over by Pope
in his lifetime, and all but two or three pages, had been published
again and again.]

[Footnote 9:

A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod,
An honest man's the noblest work of God.--WARBURTON.]

[Footnote 10: It will be printed in the same form with this, and every
future edition of his works, so as to make a part of them.--WARBURTON.

The Life which Warburton promised with such solemn pomp was never
written and he was content to assist Ruffhead in his feeble
compilation.]

[Footnote 11: Warburton intimates that Pope's only faults grew out of
his credulous belief in "the specious appearance of virtue," which was a
sarcasm directed against those friends of Pope who were the enemies of
Warburton.]

[Footnote 12: The demand of Warburton was not for a truce on the day of
Pope's funeral, which took place seven years before. He insisted that
because Pope was dead no one should ever again question his title to be
called "good." Neither Pope nor Warburton was accustomed to spare dead
men, and the claim for exemption was specially inconsistent in the
preface to works which were full of bitter attacks upon both living and
dead. Warburton was to go on circulating Pope's venom, and any victim
who retaliated was to be pronounced "sacrilegious," "a scandal even to
barbarians," and worthy to be "rewarded with execration and a gibbet."]

[Footnote 13: Warburton was a fortunate author. Though he published a
host of paradoxical notions, his opponents, if we are to trust his
repeated assertions, were always fools and knaves.]

INTRODUCTION.

In his will, dated December 12, 1743, not quite six months before he
died, Pope bequeathed his printed works to Warburton, on condition that
he published them without "future alterations." Warburton states that
the object of the proviso was to relieve him from the obloquy he might
incur by reproducing offensive strokes of satire. A few slight
alterations which had not the sanction of any prior edition were
nevertheless introduced by Warburton into some of the poems, and he
announced on the title-page and in the preface, that they were taken
from a corrected copy delivered to him by Pope. Mr. Croker mistrusted
the genuineness of the "alterations," and he intended to reject the text
of Warburton, and adopt in the main the text of the last octavo edition
which had appeared during the lifetime of the poet. The honour of
Warburton is not above suspicion, but Mr. C