religiously
observed the severe Canons of literal Criticism, &c. &c.' p. xiv. Yet
further on he says, 'These, such as they are, were amongst my younger
amusements, when, many years ago I used to turn over these sort of
Writers to unbend myself from more serious applications.'

The excellence of the edition proved to be by no means proportionate to
the arrogance of the editor. His text is, indeed, better than Pope's,
inasmuch as he introduced many of Theobald's restorations and some
probable emendations both of his own and of the two editors whom he so
unsparingly denounced, but there is no trace whatever, so far as we have
discovered, of his having collated for himself either the earlier Folios
or any of the Quartos.

Warburton[10] was, in his turn, severely criticised by Dr Zachary Grey,
and Mr John Upton, in 1746, and still more severely by Mr Thomas
Edwards, in his _Supplement to Mr Warburton's edition of Shakespeare_,
1747. The third edition of Mr Edwards's book, 1750, was called _Canons
of Criticism and Glossary, being a Supplement, &c._ This title is a
sarcastic allusion to two passages in Warburton's preface: 'I once
intended to have given the Reader a _body of Canons_, for literal
Criticism, drawn out in form,' &c. p. xiv, and 'I had it once, indeed,
in my design, to give a general alphabetic _Glossary_ of these terms,'
&c. p. xvi. Dr Grey's attack was reprinted, with additions, and a new
title, in 1751, and again in 1752. Warburton and his predecessors were
passed in review also by Mr Benjamin Heath, in _A Revisal of
Shakespeare's text_, 1765.

Dr Samuel Johnson first issued proposals for a new edition of
Shakespeare in 1745, but met with no encouragement. He resumed the
scheme in 1756, and issued a new set of Proposals (reprinted in Malone's
preface), 'in which,' says Boswell, 'he shewed that he perfectly well
knew what a variety of research such an undertaking required, but his
indolence prevented him from pursuing it with that diligence, which
alone can collect those scattered facts that genius, however acute,
penetrating, and luminous, cannot discover by its own force.' Johnson
deceived himself so far, as to the work to be done and his own energy in
doing it, that he promised the publication of the whole before the end
of the following year. Yet, though some volumes were printed as early as
1758 (Boswell, Vol. II. p. 84), it was not published till 1765, and
might never have been published at all, but for