resemble the ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own,
because they are like our fathers: and indeed it is very unreasonable
that people should expect us to be scholars, and yet be angry to find us
so.

I fairly confess that I have served myself all I could by reading; that
I made use of the judgment of authors dead and living; that I omitted no
means in my power to be informed of my errors, both by my friends and
enemies: but the true reason these pieces are not more correct, is owing
to the consideration how short a time they and I have to live: one may
be ashamed to consume half one's days in bringing sense and rhyme
together; and what critic can be so unreasonable as not to leave a man
time enough for any more serious employment, or more agreeable
amusement?

The only plea I shall use for the favour of the public is, that I have
as great a respect for it as most authors have for themselves; and that
I have sacrificed much of my own self-love for its sake, in preventing
not only many mean things from seeing the light, but many which I
thought tolerable. I would not be like those authors who forgive
themselves some particular lines for the sake of a whole poem, and _vice
versa_ a whole poem for the sake of some particular lines. I believe no
one qualification is so likely to make a good writer as the power of
rejecting his own thoughts; and it must be this (if anything) that can
give me a chance to be one. For what I have published, I can only hope
to be pardoned; but for what I have burned, I deserve to be praised. On
this account the world is under some obligation to me, and owes me the
justice in return to look upon no verses as mine that are not inserted
in this collection. And perhaps nothing could make it worth my while to
own what are really so, but to avoid the imputation of so many dull and