ginal and predominant errour of his commentary, is acquiescence
in his first thoughts; that precipitation which is produced by
consciousness of quick discernment; and that confidence which presumes
to do, by surveying the surface, what labour only can perform,
by penetrating the bottom. His notes exhibit sometimes perverse
interpretations, and sometimes improbable conjectures; he at one
time gives the authour more profundity of meaning, than the sentence
admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain
to every other reader. But his emendations are likewise often happy
and just; and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and
sagacious.

Of his notes, I have commonly rejected those, against which the
general voice of the publick has exclaimed, or which their own
incongruity immediately condemns, and which, I suppose, the authour
himself would desire to be forgotten. Of the rest, to part I have
given the highest approbation, by inserting the offered reading in
the text; part I have left to the judgment of the reader, as doubtful,
though specious; and part I have censured without reserve, but I am
sure without bitterness of malice, and, I hope, without wantonness of
insult.

It is no pleasure to me, in revising my volumes, to observe how much
paper is wasted in confutation. Whoever considers the revolutions of
learning, and the various questions of greater or less importance,
upon which wit and reason have exercised their powers, must lament the
unsuccessfulness of enquiry, and the slow advances of truth, when he
reflects, that great part of the labour of every writer is only the
destruction of those that went before him. The first care of the
builder of a new system, is to demolish the fabricks which are
standing. The chief desire of him that comments an authour, is to
shew how much other commentators have corrupted and obscured him.
The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of
controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again
to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion
without progress. Thus sometimes truth and criour, and sometimes
contrarieties of errour, take each other's place by reciprocal
invasion. The tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one
generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden
meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams
into the regions of obscurity, on a