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ture to ſay, without any fear of being refuted, that I have proved, not by dogmatical aſſertion, but by a minute enumeration of particular paſſages, that book to be of no authority whatſoever. How ſo wild a notion as that it was of any authority, ſhould ever have been entertained by any one but the writer whoſe miſrepreſentations I am now expoſing, is perfectly unaccountable. The ſecond edition of a printed book can only derive authority from its being printed with the author's laſt correctons, or from ſome more correct manuſcript of his work than that from which the firſt edition was printed. From whence ſhould the authority of the ſecond folio be derived? We know that Shakſpeare did not correct his manuſcripts for the preſs, even for the firſt edition which was publiſhed in 1623:—where then were the corrections which were made in the ſecond, found? Can it be believed, that the printer or editor, who did not, as I have proved incontrovertibly, examine one of the quarto printed plays[1], which were then common in every hand, ſhould have hunted after the manuſcripts from which the firſt folio was in ſome caſes
- ↑ Pref. to the late edition of Shakſpeare, p. xxvii, note 4.
