But these are now to be no faults; for ten days after his book is
published, and that his mistakes are grown so famous, that they are
come back to him, he sends his _Errata_[A] to be printed, and
annexed to his play; and desires, that, instead of _shutting_,
you would read _opening_, which, it seems, was the printer's
fault. I wonder at his modesty, that he did not rather say it was
Seneca's or mine; and that, in some authors, _reserate_ was to
_shut_ as well as to _open_, as the word _barach_, say
the learned, is both to _bless_ and _curse_.
[Footnote A: This erratum has been suffered to remain in the edition
of the Knight's plays now before us, published in 1692.]
Well, since it was the printer, he was a naughty man to commit
the same mistake twice in six lines: I warrant you _delectus
verborum_, for _placing of words_, was his mistake too, though
the author forgot to tell him of it: If it were my book, I assure you
I should. For those rascals ought to be the proxies of every gentleman
author, and to be chastised for him, when he is not pleased to own an
error. Yet since he has given the _errata_, I wish he would have
enlarged them only a few sheets more, and then he would have spared
me the labour of an answer: For this cursed printer is so given to
mistakes, that there is scarce a sentence in the preface without some
false grammar, or hard sense in it; which will all be charged upon the
poet, because he is so good-natured as to lay but three errors to the
printer's account, and to take the rest upon himself, who is better
able to support them.
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