by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have therefore shewn
so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover the
rest.

To the end of most plays, I have added short strictures, containing
a general censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which I
know not how much I have concurred with the current opinion; but
I have not, by any affectation of singularity, deviated from it.
Nothing is minutely and particularly examined, and therefore it is
to be supposed, that in the plays which are condemned there is much
to be praised, and in these which are praised much to be condemned.

The part of criticism in which the whole succession of editors
has laboured with the greatest diligence, which has occasioned the
most arrogant ostentation, and excited the keenest acrimony, is the
emendation of corrupted passages, to which the publick attention
having been first drawn by the violence of contention between Pope
and Theobald, has been continued by the persecution, which, with a
kind of conspiracy, has been since raised against all the publishers
of Shakespeare.

That many passages have passed in a state of depravation through
all the editions is indubitably certain; of these the restoration
is only to be attempted by collation of copies or sagacity of
conjecture. The collator's province is safe and easy, the conjecturer's
perilous and difficult. Yet as the greater part of the plays are
extant only in one copy, the peril must not be avoided, nor the
difficulty refused.

Of the readings which this emulation of amendment has hitherto