I had not mentioned the modest Liberty I have here and there taken of animadverting on my Author, but that I was willing to obviate in time the splenetick Exaggerations of my Adversaries on this Head.  From past Experiments I have Reason to be conscious, in what Light this Attempt may be placed:  and that what I call a modest Liberty, will, by a little of their Dexterity, be inverted into downright Impudence.  From a hundred mean and dishonest Artifices employ’d to discredit this Edition, and to cry down its Editor, I have all the Grounds in Nature to be aware of Attacks.  But tho’ the Malice of Wit join’d to the Smoothness of Versification may furnish some Ridicule; Fact, I hope, will be able to stand its Ground against Banter and Gaiety.

    [Sidenote:  Shakespeare’s Anachronisms defended.]

    [Sidenote*:  Mr. Pope’s Anachronisms examin’d.]

It has been my Fate, it seems, as I thought it my Duty, to discover some Anachronisms in our Author; which might have slept in Obscurity but for this Restorer, as Mr. Pope is pleas’d affectionately to style me; as, for Instance, where Aristotle is mentioned by Hector in Troilus and Cressida:  and Galen, Cato, and Alexander the Great, in Coriolanus.  These, in Mr. Pope’s Opinion, are Blunders, which the Illiteracy of the first Publishers of his Works has father’d upon the Poet’s Memory:  it not being at all credible, that These could be the Errors of any Man who had the least Tincture of a School, or the least Conversation with such as had. But I have sufficiently proved, in the Course of my Notes, that such Anachronisms were the Effect of poetic Licence, rather than of Ignorance in our Poet.  And if I may be permitted to ask a modest Question by the way, Why may not I restore an Anachronism really made by our Author, as well as Mr. _Pope_ take the Privilege to fix others upon him, which he never had it in his Head to make; as I may venture to affirm He had not, in the Instance of Sir _Francis Drake_, to which I have spoke in the proper Place?

But who shall dare make any Words about this Freedom of Mr. Pope’s towards Shakespeare, if it can be prov’d, that, in his Fits of Criticism, he makes no more Ceremony with good Homer himself?  To try, then, a Criticism of his own advancing; In the 8th Book of the Odyssey, where Demodocus sings the Episode of the Loves of Mars and Venus; and that, upon their being taken in the Net by Vulcan,

  ——­the God of Arms
  Must pay the Penalty for lawless Charms;