large additions and improvements? Did the true author (Bacon or
Bungay) now edit his work, add much matter, and go wrong forty-seven
times where the quarto was right, and go right twenty times when the
quarto was wrong? Did he, for the Folio of 1623, nearly double The
Merry Wives in extent, and also leave all the errors of the fourth
quarto uncorrected?

In that case how negligent was Bacon of his immortal works! Now
Bacon was a scholar, and this absurd conduct cannot be imputed, I
hope, to him.

Mr. Pollard is much more lenient than his fellow-scholars towards the
Editor or Editors of the Folio. He concludes that "manuscript copies
of the plays were easily procurable." Sixteen out of the thirty-six
plays existed in quartos. Eight of the sixteen were not used for the
Folio; five were used, "with additions, corrections, or alterations"
(which must have been made from manuscripts). Three quartos only
were reprinted as they stood. The Editors greatly preferred to use
manuscript copies; and showed this, Mr. Pollard thinks, by placing
plays, never before printed, in the most salient parts of the three
sets of dramas in their book. {215a} They did make an attempt to
divide their plays into Acts and Scenes, whereas the quartos, as a
general rule, had been undivided. But the Editors, I must say, had
not the energy to carry out their good intentions fully--or Bacon or
Bungay, if the author, wearied in well-doing. The work is least ill
done in the Comedies, and grows worse and worse as the Editor, or
Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack.

A great living author, who had a decent regard for his own works,
could never have made or passed this slovenly Folio. Yet Mr.