In 1709 there came a new phase in the history of Shakespearian Bibliography when Rowe, the poet-dramatist, at the suggestion of his bookseller, who believed that "none but a poet should presume to meddle with a poet," undertook to present to the world a new edition of Shakespeare's plays, in which the player-dramatist was for the first time to be brought within the fraternity of academicians. His works were to be edited on similar lines to those of the poets of Rowe's time, with the appendage of a life and a recommendatory preface. The contrast between this preface and that of Heminge and Condell is characteristic. To Rowe it is "a great wonder" that Shakespeare should have advanced dramatic poetry as far as he did; and, since he wrote "under a mere light of nature," and was never acquainted with Aristotle's precepts, it would be hard to "judge him by a law he knew nothing of." With Rowe, also, the "fable" comes first for criticism, because even if it is not the most difficult or beautiful part of the play, it is the most important; yet he contends that in this art Shakespeare has "no mastery or strength." In accordance with academic notions, Rowe completes the work begun by Heminge and Condell, and divides all the plays into acts and scenes; cutting up the text, as it is said, on "rational principles."[5] But Rowe's divisions are both misplaced and unauthorized; and even his text is faulty through being printed from the fourth edition of the first folio, the latest one and the least accurate. Pope follows Rowe as editor in 1723, and upholds the authority of the early copies, which, as he says with truth, "hold the place of the originals, and are the only materials left to repair the deficiencies, or restore the corrupted sense of the author." Pope's study of the "originals," however, confirms him in Rowe's opinion that Heminge and Condell were ignorant men, both as editors and actors. It was-- "Ben Jonson, getting possession of the stage, brought critical learning into vogue: and that this was not done without difficulty may appear from those frequent lessons (and indeed almost declamations) which he was forced to prefix to his first plays, and put into the mouth of his actors.... Till then, our authors had no thoughts of writing on the model of the ancients: their tragedies were only histories in dialogue: and their comedies followed the thread of any novel as they found it no less implicitly than if it had been true history."