g notes is not of difficult attainment.
The work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence,
ignorance, and asinine tastelessness of the former editors, and
shewing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the
inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing
something which to superficial readers would seem specious, but
which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the true
reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding with loud acclamations
on the discovery, and a sober wish for the advancement and prosperity
of genuine criticism.

All this may be done, and perhaps done sometimes without impropriety.
But I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires
many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot
without so much labour appear to be right The justness of a happy
restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied
to criticism, _quod dubitas ne feceris_.

To dread the shore which he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to
the sailor. I had before my eye, so many critical adventures ended in
miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. I encountered in every
page Wit struggling with its own sophistry, and Learning confused by
the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I
admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossessing their
emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how
many of the readings which I have corrected may be by some other
editor defended and established.

Criticks, I saw, that other's names efface,
And fix their own, with labour, in the place;
Their own, like others, soon their place resign'd,
Or disappear'd, and left the first behind,

POPE.

That a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be
wonderful, either to others or himself, if it be considered, that in
his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that
regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed
at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a slight
misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts
connected, is sufficient to make him not only fails, but fail
ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces perhaps but one
reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be
able to dispute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The
allure