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 new system, is to demolish the fabricks which
are standing. The chief desire of him that comments an authour,
is to shew how much other commentators have corrupted and obscured
him. The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach
of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again
to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion
without progress. Thus sometimes truth and errour, and sometimes
contrarieties of errour, take each other's place by reciprocal
invasion. The tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one
generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden
meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their
beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their
lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way.

These elevations and depressions of renown, and the contradictions
to which all improvers of knowledge must for ever be exposed, since
they are not escaped by the highest and brightest of mankind, may
surely be endured with patience by criticks and annotators, who
can rank themselves but as the satellites of their authours. How