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PREFACE.
To a Publication of this kind little can with propriety be prefixed: The Reader, if it have one, will peruse it with the Candour of a Gentleman and a Scholar: He will consider whether it may not be of some Use at present in a political View by shewing the Absurdity of modern Innovation; and determine whether, by endeavouring to repress the Rage of conjectural Emendation and Criticism, it may not render a small Service to the Cause of Literature.
It is therefore unnecessary to deprecate the Inference, which was at first apprehended from the Disproportion of the Text and Notes, that the former was framed as a Vehicle for the latter; or, supposing it really the Case, to suggest the poetical Structure of the Rolliad and the Botanic Garden as a sufficient Authority. The Writer does not deny that in some of his Observations he has been anticipated (for there is but the same plain Tale to tell) and that others perhaps owe their Novelty to their Insignificance: He neither hints at his own Age nor that of the Poem in Justification of its Juvenilities and Mistakes; but without the Possibility of being read by the past, or the Probability of being remembered by the future, would feel himself happy in the Prospect of being relished by the present, Generation.
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