The notes which I have borrowed or written are either illustrative,
by which difficulties are explained; or judicial, by which faults
and beauties are remarked; or emendatory, by which depravations
are corrected.

The explanations transcribed from others, if I do not subjoin any
other interpretation, I suppose commonly to be right, at least I
intend by acquiescence to confess, that I have nothing better to
propose.

After the labours of all the editors, I found many passages which
appeared to me likely to obstruct the greater number of readers,
and thought it my duty to facilitate their passage. It is impossible
for an expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for
others. He can only judge what is necessary by his own experience;
and how long soever he may deliberate, will at last explain many
lines which the learned will think impossible to be mistaken, and
omit many for which the ignorant will want his help. These are censures
merely relative and must be quietly endured. I have endeavoured to
be neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and
hope that I have made my authour's meaning accessible to many who
before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something
to the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure.

The compleat explanation of an authour not systematick
and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual
allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single
scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are suppressed,
must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs,
too minute to attract the notice of law, such as mode of dress,