This was a work which Pope seems to have thought unworthy of his abilities, being not able to suppress his contempt of the dull duty of an editor.  He understood but half his undertaking.  The duty of a collator is indeed dull, yet, like other tedious tasks, is very necessary; but an emendatory critick would ill discharge his duty, without qualities very different from dullness.  In perusing a corrupted piece, he must have before him all possibilities of meaning, with all possibilities of expression.  Such must be his comprehension of thought, and such his copiousness of language.  Out of many readings possible, he must be able to select that which best suits with the state, opinions, and modes of language prevailing in every age, and with his authour’s particular cast of thought, and turn of expression.  Such must be his knowledge, and such his taste.  Conjectural criticism demands more than humanity possesses, 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 errours.  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 authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all others, and that the rest only deviate from it by the printer’s negligence.  Whoever has any of the folios has all, excepting those diversities which mere reiteration of editions will produce.  I collated them all at the beginning, but afterwards used only the first.