How just, notwithstanding, I have been in detecting the _Anachronisms_ of my Author, and in defending him for the Use of them, our late Editor seems to think, they should rather have slept in Obscurity: and the having discovered them is sneer’d at, as a sort of wrong-headed Sagacity. The numerous Corrections which I have made of the Poet’s Text in my _Shakespeare Restor’d_, and which the Publick have been so kind to think well of, are, in the Appendix of Mr. _Pope_’s last Edition, slightingly call’d _Various Readings, Guesses_, &c. He confesses to have inserted as many of them as he judg’d of any the least Advantage to the Poet; but says, that the whole amounted to about 25 Words: and pretends to have annexed a compleat List of the rest, which were not worth his embracing. Whoever has read my Book, will at one Glance see, how in both these Points Veracity is strain’d, so an Injury might but be done. _Malus, etsi obesse non potest, tamen cogitat._ Another Expedient, to make my Work appear of a trifling Nature, has been an Attempt to depreciate _Literal Criticism_. To this end, and to pay a servile Compliment to Mr. _Pope_, an _Anonymous_ Writer has, like a _Scotch_ Pedlar in Wit, unbraced his Pack on the Subject. But, that his Virulence might not seem to be levelled singly at me, he has done me the Honour to join Dr. _Bentley_ in the Libel. I was in hopes, we should have been both abused with Smartness of Satire at least, tho’ not with Solidity of Argument; that it might have been worth some Reply in Defence of the Science attacked. But I may fairly say of this Author, as _Falstaffe_ does of _Poins_;—_Hang him, Baboon! his Wit is as thick as _TEWKSBURY_ Mustard; there is no more Conceit in him, than is in a _MALLET. If it be not Prophanation to set the Opinion of the divine _Longinus_ against such a Scribler, he tells us expressly, “That to make a Judgment upon _Words_ (and _Writings_) is the most consummate Fruit of much Experience.” ἡ γὰρ τῶν λόγων κρίσις πολλῆς ἔστι πείρας τελευταῖον ἐπιγέννημα. Whenever Words are depraved, the Sense of course must be corrupted; and thence the Reader’s betray’d into a false Meaning. If the _Latin_ and _Greek_ Languages have receiv’d the greatest Advantages imaginable from the Labours of the Editors and Criticks of the two last Ages; by whose Aid and Assistance the Grammarians have been enabled to write infinitely better in that Art than even the preceding Grammarians, who wrote when those Tongues flourish’d as living Languages: I should account it a peculiar Happiness, that, by the faint Assay I have made in this Work, a Path might be chalk’d out, for abler Hands, by which to derive the same Advantages to our own Tongue: a Tongue, which, tho’ it wants none of the fundamental Qualities of an universal Language, yet, as a _noble Writer_ says, lisps and stammers as in its Cradle; and has produced little more towards its polishing than Complaints of its Barbarity.