authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all
others, and that the rest only deviate from it by the printer's
negligence. Whoever has any of the folios has all, excepting those
diversities which mere reiteration of editions will produce. I
collated them all at the beginning, but afterwards used only the
first.

Of his notes I have generally retained those which he retained
himself in his second edition, except when they were confuted by
subsequent annotators, or were too minute to merit preservation. I
have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting
the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his achievement.
The exuberant excrescence of diction I have often lopped, his
triumphant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have sometimes suppressed,
and his contemptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but
I have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself,
for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some
notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest.

Theobald, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and faithless, thus
petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having Pope for his
enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this
undertaking. So willingly does the world support those who solicite
favour, against those who command reverence; and so easily is he
praised, whom no man can envy.

Our authour fell then into the hands of Sir Thomas Hanmer, the
Oxford editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature
for such studies. He had, what is the first requisite to emendatory
criticism, that intuition by which the poet's intention is immediately