tick of fallibility, and it was but reasonable that he should
claim what he so liberally granted.

As he never writes without careful enquiry and diligent consideration, I
have received all his notes, and believe that every reader will wish for
more.

Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak. Respect is due to high
place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration to genius and
learning; but he cannot be justly offended at that liberty of which he has
himself so frequently given an example, nor very solicitous what is
thought of notes, which he ought never to have considered as part of his
serious employments, and which, I suppose, since the ardour of composition
is remitted, he no longer numbers among his happy effusions.

The original and predominant error 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 author 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 author 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