takes leave of his Readers, by assuring them—­that, if he were not persuaded that the contents of these Volumes, and the Work to which they are subsidiary, evince something of the ‘Vision and the Faculty divine’; and that, both in words and things, they will operate in their degree, to extend the domain of sensibility for the delight, the honour, and the benefit of human nature, nothwithstanding the many happy hours which he has employed in their composition, and the manifold comforts and enjoyments they have procured to him, he would not, if a wish could do it, save them from immediate destruction;—­from becoming at this moment, to the world, as a thing that had never been.

[Footnote 5:  The learned Hakewill (a third edition of whose book bears date 1635), writing to refute the error ’touching Nature’s perpetual and universal decay,’ cites triumphantly the names of Ariosto, Tasso, Bartas, and Spenser, as instances that poetic genius had not degenerated; but be makes no mention of Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 6:  This flippant insensibility was publicly reprehended by Mr. Coleridge in a course of Lectures upon Poetry given by him at the Royal Institution.  For the various merits of thought and language in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, see Nos. 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 54, 64, 66, 68, 73, 76, 86, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 129, and many others.]

[Footnote 7:  Hughes is express upon this subject in his dedication of Spenser’s Works to Lord Somers, he writes thus ’It was your Lordship’s encouraging a beautiful edition of Paradise Lost that first brought that incomparable Poem to be generally known and esteemed.’]

[Footnote 8:  This opinion seems actually to have been entertained by Adam Smith, the worst critic, David Hume not excepted, that Scotland, a soil to which this sort of weed seems natural, has produced.]

[Footnote 9:  CORTES, alone in a night-gown.

  All things are hush’d as Nature’s self lay dead;
  The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head. 
  The little Birds in dreams their songs repeat,
  And sleeping Flowers beneath the Night-dew sweat: 
  Even Lust and Envy sleep; yet Love denies
  Rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes.

DRYDEN’S Indian Emperor.]

[Footnote 10:  Since these observations upon Thomson were written, I have perused the second edition of his Seasons, and find that even that does not contain the most striking passages which Warton points out for admiration, these, with other improvements, throughout the whole work, must have been added at a later period.]

[Footnote 11:  Shenstone, in his Schoolmistress, gives a still more remarkable instance of this timidity On its first appearance (see D’Israeli’s 2d Series of the Curiosities of Literature) the Poem was accompanied with an absurd prose commentary, showing, as indeed some incongruous expressions in the text imply, that the whole was intended for burlesque.  In subsequent editions, the commentary was dropped, and the People have since continued to read in seriousness, doing for the Author what he had not courage openly to venture upon for himself.]