Branches of Science. Some are added
to shew, where there is a Suspicion of our Author having borrowed
from the Antients: Others, to shew where he is rallying his
Contemporaries; or where He himself is rallied by them. And some are
necessarily thrown in, to explain an obscure and obsolete _Term_,
_Phrase_, or _Idea_. I once intended to have added a complete and
copious _Glossary_; but as I have been importun’d, and am prepar’d,
to give a correct Edition of our Author’s POEMS, (in which many
Terms occur that are not to be met with in his _Plays_,) I thought a
_Glossary_ to all _Shakespeare_’s Works more proper to attend that
Volume.

In reforming an infinite Number of Passages in the _Pointing_, where
the Sense was before quite lost, I have frequently subjoin’d Notes
to shew the _deprav’d_, and to prove the _reform’d_, Pointing: a
Part of Labour in this Work which I could very willingly have spared
myself. May it not be objected, why then have you burthen’d us with