Rumpatur quisquis rumpitur invidia!

The rest of this edition I have not read, but, from the little that I have seen, think it not dangerous to declare that, in my opinion, its pomp recommends it more than its accuracy.  There is no distinction made between the ancient reading, and the innovations of the editor; there is no reason given for any of the alterations which are made; the emendations of former criticks are adopted without any acknowledgment, and few of the difficulties are removed which have hitherto embarrassed the readers of Shakespeare.

I would not, however, be thought to insult the editor, nor to censure him with too much petulance, for having failed in little things, of whom I have been told, that he excels in greater.  But I may, without indecency, observe, that no man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself; and that those who, like Themistocles, have studied the arts of policy, and “can teach a small state how to grow great,” should, like him, disdain to labour in trifles, and consider petty accomplishments as below their ambition.[5]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] “To deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft
    and sorcery, is, at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of
    God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament:  and the
    thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath, in
    its turn, borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well-attested,
    or by prohibitory laws, which, at least, suppose the possibility of
    commerce with evil spirits.”  Blackstone, Commentaries iv. 60.  The
    learned judge, however, concludes with calling it a “dubious crime,”
    and approves the maxim of the philosophic Montesquieu, whom no one
    would lightly accuse of superstition, that “il faut etre tres
    circonspect dans la poursuite de la magie et de l’heresie.”  Esprit
    des Lois, xii. 5.  Selden attempted to justify the punishing of
    witchcraft capitally.  Works, iii. 2077.  See Spectator, 117. 
    Barrington’s Ancient Statutes, 407.

[2] In Nashe’s Lenten Stuff, 1599, it is said, that no less than six
    hundred witches were executed at one time.  Reed.—­Boswell’s
    Shakespeare, xi. 5.  Dr. Grey, in his notes on Hudibras, mentions,
    that Hopkins the noted witch-finder hanged sixty suspected witches
    in one year.  He also cites Hutchinson on Witchcraft for thirty
    thousand having been burnt in 150 years. See Barrington on Ancient
    Statutes.

[3] Johnson’s apprehensions here are surely unfounded.  The region of
    Fancy, however, in his mind, was very circumscribed.  Mrs. Montague’s
    chapter on Shakespeare’s Preternatural Beings, in her excellent
    Essay, will repay perusal.  See too Schlegel on Dramatic Literature.