The work immediately attracted great attention. Kenrick lost no time in issuing _A Review of Doctor Johnson’s New Edition of Shakespeare: in which the Ignorance or Inattention of that Editor is exposed, and the Poet defended from the Persecution of his Commentators_, 1765. Johnson was “above answering for himself,” but James Barclay, an Oxford student, replied for him, to his annoyance, in _An Examination of Mr. Kenrick’s Review_, 1766, and Kenrick himself rejoined in _A Defence of Mr. Kenrick’s Review ... By a Friend_, 1766. The most important criticism of the edition was Tyrwhitt’s _Observations and Conjectures upon some Passages of Shakespeare_, issued anonymously by the Clarendon Press in 1766. Though we read that “the author has not entered into the merits of Mr. Johnson’s performance, but has set down some observations and conjectures,” the book is in effect an examination of Johnson’s edition. Notices appeared also in the _Monthly_ and _Critical Reviews_, the _London Magazine_, the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, and the _Annual Register_. The _Monthly Review_ devotes its two articles (October and November, 1765) chiefly to the Preface. It examines at considerable length Johnson’s arguments against the “unities,” and concludes that “there is hardly one of them which does not seem false or foreign to the subject.” The _Critical Review_, on the other hand, pronounces them “worthy of Mr. Johnson’s pen”; and the _London Magazine_ admits their force, though it wishes that Johnson had “rather retained the character of a reasoner than assumed that of a pleader.” Richard Farmer.