OBSERVATIONS ON SHAKESPEARE. By JOHN UPTON Ne forte pudori Sit tibi Mufa lyrae folers, & cantor Apollo. Hor. LONDON: Hagedom Printed for G. HAWKINS, in Fleet-ftreet. M,DCC,XLVI. RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL of GRANVILLE THESE, CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON SHAKESPEARE ARE WITH ALL DECENT HUMILITY AND THE HIGHEST ESTEEM INSCRIBED AND DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. ON SHAKESPEARE. T ΒΟΟΚ Ι. 18 SECT. I. IS a common observation, and therefore perhaps not altogether untrue, that critics generally fet out with these two 'maxims; the one, that the author must always dictate what is beft; the other, that the critic is to determine what that beft is. There is an affertion not very unlike this, that Dr. Bentley has made in his late edition of Milton: "I have "fuch 1. See his first note on Milton's Paradife loft. However to do the Dr. juftice, there are fome errors which he has undoubtedly mended, of which two are moft remarkable. B. VII, 321. The fmelling gourd, which fhould be fwelling. and .451. foul living, which ought to have been printed, foul living. In most of the other places, if he cannot find errors, he will make them. But methinks an author should |