and he that exercises it with most praise has very frequent need
of indulgence. Let us now be told no more of the dull duty of an
editor.

Confidence is the common consequence of success. They whose excellence
of any kind has been loudly celebrated, are ready to conclude,
that their powers are universal. Pope's edition fell below his own
expectations, and he was so much offended, when he was found to
have left any thing for others to do, that he past the latter part
of his life in a state of hostility with verbal criticism.

I have retained all his notes, that no fragment of so great a writer
may be lost; his preface, valuable alike for elegance of composition
and justness of remark, and containing a general criticism on his
authour, so extensive that little can be added, and so exact, that
little can be disputed, every editor has an interest to suppress,
but that every reader would demand its insertion.

Pope was succeeded by Theobald, a man of narrow comprehension and
small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of
genius, with little of the artificial light of learning, but zealous
for minute accuracy, and not negligent in pursuing it. He collated
the ancient copies, and rectified many errors. A man so anxiously
scrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he
did was commonly right.

In his report of copies and editions he is not to be trusted,
without examination. He speaks sometimes indefinitely of copies,
when he has only one. In his enumeration of editions, he mentions
the two first folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle