[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.]
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 Odyssey, with the postscript (not the notes), the preface to Shakespeare, and a few Spectators[3] and Guardians. Whatever besides I have written, or joined in writing with Dr. Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, or Mr. Gay (the only persons with whom I ever wrote in conjunction) are to be found in the four volumes of Miscellanies by us published.[4] I think them too inconsiderable to be separated and reprinted here; nevertheless, that none of my faults may be imputed to another, I must own that of the prose part, the Thoughts on Various Subjects at the end of the second volume, were wholly mine; and of the verses, the Happy Life of a Country Parson, the Alley in imitation of Spenser, the characters of Macer, Artimesia, and Phryne, the Verses to Mrs. M[artha] B[lount] on her Birth-day, and a few epigrams.[5] It will be but justice to me to believe that nothing more is mine, notwithstanding all that has been published in my name, or added to my[6] miscellanies since 1717,[7] by any bookseller whatsoever.