se" is interspersed with obvious
thoughts and erroneous maxims. The language of Atterbury is sober, and
even in writing to the author he was not betrayed by the partiality of
friendship into the exaggerations of Warton.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

I am inclined to think that both the writers of books, and the readers
of them, are generally not a little unreasonable in their expectations.
The first seem to fancy that the world must approve whatever they
produce, and the latter to imagine that authors are obliged to please
them at any rate. Methinks, as on the one hand, no single man is born
with a right of controlling the opinions of all the rest; so on the
other, the world has no title to demand, that the whole care and time of
any particular person should be sacrificed to its entertainment.
Therefore I cannot but believe that writers and readers are under equal
obligations for as much fame, or pleasure, as each affords the other.

Every one acknowledges, it would be a wild notion to expect perfection
in any work of man: and yet one would think the contrary was taken for
granted, by the judgment commonly passed upon poems. A critic supposes
he has done his part if he proves a writer to have failed in an
expression, or erred in any particular point: and can it then be
wondered at if the poets in general seem resolved not to own themselves
in any error? For as long as one side will make no allowances, the other
will be brought to no acknowledgments.[1]

I am afraid this extreme zeal on both sides is ill-placed; poetry and
criticism being by no means the universal concern of the world, but only
the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who
read there. Yet sure, upon the whole, a bad author deserves better usage
than a bad critic: for a writer's endeavour, for the most part, is to
please his readers, and he fails merely through the misfortune of an ill
judgment; but such a critic's is to put them out of humour; a design he
could never go upon without both that and an ill temper.[2]

I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad poets.
What we call a genius, is hard to be distinguished by a man himself,
from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he cannot
at first discover it any other way than by giving way to that prevalent
propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken. The only
method he has is to make the experiment by writing, and appeali