players by thoſe who may be ſuppoſed to have ſeldom underſtood them; they were tranſmitted by copiers equally unſkilful, who ſtill multiplied errors; they were perhaps ſometimes mutilated by the actors, for the fake of ſhortening the ſpeeches; and were at laſt printed 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 author’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 errors, 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 expoſitions of the new reading, and ſelf-congratulations on the happineſs of diſcovering it.
As
