but I thought it a work, which though not unbecoming a man who has more serious ftudies, yet was not of that confequence as to found any great matter of reputation upon.

Since then I am thus obliged to appear in public, I the more readily fubmit; that I may have an opportunity of answering, not what Mr. Warburton has written against me, for that is unanswerable; but fome objections which I hear have been made against the Canons, by fome of his friends.

It is my misfortune in this controversy to be engaged with a perfon, who is better known by his name than his works; or, to speak more properly, whofe works are more known than read; which will oblige me to use several explanations and references, unneceffary indeed to those who are well read in him; but of confequence towards clearing myfelf from the imputation of dealing hardly by him; and faving my readers a tafk, which I confefs I did not find a very pleasing one.

Mr. Warburton had promised the world a moft complete edition of Shakespear; and, long before it came out, raised our expectations of it by a pompous account of what he would do, in the General Dictionary. He was very handfomely paid for what he promised. The expected edition at length comes out; with a title-page importing that the Genuine Text, collated with all the former editions, and then corrected and emended, is there fettled. His pre

face

face is taken-up with describing the great difficulties of his work, and the great qualifications requifite to a due performance of it; yet at the fame time he very cavalierly tells us, that thefe notes were among the amusements of his younger years: and as for the Canons of Crificifm and the Gloffary which he promised, he abfolves himself, and leaves his readers to collect them out of his notes.

I defire to know, by what name such a behaviour in any other commerce or intercourse of life would be called? and whether a man shot dealt gently with, who is only laughed at for it? I thought then, I had a right to laugh; and when I found fo many hafty, crude, and to fay no worse, unedifying notes fupported by fuch magifterial pride, I took the liberty he gave me; and extracted fome Canons and an effay towards a Gloffary from his work. If He had done it, he had saved me the labor: it is poffible indeed, that he might not have pitched upon all the fame paffages as I did to collect them from; as perhaps no two people, who did not confult together, would; but I defie him to ay, that these are not fairly collected; or that he is unfairly quoted for the examples: if Mr. Warburton would have been more grave upon the occafion, yet I did not laugh fo much as I might have done; and I used him with better manners, than ever he did any person whom he had a controverfy with; except one gentleman, whom he is afraid of; if I may except even him.

But

But all this avails me nothing: I have read Shakespear at Lincoln's Inn; and have pub lifhed my Canons of Criticism; and for this am to be degraded of my gentility. A fevere fentence this-I find, that reading of Shakespear is a greater crime than high-treafon: had been guilty of the latter, I must have been in dicted by my addition, tried by my peers, fhould not have loft my blood, till I had be attainted; whereas here the punishment is 1 curred ipfo facto, without jury or trial.

I might complain of Mr. Warburton to l Masters of the Bench, for degrading a Bart of their house by his fole authority; but only reafon coolly with him upon the equ this new proceeding.

A Gentleman (if I do not mean m with Mr. Warburton's leave I may ufth word) I fay, a gentleman, defigned for the study of the law, muft not prefume to much less to make any obfervations on She fpear; while a Minister of Christ, a Diving the Church of England, and one, who, if either of the Universities would have given him th honour, would have been a Doctor in Divi or, as in his preface he decently expreffes *of the Occult Sciences; He, I fay, may the care of his living in the country, an chapel in town, to curates; and spend his He ven-devoted hours in writing obfcene and

• Pref. p. 25.

mor

moral notes on that author, and imputing to him fentiments which he would have been afhamed of.

Who is Mr. Warburton? what is his birth, or whence his privilege? that the reputations of men both living and dead, of men in birth, character, station, in every inftance of true worthiness, much his fuperiors, must lie at the mercy of his petulant fatire, to be hacked and mangled as his ill-mannered fpleen shall prompt him;

while it shall be unlawful for any body, under penalty of degradation, to laugh at the unfcholar-like blunders, the crude and far-fetch'd conceits, the illiberal and indecent reflections; which he has endeavoured with so much selffufficiency and arrogance to put-off upon the world as a standard of true criticism ?

After being degraded from my gentility, I am accused of dulnefs, of being engaged against Shakespear, and of perfonal abufe: for the firft; if, as Audrey fays, the Gods have not made me poetical, I cannot help it; every body has not the wit of the ingenious Mr. Warburton; and I confess myself not to be his match in that fpecies of wit, which he deals-out fo lavishly in his notes upon all occafions. As to the charge of being engaged against Shakespear; if he does not, by the most scandalous equivocation, mean His edition of Shakespear, it is maliciously false; for I defy him to prove, that I ever either wrote or spoke concerning Shake

fpear, but with that esteem which is due to the greatest of our English Poets. And as to the imputation of personal abuse; I deny it, and call upon him to produce any inftance of it. I know nothing of the man, but from his works ; and from what he has fhewn of his temper in them, I do not defire to know more of him ; nor am I confcious of having made one remark, which did not naturally arise from the subject before me; or of having been in any inftance fevere, but on occafions where every gentleman must be moved; I mean, where his notes feemed to me of an immoral tendency; or full of thofe illiberal, common-place reflections on the fair fex, which are unworthy of a gentleman or a man; much lefs do they become a divine and a married man and if this is called perfonal abuse, I will repete it; till he is ashamed of fuch language, as none but libertines and the loweft of the vulgar can think to be wit; and this too flowing from the fulness of his heart, where honeft Shakespear gave not the least occafion for fuch reflexions.

If any applications are made, which I did not defign; I ought not to be answerable for them: if this is done by Mr. Warburton's friends, they pay him an ill complement; if by himself, he must have reafon from fome unlucky co-incidences, which should have made him more cautious of touching fome points; and he ought to have remembered, that a man, whose

house