His chief assailants are the authours of _the Canons of criticism_ and of the _Review of_ Shakespeare's _text_; of whom one ridicules his errours with airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or incendiary.

The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him.

When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of _Coriolanus,_ who was afraid that _girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle_; when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in _Macbeth_, _An eagle tow'ring in his pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd._ Let me however do them justice.

One is a wit, and one a scholar.

They have both shown acuteness sufficient in the discovery of faults, and have both advanced some probable interpretations of obscure passages; but when they aspire to conjecture and emendation, it appears how falsely we all estimate our own abilities, and the little which they have been able to perform might have taught them more candour to the endeavours of others.
Before Dr._Warburton's_ edition, _Critical observations on_ Shakespeare had been published by Mr._Upton_, a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste.