“I am extremely obliged for the tender concern you have for my reputation in what I am _to prefix to my Edition_: and this part, as it will come last in play, I shall certainly be so kind to myself to communicate in due time to your perusal. The whole affair of _Prolegomena_ I have determined to soften into _Preface_. I am so very cool as to my sentiments of my Adversary’s usage, that I think the publick should not be too largely troubled with them. _Blockheadry_ is the chief hinge of his satire upon me; and if my Edition do not wipe out that, I ought to be content to let the charge be fixed; if it do, the reputation gained will be a greater triumph than resentment. But, dear Sir, will you, at your leisure hours, think over for me upon the contents, topics, orders, etc., of this branch of my labour? You have a comprehensive memory, and a happiness of digesting the matter joined to it, which my head is often too much embarrassed to perform; let that be the excuse for my inability. But how unreasonable is it to expect this labour, when it is the only part in which I shall not be able to be just to my friends: for, to confess assistance in a _Preface_ will, I am afraid, make me appear too naked. Rymer’s extravagant rancour against our Author, under the umbrage of criticism, may, I presume, find a place here” (_id._ ii., pp. 621, 622). This confession of weakness is valuable in the light of Warburton’s Preface to his own edition of 1747. His statement of the assistance he rendered Theobald is rude and cruel, but it is easier to impugn his taste than his truthfulness. Theobald did not merely ask for assistance in the Preface; he received it too. Warburton expressed himself on this matter, with his customary force and with a pleasing attention to detail, in a letter to the Rev. Thomas Birch on 24th November, 1737. “You will see in Theobald’s heap of disjointed stuff,” he says, “which he calls a Preface to Shakespeare, an observation upon those poems [_i.e._ _L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_] which I made to him, and which he did not understand, and so has made it a good deal obscure by contracting my note; for you must understand that almost all that Preface (except what relates to Shakespeare’s Life, and the foolish Greek conjectures at the end) was made up of notes I sent him on particular passages, and which he has there stitched together without head or tail” (Nichols, ii., p. 81). The Preface is indeed a poor piece of patch-work. Examination of the footnotes throughout the edition corroborates Warburton’s concluding statement. Some of the annotations which have his name attached to them are repeated almost verbatim (_e.g._ the note in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ on the use of music), while the comparison of Addison and Shakespeare is taken from a letter written by Warburton to Concanen in 1726-7 (_id._ ii., pp. 195, etc.).