The Science of Criticism, as far as it affects an Editor, seems to be reduced to these three Classes; the Emendation of corrupt Passages; the Explanation of obscure and difficult ones; and an Inquiry into the Beauties and Defects of Composition.  This Work is principally confin’d to the two former Parts:  tho’ there are some Specimens interspers’d of the latter Kind, as several of the Emendations were best supported, and several of the Difficulties best explain’d, by taking notice of the Beauties and Defects of the Composition peculiar to this Immortal Poet.  But This was but occasional, and for the sake only of perfecting the two other Parts, which were the proper Objects of the Editor’s Labour.  The third lies open for every willing Undertaker:  and I shall be pleas’d to see it the Employment of a masterly Pen.

It must necessarily happen, as I have formerly observ’d, that where the Assistance of Manuscripts is wanting to set an Author’s Meaning right, and rescue him from those Errors which have been transmitted down thro’ a Series of incorrect Editions, and a long Intervention of Time, many Passages must be desperate, and past a Cure; and their true Sense irretrievable either to Care or the Sagacity of Conjecture.  But is there any Reason therefore to say, That because All cannot be retriev’d, All ought to be left desperate?  We should shew very little Honesty, or Wisdom, to play the Tyrants with an Author’s Text; to raze, alter, innovate, and overturn, at all Adventures, and to the utter Detriment of his Sense and Meaning:  But to be so very reserved and cautious, as to interpose no Relief or Conjecture, where it manifestly labours and cries out for Assistance, seems, on the other hand, an indolent Absurdity.

But because the Art of Criticism, both by Those who cannot form a true Judgment of its Effects, nor can penetrate into its Causes, (which takes in a great Number besides the Ladies;) is esteem’d only an arbitrary capricious Tyranny exercis’d on Books; I think proper to subjoin a Word or two about those Rules on which I have proceeded, and by which I have regulated myself in this Edition.  By This, I flatter myself, it will appear, my Emendations are so far from being arbitrary or capricious, that They are establish’d with a very high Degree of moral Certainty.

As there are very few Pages in Shakespeare, upon which some Suspicions of Depravity do not reasonably arise; I have thought it my Duty, in the first place, by a diligent and laborious Collation to take in the Assistances of all the older Copies.

In his Historical Plays, whenever our English Chronicles, and in his Tragedies when Greek or Roman Story, could give any Light; no Pains have been omitted to set Passages right by comparing my Author with his Originals:  for, as I have frequently observed, he was a close and accurate Copier where-ever his Fable was founded on History.