formalities of conversation, rules of visits, disposition of
furniture, and practices of ceremony, which naturally find places
in familiar dialogue, are so fugitive and unsubstantial that they
are not easily retained or recovered. What can be known, will
be collected by chance, from the recesses of obscure and obsolete
papers, perused commonly with some other view. Of this knowledge
every man has some, and none has much; but when an authour has
engaged the publick attention, those who can add any thing to his
illustration, communicate their discoveries, and time produces what
had eluded diligence.

To time I have been obliged to resign many passages, which, though
I did not understand them, will perhaps hereafter be explained,
having, I hope, illustrated some, which others have neglected or
mistaken, sometimes by short remarks or marginal directions, such
as every editor has added at his will, and often by comments more
laborious than the matter will seem to deserve; but that which
is most difficult is not always most important, and to an editor
nothing is a trifle by which his authour is obscured.

The poetical beauties or defects I have not been very diligent to
observe. Some plays have more, and some fewer judicial observations,
not in proportion to their difference of merit, but because I gave
this part of my design to chance and to caprice. The reader, I
believe, is seldom pleased to find his opinion anticipated; it is
natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we
receive. Judgement, like other faculties, is improved by practice,
and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial
decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table book.
Some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part is infused