The fifth volume contains a correcter and completer edition of the Dunciad than hath been hitherto published, of which, at present, I have only this further to add, that it was at my request he laid the plan of a fourth book. I often told him, it was pity so fine a poem should remain disgraced by the meanness of its subject, the most insignificant of all dunces,--bad rhymers and malevolent cavillers; that he ought to raise and ennoble it by pointing his satire against the most pernicious of all,--minute philosophers and free-thinkers. I imagined, too, it was for the interests of religion to have it known, that so great a genius had a due abhorrence of these pests of virtue and society. He came readily into my opinion; but, at the same time, told me it would create him many enemies. He was not mistaken, for though the terror of his pen kept them for some time in respect, yet on his death they rose with unrestrained fury in numerous coffee-house tales, and Grub Street libels. The plan of this admirable satire was artfully contrived to show, that the follies and defects of a fashionable education naturally led to, and necessarily ended in, freethinking, with design to point out the only remedy adequate to so destructive an evil. It was to advance the same ends of virtue and religion, that the editor prevailed on him to alter everything in his moral writings that might be suspected of having the least glance towards fate or naturalism, and to add what was proper to convince the world that he was warmly on the side of moral government and a revealed will. And it would be great injustice to his memory not to declare that he embraced these occasions with the most unfeigned pleasure. The sixth volume consists of Mr. Pope's miscellaneous pieces in verse and prose. Amongst the verse several fine poems make now their first appearance in his works. And of the prose, all that is good, and nothing but what is exquisitely so, will be found in this edition. The seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes consist entirely of his letters, the more valuable, as they are the only true models which we, or perhaps any of our neighbours, have of familiar epistles.[7] This collection is now made more complete by the addition of several new pieces. Yet, excepting a short explanatory letter to Col. M[oyser], and the letters to Mr. A[llen] and Mr. W[arburton] (the latter of which are given to show the editor's inducements, and the engagements he was under, to intend the care of this edition) excepting these, I say, the rest are all here published from the author's own printed, though not published copies delivered to the editor.[8]