language, not being designed for the reader's desk, was
all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the
audience.

Hanmer's care of the metre has been too violently censured. He found the
measure reformed in so many passages by the silent labours of some
editors, with the silent acquiescence of the rest, that he thought
himself allowed to extend a little further the license, which had
already been carried so far without reprehension; and, of his
corrections in general, it must be confessed, that they are often just,
and made commonly with the least possible violation of the text.

But, by inserting his emendations, whether invented or borrowed, into
the page, without any notice of varying copies, he has appropriated the
labour of his predecessors, and made his own edition of little
authority. His confidence indeed, both in himself and others, was too
great; he supposes all to be right that was done by Pope and Theobald;
he seems not to suspect a critick of fallibility; and it was but
reasonable that he should claim what he so liberally granted.

As he never writes without careful inquiry and diligent consideration, I
have received all his notes, and believe that every reader will wish for
more.

Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak. Respect is due to high
place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration to genius and
learning; but he cannot be justly offended at that liberty of which he
has himself so frequently given an example, nor very solicitous what is
thought of notes, which he ought never to have considered as part of his
serious employments, and which, I suppose, since the ardour of
composition is remitted, he no longer numbers among his happy effusions.

The original and predominant errour of his commentary is acquiescence in
his first thoughts; that precipitation which is produced by
consciousness of quick discernment; and that confidence which presumes
to do, by surveying the surface, what labour only can perform, by
penetrating the bottom. His notes exhibit sometimes perverse
interpretations, and sometimes improbable conjectures; he at one time
gives the author more profundity of meaning than the sentence admits,
and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every
other reader. But his emendations are likewise often happy and just; and
his interpretation of obscure passages learned and sagacious.

Of his notes, I have commonly rejected, those again