lterations have been made but what the sense necessarily required, what
the measure of the verse often helped to point out, and what the
similitude of words in the false reading and in the true, generally
speaking, appeared very well to justify.

Most of those passages are here thrown to the bottom of the page and
rejected as spurious, which were stigmatized as such in Mr. _Pope_'s
Edition; and it were to be wished that more had then undergone the same
sentence. The promoter of the present Edition hath ventured to discard but
few more upon his own judgment, the most considerable of which is that
wretched piece of ribaldry in King _Henry V._ put into the mouths of the
_French_ Princess and an old Gentlewoman, improper enough as it is all in
_French_ and not intelligible to an _English_ audience, and yet that
perhaps is the best thing that can be said of it. There can be no doubt
but a great deal more of that low stuff which disgraces the works of this
great Author, was foisted in by the Players after his death, to please the
vulgar audiences by which they subsisted: and though some of the poor
witticisms and conceits must be supposed to have fallen from his pen, yet
as he hath put them generally into the mouths of low and ignorant people,
so it is to be remember'd that he wrote for the Stage, rude and unpolished
as it then was; and the vicious taste of the age must stand condemned for
them, since he hath left upon record a signal proof how much he despised
them. In his Play of _The Merchant of Venice_ a Clown is introduced
quibbling in a miserable manner, upon which one who bears the character of
a man of sense makes the following reflection: _How every fool can play
upon a word! I think the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence,
and discourse grow commendable in none but parrots._ He could hardly have
found stronger words to express his indignation at those false pretences
to wit then in vogue; and therefore though such trash is frequently
interspersed in his writings, it would be unjust to cast it as an
imputation upon his taste and judgment and character as a Writer.

There being many words in _Shakespear_ which are grown out of use and
obsolete, and many borrowed from other languages which are not enough
naturalized or known among us, a Glossary is added at the end of the work,
for the explanation of all those terms which have hitherto been so many
stumbling-blocks to the generality of Readers; and where th