There are still other Reasons, which may be suppos’d to have affected the whole Set. When the _Players_ took upon them to publish his Works intire, every Theatre was ransack’d to supply the Copy; and _Parts_ collected which had gone thro’ as many Changes as Performers, either from Mutilations or Additions made to them. Hence we derive many Chasms and Incoherences in the Sense and Matter. Scenes were frequently transposed, and shuffled out of their true Place, to humour the Caprice or suppos’d Convenience of some particular Actor. Hence much Confusion and Impropriety has attended, and embarras’d, the Business and Fable. For there ever have been, and ever will be in Playhouses, a Set of assuming Directors, who know better than the Poet himself the Connexion and Dependance of his Scenes; where Matter is defective, or Superfluities to be retrench’d; Persons, that have the Fountain of _Inspiration_ as peremptorily in them, as Kings have That of _Honour_. To these obvious Causes of Corruption it must be added, that our Author has lain under the Disadvantage of having his Errors propagated and multiplied by Time: because, for near a Century; his Works were republish’d from the faulty Copies without the assistance of any intelligent Editor: which has been the Case likewise of many a _Classic_ Writer. [Sidenote: The Editor’s Drift and Method.] [Sidenote*: Difference betwixt this Edition and Dr. _Bentley_’s _Milton_.] The Nature of any Distemper once found has generally been the immediate Step to a Cure. _Shakespeare_’s Case has in a great Measure resembled That of a corrupt _Classic_; and, consequently, the Method of Cure was likewise to bear a Resemblance. By what Means, and with what Success, this Cure has been effected on ancient Writers, is too well known, and needs no formal Illustration. The Reputation consequent on Tasks of that Nature invited me to attempt the Method here; with this View, the Hopes of restoring to the Publick their greatest Poet in his Original Purity: after having so long lain in a Condition that was a Disgrace to common Sense. To this End I have ventur’d on a Labour, that is the first Assay of the kind on any modern Author whatsoever. For the late Edition of _Milton_ by the Learned *Dr. _Bentley_ is, in the main, a Performance of another Species. It is plain, it was the Intention of that Great Man rather to Correct and pare off the Excrescencies of the _Paradise Lost_, in the manner that _Tucca_ and _Varius_ were employ’d to criticize the _Æneis_ of _Virgil_, than to restore corrupted Passages. Hence, therefore, may be seen either the Iniquity or Ignorance of his Censurers, who, from some Expressions, would make us believe, the _Doctor_ every where gives us his Corrections as the Original Text of the Author; whereas the chief Turn of his Criticism is plainly to shew the World, that if _Milton_ did not write as He would have him, he ought to have wrote so.