icitous to
prevent any share of the offence they might occasion, from falling on
the friend whom he had engaged to give them to the public.[2] In
discharge of this trust, the public has here a complete edition of his
works, executed in such a manner, as, I am persuaded, would have been to
his satisfaction. The editor hath not, for the sake of profit, suffered
the author's name to be made cheap by a subscription;[3] nor his works
to be defrauded of their due honours by a vulgar or inelegant
impression; nor his memory to be disgraced by any pieces unworthy of his
talents or virtue. On the contrary, he hath, at a very great expense,
ornamented this edition with all the advantages which the best artists
in paper, printing, and sculpture could bestow upon it.[4]

If the public hath waited longer than the deference due to its generous
impatience for the author's writings should have suffered, it was owing
to a reason which the editor need not be ashamed to tell. It was his
regard to the family interests of his deceased friend. Mr. Pope, at his
death, had left large impressions of several parts of his works, unsold,
the property of which was adjudged to belong to his executors; and the
editor was willing they should have time to dispose of them to the best
advantage, before the publication of this edition (which hath been long
prepared) should put a stop to the sale. But it may be proper to be a
little more particular concerning the superiority of this edition above
all the preceding, so far as Mr. Pope himself was concerned. What the
editor hath done, the reader must collect for himself.

The first volume, and the original poems in the second, are here first
printed from a copy corrected throughout by the author himself, even to
the very preface,[5] which, with several additional notes in his own
hand, he delivered to the editor a little before his death. The juvenile
translations, in the other part of the second volume, it was never his
intention to bring into this edition of his works, on account of the
levity of some, the freedom of others, and the little importance of all.
But these being the property of other men, the editor had it not in his
power to follow the author's intention.

The third volume (all but the Essay on Man, which together with the
Essay on Criticism, the author, a little before his death, had corrected
and published in quarto, as a specimen of his projected edition,) was
printed by him in his last il