ABSTRACT

THE Reader may possibly apprehend, from the space which I foresee

this Preface will occupy, that his judgment is about to be deluded by

Artifice, or seared by Declamation, to approve a Composition, which even the Author distrusts, or to pardon Errors which pierce the most

splendid Disguise of heroic Verse. But Examples have proved sufficiently that Verse cannot always be defended by Prose, and a Writer can no longer support the Credit of his Works by Versatile

and partial Criticism; the object of this attempt is not Fame, and the

history of its motives would be very short, but for its connexion with a subject, on which it is impossible to think long with indifference.