Of these editions some have passed several times through the press; but only such as vary from each other are here enumerated.

To this list might be added, several spurious and mutilated impressions; but as they appear to have been executed without the smallest degree of skill either in the manners or language of the time of Shakspeare, and as the

names of their respective editors are prudently concealed, it were useless to commemorate the number of their volumes, or the distinct date of each publication.

Some of our legitimate editions will afford a sufficient specimen of the fluctuation of price in books.—An ancient quarto was sold for sixpence; and the folios 1623 and 1632, when first printed, could not have been rated higher than at ten shillings each^{2 note}.—Very lately, seven pounds, five shillings; and seventeen pounds, six shillings and six-pence, have been paid for a quarto; the first folio has been repeatedly sold for twenty-five pounds; and also for thirty-five pounds, fourteen shillings: but what price may be expected for it hereafter, is not very easy to be determined, the conscience of Mr. Fox, bookseller, in Holborn, having once permitted him to ask no less than two guineas for two leaves out of a mutilated copy of that impression, though he had several, almost equally defective, in his shop. The second folio is commonly rated at two or three guineas^{3 note}

At the late Mr. Jacob Tonson's sale, in the year 1767, one hundred and forty copies of Mr. Pope's edition of Shakspeare, in six volumes quarto (for which the subscribers paid six guineas), were disposed of among the booksellers at sixteen shillings per set. Seven hundred and fifty of this edition were printed.

At the same sale, the remainder of Dr. Warburton's

edition, in eight volumes octavo, printed in 1747 (of which the original price was two pounds eight shillings, and the number printed, one thousand), was sold off: viz. one hundred and seventy-eight copies, at eighteen shillings each.

On the contrary, Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition, printed at Oxford in 1744, which was first sold for three guineas, had arisen to nine or ten, before it was reprinted.

It appears, however, from the foregoing catalogue (when all reiterations of legitimate editions are taken into the account, together with five spurious ones printed in Ireland, one in Scotland, one at Birmingham, and four in London, making in the whole thirty-seven impressions) that not less than 37,500 copies of our author's works have been dispersed, exclusive of the quartos, single plays, and such as have been altered for the stage. Of the latter, as exact a list as I have been able to form, with the assistance of Mr. Reed, of Staple-Inn (than whom no man is more conversant with English publications both ancient and modern, or more willing to assist the literary undertakings of others), will be found in the course of the following pages. Steevens.