University of Virginia Library

I have now gone through the Collections upon the Odyssey, and laid together what occurred most remarkable in this excellent Poem. I am not so vain as to think these Remarks free from faults, nor so disingenuous as not to confess them: All Writers have occasion for indulgence, and those most who least acknowledge it. I have sometimes used Madam Dacier as she has done others, in transcribing some of her Remarks without particularizing them; but indeed it was through inadvertency only that her name is sometimes omitted at the bottom of the note. If my performance has merit, either in these, or in my part of the translation (namely in the sixth, eleventh, and eighteenth books) it is but just to attribute it to the judgment and care of Mr. Pope, by whose hand every sheet was corrected. His other, and much more able assistant, was Mr. Fenton, in the fourth and the twentieth books. It was our particular request, that our several parts might not be made known to the world till the end of it: And if they have had the good fortune not to be distinguished from His, we ought to be the less vain, since the resemblance proceeds much less from our diligence and study to copy his manner, than from his own daily revisal and correction. The most experienced Painters will not wonder at this, who very well know, that no Critic can pronounce even of the pieces of Raphael or Titian, which have, or which have not, been work'd upon by those of their school? when the same Master's hand has directed the execution of the whole, reduced it to one character and colouring, gone over the several parts, and given to each their finishing.

I must not conclude without declaring our mutual satisfaction in Mr. Pope's acceptance of our best endeavours, which have contributed at least to his more speedy execution of this great undertaking. If ever My name be numbered with the learned, I must ascribe it to his friendship, in transmitting it to posterity by a participation in his labours. May the sense I have of this, and other instances of that friendship, be known as long as His name will cause mine to last: And may I to this end be permitted, at the conclusion of a work which is a kind of monument of his partiality to me, to place the following lines, as an Inscription memorial of it.