What I intended was to do him all the justice
in my power, and that I accomplished, however imperfectly. It struck me
that the best mode of attempting to do him any justice was to take the
utmost pains to restore his text to the state in which he left it; and
give me leave, very humbly, to say that this is the chief recommendation
of the edition I superintended through the press, having collated every
line, syllable, and letter, with every known old copy. For this purpose
I saw, consulted and compared every quarto and every folio impression in
the British Museum, at Oxford, at Cambridge, in the libraries of the
Duke of Devonshire and Lord Ellesmere, and in several private
collections. If my edition have no other merit, I venture to assert that
it has this. It was a work of great labour, but it was a work also of
sincere love. It is my boast, and my only boast, that I have restored
the text of Shakespeare, as nearly as possible, to the integrity of the
old copies.
When your correspondent complains, therefore, that in "Hen. IV. Part 2,"
Act III. sc. 1., in the line,
"With deafening clamours in the slippery clouds,"
the word _shrouds_ is not substituted by editors of Shakespeare for
"clouds," the answer is, that not a single old copy warrants the merely
fanciful emendation, and that it is not at all required by the sense of
the passage.
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