assurance, after many years, of a man who had no regard for truth does
not outweigh the assertion in the Spectator, when coupled with the
peculiar wording by which he evaded the public contradiction of the
statement.]

[Footnote 19: In 1721 he broke through his rule by recommending the
poems of Parnell to Lord Oxford in an Epistle in verse.--CUNNINGHAM.]

[Footnote 20: A few sentences before he had said, "for what I have
published I can only hope to be pardoned," and already he has forgotten
his mock modesty, and admits he has a hope that his works may prove "a
monument."]

[Footnote 21: The commendation of his own goodness is a theme which
constantly recurs in Pope, as if he hoped to conceal his delinquencies
by his loud profession of the contrary qualities. The topic is
introduced into this preface in a forced manner, and treated with
singular weakness. Intellectual capacity and literary pre-eminence are
no security for moral excellence; and it was idle to ask the public to
forget his reputation as a poet, which was his sole claim to fame, and
to commemorate him for virtues of which the world had no proof, and
which, if they were real, he shared with thousands.]

[Footnote 22: This was written in 1716; did our author recollect this
sentiment in 1729[8]?--WARTON.

Warton alludes to the Dunciad, but to have "insulted adversaries with
ill language" was only one out of several particulars, in which Pope's
subsequent career belied the protestations in his preface.]

[Footnote 23: This far-fetched excuse of Pope for rebuking the vanity of
contemporary poets, was a clumsy expedient to gratify his own vanity in
proclaiming to the world that "he had been encouraged by the great, and
commended by the eminent." He had not much title to reprove the vanity
of his brethren, when, in the same sentence, he recorded the praise
which the different orders of mankind had bestowed upon himself.]

PREFACE TO POPE'S WORKS.

VOL. II. 4TO, 1735.

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.

All I had to say of my writings is contained in my preface to the first
of these volumes, printed for J. Tonson, and B. Lintot in quarto and
folio in the year 1717; and all I have to say of myself will be found in
my last Epistle.[1] I have nothing to add, but that this volume, and the
above-mentioned contain whatsoever I have written, and[2] designed for
the press, except my translation of the Iliad (with my preface and
notes), of twelve books of the Od