In explanation of Warton's probable error two extenuating facts should be remembered. First, since Thomson died about 1766, Warton's recollection was at least fifteen years old; and second, only in 1780 did Edmond Malone edit the _Sonnets_ and _The Passionate Pilgrim_ as discriminate texts comprising Shakespeare's lyrics. Even then Malone omitted without comment the separate title page _Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musicke_. Previously, except in George Steevens's edition of the _Sonnets_, Shakespeare's poems were lumped together, with lyrics of several other Elizabethan poets, and printed as Shakespeare's _Poems on Several Occasions_. Moreover, Warton was not the first to write of a 1599 edition of the _Sonnets_. His friend Bishop Percy may have helped to create this false impression in Warton's memory. In his interleaved copy of Langbaine's _Account of the English Dramatick Poets_, immediately after Oldys's statement that Shakespeare's _Sonnets_ were not printed until 1609, Percy commented, "But this is a mistake. Lintot republished Shakespeare's Sonnets from an edition in 1599." Malone, in his transcript of Steevens's transcript of Percy, corrected Percy's mistake: "This is a mistake of Dr. Percy's. Lintot republished from old ed's but not from any ed. of 1599, except a very _few_ sonnets called the _Passionate Pilgrim_ printed in that year." (Photostat of Bergen Evans's transcript of Bodleian Malone 129-132.) Warton, however, may well have been misled by Percy's comment, for in the winter of 1769 he had borrowed and used Percy's annotated copy of Langbaine. (_The Percy Letters, The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton_, ed. M. G. Robinson and Leah Dennis [Baton Rouge, 1951], pp. 135, 137.) It is unfortunate that the matter was not cleared up in discussion with Malone, whom at some time during the 1780's Warton furnished with a copy of the 1596 _Venus and Adonis_ and with whom he corresponded around 1785 concerning sonnets in general and Shakespeare in particular. (William Shakespeare, _Plays and Poems_, ed. Edmond Malone [London, 1790] X, 13, n. 1; and James Prior, _The Life of Edmond Malone_ [London, 1860], pp. 122-123.)]
[31] _Wits Tr._ fol. 281. b. [The brackets in the text are Warton's.]