s never so concerned about my works as to
vindicate them in print, believing if any thing was good it would defend
itself, and what was bad could never be defended; that I used no
artifice to raise or continue a reputation, depreciated no dead author I
was obliged to, bribed no living one with unjust praise, insulted no
adversary with ill language,[22] or, when I could not attack a rival's
works, encouraged reports against his morals. To conclude, if this
volume perish, let it serve as a warning to the critics not to take too
much pains for the future to destroy such things as will die of
themselves; and a _memento mori_ to some of my vain contemporaries the
poets, to teach them that when real merit is wanting, it avails nothing
to have been encouraged by the great, commended by the eminent, and
favoured by the public in general.[23]

_Nov. 10, 1716._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In all editions till that of Warburton it was thus: "For as
long as one side despises a well meant endeavour, the other will not be
satisfied with a moderate approbation." The first sentence of the next
paragraph is expanded in the manuscript: "Indeed they both proceed in
such a manner as if they really believed that poetry was immediate
inspiration. It were to be wished they would reflect that this
extraordinary zeal and fury is ill placed, poetry and criticism being by
no means the universal concern of the world. I do not say this to
imitate those people who make a merit of undervaluing the arts and
qualifications without which they had never been taken notice of. I
think poetry as useful as any other art, because it is as entertaining,
and therefore as well deserving of mankind."]

[Footnote 2: Until the edition of Warburton the reading was slightly
different: "Yet sure upon the whole a bad author deserves better usage
than a bad critic; a man may be the former merely through the misfortune
of an ill judgment, but he cannot be the latter without both that and an
ill temper."]

[Footnote 3: The instance of Pope himself is a refutation of his theory
that the world was almost exclusively composed of flatterers and
detractors, and chiefly of the last. Where he could count the deniers of
his genius by tens he could number his admirers by thousands.]

[Footnote 4: What is here said of the privileges of the poetic character
will not, I believe, bear the test of truth and experience. Surely a
poet