nd.--POPE.

That a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be wonderful,
either to others or himself, if it be considered, that in his art there is
no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate
positions. His chance of error is renewed at every attempt; an oblique
view of the passage, a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual
inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only
fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces
perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another
will always be able to dispute his claims.

It is an unhappy state in which danger is hid under pleasure. The
allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has all the
joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy
change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise against
it.

Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world; nor
is it my intention to depreciate a study that has exercised so many mighty
minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the bishop of
Aleria to English Bentley. The criticks on ancient authors have, in the
exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the editor of
Shakespeare is condemned to want. They are employed upon grammatical and
settled languages, whose construction contributes so much to perspicuity,
that Homer has fewer passages unintelligible than Chaucer. The words have
not only a known regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and
confine the choice. There are commonly more manuscripts than one; and they
do not often conspire in the same mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to
Salmasius how little satisfaction his emendations gave him. _Illudunt
nobis conjecturae nostrae, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices
incidimus._ And Lipsius could complain that criticks were making faults by
trying to remove them, _Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur._ And
indeed, when mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger
and Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are
often vague and disputable, like mine or Theobald's.

Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little;
for raising in the publick expectations, which at last I have not
answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of
knowledge is often tyrannical. It is ha