at he did not rather say it was
Seneca's or mine; and that, in some authors, _reserate_ was to
_shut_ as well as to _open_, as the word _barach_, say
the learned, is both to _bless_ and _curse_.

[Footnote A: This erratum has been suffered to remain in the edition
of the Knight's plays now before us, published in 1692.]

Well, since it was the printer, he was a naughty man to commit
the same mistake twice in six lines: I warrant you _delectus
verborum_, for _placing of words_, was his mistake too, though
the author forgot to tell him of it: If it were my book, I assure you
I should. For those rascals ought to be the proxies of every gentleman
author, and to be chastised for him, when he is not pleased to own an
error. Yet since he has given the _errata_, I wish he would have
enlarged them only a few sheets more, and then he would have spared
me the labour of an answer: For this cursed printer is so given to
mistakes, that there is scarce a sentence in the preface without some
false grammar, or hard sense in it; which will all be charged upon the
poet, because he is so good-natured as to lay but three errors to the
printer's account, and to take the rest upon himself, who is better
able to support them. But he needs not apprehend that I should
strictly examine those little faults, except I am called upon to do
it: I shall return therefore to that quotation of Seneca, and answer,
not to what he writes, but to what he means. I never intended it as
an argument, but only as an illustration of what I had said before
concerning the election of words; and all he can charge me with is
only this, that if Seneca could make an ordinary thing sound well in
Latin by the choice of words, the same, with the like care, might be
performed in English: If it cannot, I have committed an error on the
right hand, by commending too much the copiousness and well-sounding
of our language, which I hope my countrymen will pardon me; at least
the words which follow in my Dramatic Essay will plead somewhat in my
behalf; for I say there, that this objection happens but seldom in
a play; and then, too, either the meanness of the expression may be
avoided, or shut out from the verse by breaking it in the midst.

But I have said too much in the defence of verse; for, after all,
it is a very indifferent thing to me whether it obtain or not. I am
content hereafter to be ordered by his rule, that is, to write it
sometimes because it pleases me, and so m