in the course of time became the literary autocrat of his age. He was disliked by many; but there was no one to dispute his supremacy. As he was cons… - Thomas Lounsbury

The pronouncing dictionary has not only come, but is treated with a deference to which, at the outset, it was an utter stranger. It seems as if its production must have been due in the first instance to the desire for a work of such a nature manifested by the imperfectly educated middle class, rising more and more into social prominence. The members of this body wanted somebody to tell them precisely what to say and how to say it. They did not care to exercise the right of private judgment, or, rather, they did not have sufficient faith in their own cultivation to trust it. Authority was what they were after; and when men are longing for authority on any subject, some one will be considerate enough of their welfare, and confident enough in his own sufficiency, to come forward and furnish it.

It was in the that the forces which give stability and credit to a language began first to operate powerfully upon the speech employed by the great body of the people. It was in the latter half of that century that , in the strict sense of the word literature, properly begins. Numerous works had, indeed, been written between the and this period; but, with the exception of some few specimens of lyric poetry, there had been nothing produces, which, looked at from a purely literary point of view, had any reason to show for its existence. If known to the cultivated classes at all, it was probably treated with contempt; for it was certainly contemptible in execution, whatever it may have been in design. The men who, during those centuries, wrote in English, seem to have done so in most cases because they had not the knowledge or the ability to write in Latin or in French. To a very large extent, their works were translations.

W is to be found the best text of ? Of the many s before the public, which one is the one to be preferred? These are questions which are pretty certain to be asked by him who is about to take up for the first time the study of that author's dramatic productions. It may and it sometimes does cause a feeling of disappointment when the answer is made—as no other answer can fairly be made—that not only is there no best edition of Shakespeare's works, but there never can be and never will be one.