If this Commentary were only a perverse and forced interpretation, as Warton insinuates, it is scarcely likely that Pope would have approved of it so highly, as not only to speak of it in the warmest terms of admiration, but to allow it to accompany his own edition of the poem. To assert that Pope was not the best judge of his own meaning, is an insult not only to his understanding, but to common sense; and to discard the commentary of Warburton, as Warton has done in his edition, in order to replace it by a series of notes, intended to impress the reader with his own opinions, is a kind of infringement on those rights, which had already been decided on by the only person who was entitled to judge on the subject. For these reasons I have thought it advisable, in this edition, to restore the commentary of Warburton entire, which has only been partially done by Mr. Bowles; conceiving that it is as injurious, if not more so, to the commentator, whose object it is to demonstrate the order and consistency of the poem, to deprive him of a portion of his remarks, as it is to deprive him of them altogether.--ROSCOE. Warburton's commentary proceeded upon two assumptions, which are not complimentary to Pope. The first was that a poem which had contracted no obscurity from age, and which consisted of a series of simple precepts, was written in a manner so confused that it would not be intelligible to ordinary readers, unless the whole was retold in cumbrous prose. The second assumption was that Pope was so deficient in power of expression that his ideas were constantly at variance with his words. One of the sarcastic canons of criticism which Edwards deduced from Warburton's Shakspeare was that an editor "may interpret his author so as to make him mean directly contrary to what he says," and certain it is that if Warburton's explanations are correct, Pope's language was often sadly inaccurate. Roscoe, in effect, adopts the last solution, for he urges that Pope, who was the best judge of his own meaning, acknowledged his meaning to be that which Warburton ascribed to him. There is another, and more probable alternative. Though Pope undeniably knew his own meaning best, his vanity may have been gratified by the subtle views which were imputed to him, and he may have had the weakness, in consequence, to adopt interpretations which never crossed his mind when he composed his poem. Since, however, he desired that his works should be read by the light of Warburton's paraphrase, an editor is not warranted in overruling the decision of the author, and on this account the commentary and notes of Warburton are printed in their integrity, though in themselves they are tedious, verbose, and barren. THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF W. WARBURTON ON THE ESSAY ON CRITICISM. COMMENTARY.