without correction of the press.

In this state they remained, not as Dr. Warburton supposes,
because they were unregarded, but because the editor's art was not
yet applied to modern languages, and our ancestors were accustomed
to so much negligence of English printers, that they could very
patiently endure it. At last an edition was undertaken by Rowe;
not because a poet was to be published by a poet, for Rowe seems
to have thought very little on correction or explanation, but that
our authour's works might appear like those of his fraternity, with
the appendages of a life and recommendatory preface. Rowe has been
clamorously blamed for not performing what he did not undertake,
and it is time that justice be done him, by confessing, that though
he seems to have had no thought of corruption beyond the printer's
errours, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made
before, which his successors have received without acknowledgment,
and which, if they had produced them, would have filled pages
and pages with censures of the stupidity by which the faults were
committed, with displays of the absurdities which they involved, with
ostentatious exposition of the new reading, and self congratulations
on the happiness of discovering it.

Of Rowe, as of all the editors, I have preserved the preface and
have likewise retained the authour's life, though not written with
much elegance or spirit; it relates however what is now to be known,
and therefore deserves to pass through all succeeding publications.

The nation had been for many years content enough with Mr. Rowe's
performance, when Mr. Pope made them acquainted with the true
state of Shakespeare's text, shewed that it was extremely corrupt,