Specimens interspers’d of the latter Kind, as several of the
Emendations were best supported, and several of the Difficulties
best explain’d, by taking notice of the Beauties and Defects of
the Composition peculiar to this Immortal Poet. But This was but
occasional, and for the sake only of perfecting the two other Parts,
which were the proper Objects of the Editor’s Labour. The third lies
open for every willing Undertaker: and I shall be pleas’d to see it
the Employment of a masterly Pen.

It must necessarily happen, as I have formerly observ’d, that where
the Assistance of Manuscripts is wanting to set an Author’s Meaning
right, and rescue him from those Errors which have been transmitted
down thro’ a Series of incorrect Editions, and a long Intervention
of Time, many Passages must be desperate, and past a Cure; and
their true Sense irretrievable either to Care or the Sagacity of
Conjecture. But is there any Reason therefore to say, That because
All cannot be retriev’d, All ought to be left desperate? We should
shew very little Honesty, or Wisdom, to play the Tyrants with an
Author’s Text; to raze, alter, innovate, and overturn, at all
Adventures, and to the utter Detriment of his Sense and Meaning:
But to be so very reserved and cautious, as to interpose no Relief
or Conjecture, where it manifestly labours and cries out for
Assistance, seems, on the other hand, an indolent Absurdity.

But because the Art of Criticism, both by Those who cannot form a
true Judgment of its Effects, nor can penetrate into its Causes,
(which takes in a great Number besides the Ladies;) is esteem’d only
an arbitrary capricious Tyranny exercis’d on Books; I think
proper to subjoin a Word or two about those Rules on which I have
proceeded, and by which I have regulated myself in this Edition. By