THE WORKS O F SHAKESPEAR IN EIGHT VOLUMES. The Genuine Text (collated with all the former Being reftored from the Blunders of the firft Editors, NA WITH LE BIBLIOT A Comment and Notes, Critical and Explanatory. By Mr. POPE and Mr. WARBURTON. Quorum omnium Interpretes, ut Grammatici, Poetarum Ἡ ΤΩΝ ΛΟΓΩΝ ΚΡΙΣΙΣ ΠΟΛΛΗΣ ΕΣΤΙ ΠΕΙΡΑΣ LONDON: Printed for F. and P. Knapton, S. Birt, T. Longman and MDCCXLVII. DDRESSES of this Nature. have been long the customary Tribute of Letters to fuperior Merit: And tho' Flattery may have thrown them i to Disrepute, yet this concludes no more against the Continuance of honeft Praise, than HyA 2 VOL. I. pocrify pocrify does againft the Practice of Religion. But Adulation no fooner began to belye its Subject, than it perverted the very Purpose of its Application; l while, amongst its many artful traverses, it would how beg Protection for the Book; and, now again, conftitute the Patron the fovereign Judge of its Merit gouslesma pr In this Light, Madam, you might reafonably wonder to fee a Collection of Plays dedicated to one who reads few Books befides those of Piety and Moral; and will think, the Addrefs might have been made with fomewhat lefs Impropriety even to a Bishop. This is true: but, as I faid, this literary Connexion is not, of right, between the Patron and the Work; but between him and the Author. Who, to carry con his Commerce with a good (Confcience, muft therefore fearch narrowly for a Subject which will not difhonour aeMalo doniggeli ozimob Letters, odw DEDICATION. - to bolor 1 9107 13 5 Letters, while he is giving that to Me rit, which only Letters can bestow. But I need not be asham'd to fay, that the Knowledge of you, has, at the fame time, abridged my Labour, and rewarded the Integrity of my Purpose. For if Friendship, Generofity, and the Benevolence of Charity, added to every female Virtue that most adorns your Sex, demand this Acknowledgment, it would be hard to find where it fhould be earlier paid, or to whom, in fuller Measure, returned. 20 P C J. If any now should affect to ask, What Stranger this is, of whom so much is faid? Let him know, that this his Ignorance is your fupreme Praise; whose Matron-modesty of Virtue declines all Notice, but where the Influence of your domeftic Character extends. If, haply, you have any further Ambition, it is only this, the being known to conftitute the domestic Happiness of a Man A 3 who |