or Cabal. At length, indeed, they struggled into Light; but so disguised
and travested, that no classic Author, after having run ten secular Stages
thro' the blind Cloisters of Monks and Canons, ever came out in half so
maimed and mangled a Condition. But for a full Account of his Disorders, I
refer the Reader to the excellent Discourse which follows, and turn myself
to consider the Remedies that have been applied to them.

_Shakespear_'s Works, when they escaped the Players, did not fall into
much better Hands when they came amongst Printers and Booksellers: who, to
say the Truth, had, at first, but small Encouragement for putting him into
a better Condition. The stubborn Nonsense, with which he was incrusted,
occasioned his lying long neglected amongst the common Lumber of the
Stage. And when that resistless Splendor, which now shoots all around him,
had, by degrees, broke thro' the Shell of those Impurities, his dazzled
Admirers became as suddenly insensible to the extraneous Scurf that still
stuck upon him, as they had been before to the native Beauties that lay
under it. So that, as then he was thought not to deserve a Cure, he was
now supposed not to need any.

His growing Eminence, however, required that he should be used with
Ceremony: And he soon had his Appointment of an _Editor_ in form. But the
Bookseller, whose dealing was with Wits, having learnt of them, I know not
what silly Maxim, that _none but a Poet should presume to meddle with a
Poet_, engaged the ingenious Mr. _Rowe_ to undertake this Employment. A
Wit indeed he was; but so utterly unacquainted with the whole Business of
Criticism, that he did not even collate or consult the first Editions of
the Work he undertook to publish; but contented himself with giving us a
meagre Account of the Author's Life, interlarded with some common-place
Scraps from his Writings. The Truth is, _Shakespear_'s Condition was yet
but ill understood. The Nonsense, now, by consent, received for his own,
was held in a kind of Reverence for its Age and Author: and thus it
continued, till another great _Poet_ broke the Charm; by shewing us, that
the higher we went, the less of it was still to be found.

For the Proprietors, not discouraged by their first unsuccessful Effort,
in due time made a second; and, tho' they still stuck to their Poets, with
infinitely more Success in their Choice of Mr. POPE. Who, by the mere
force of an uncommon Genius, without any particular Study