hom he is hired to defame.

Perhaps the lightness of the matter may conduce to the vehemence
of the agency; when the truth to be investigated is so near to
inexistence, as to escape attention, its bulk is to be enlarged by
rage and exclamation: That to which all would be indifferent in its
original state, may attract notice when the fate of a name is appended
to it. A commentator has indeed great temptations to supply by
turbulence what he wants of dignity, to beat his little gold to a
spacious surface, to work that to foam which no art or diligence can
exalt to spirit.

The notes which I have borrowed or written are either illustrative,
by which difficulties are explained; or judicial by which faults
and beauties are remarked; or emendatory, by which depravations are
corrected.

The explanations transcribed from others, if I do not subjoin any
other interpretation, I suppose commonly to be right, at least I
intend by acquiescence to confess, that I have nothing better to
propose.

After the labours of all the editors, I found many passages which
appeared to me likely to obstruct the greater number of readers, and
thought it my duty to facilitate their passage. It is impossible
for an expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for
others. He can only judge what is necessary by his own experience;
and how long soever he may deliberate, will at last explain many lines
which the learned will think impossible to be mistaken, and omit many
for which the ignorant will want his help. These are censures merely
relative, and must be quietly endured. I have endeavoured to be
neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and hope
that I have made my authour's meaning accessible to many who before
were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to the
publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure.

The compleat explanation of an authour not systematick and
consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual
allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single
scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are suppressed, must
be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs, too minute
to attract the notice of law, such as modes of dress, formalities of
conversation, rules of visits, disposition of furniture, and practices
of ceremony, which naturally find places in familiar dialogue, are
so fugitive and unsubstantial, that they are not easily retaine