the Curll volume into the third issue of the 1714 edition,
having apparently come to some agreement with Curll, since the title
page of Volume IX states that it was "Printed for J. Tonson, E. Curll,
J. Pemberton, and K. Sanger." In this edition Gildon omitted his
offensive remarks about Tonson, as well as the "References to Classic
Authors," in which he had suggested topics treated by both the ancients
and Shakespeare. This volume was revised by George Sewell and appeared
in appropriate format as an addition to Pope's Shakespeare, 1723-25.

Meanwhile, in July, 1709, Lintot had begun to advertise his edition of
the poems, which was expanded in 1710/11 to include the sonnets in a
second volume.[5] Thus within a year of the publication of Rowe's
edition, all of Shakespeare, as well as some spurious works, was on the
market. With the publication of these volumes, Shakespeare began to pass
rapidly into the literary consciousness of the race. And formal
criticism of his writings inevitably followed.

Rowe's "Some Account of the Life, &c. of Mr. William Shakespear,"
reprinted with a very few trifling typographical changes in 1714,
survived in all the important eighteenth-century editions, but it was
never reprinted in its original form. Pope re-arranged the material,
giving it a more orderly structure and omitting passages that were
obviously erroneous or that seemed outmoded.[6] It is odd that all later
eighteenth-century editors seem to have believed that Pope's revision
was actually Rowe's own re-writing of the _Account_ for the 1714
edition. Theobald did not reprint the essay, but he used and amplified
Rowe's material in his biography of Shakespeare; Warburton, of course,
reprinted Pope's version, as did Johnson, Steevens, and Malone. Both
Steevens and Malone identified the Pope revision as Rowe's.[7]

Thus it came about that Rowe's preface in its original form was lost
from sight during the entire eighteenth century. Even in the twentieth,
Pope's revision has been printed with the statement that it is taken
"from the second edition (1714), slightly altered from the first edition
of 1709."[8] Only D. Nichol Smith has republished the original essay in
his _Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare_, 1903.

The biographical part of Rowe's _Account_ assembled the few facts and
most of the traditions still current about Shakespeare a century after
his death. It would be easy for any undergraduate to distinguish fact
from leg