The Dunciad/Appendix 3
III.
ADVERTISEMENT
To the First Edition with Notes, in Quarto, 1729.
It will be sufficient to say of this edition, that the reader has here a much more correct and complete copy of the Dunciad, than has hitherto appear'd. I cannot answer but some mistakes may have slipt into it, but a vast number of others will be prevented by the names being now not only set at length, but justified by the authorities and reasons given. I make no doubt, the author's own motive to use real rather than feign'd names, was his care to preserve the innocent from any false application; whereas in the former editions, which had no more than the initial letters, he was made, by keys printed here, to hurt the inoffensive; and (what was worse) to abuse his friends, by an impression at Dublin.
The commentary which attends this poem was sent me from several hands, and consequently must be unequally written; yet will have one advantage over most commentaries, that it is not made upon conjectures, or at a remote distance of time: And the reader cannot but derive one pleasure from the very Obscurity of the persons it treats of, that it partakes of the nature of a Secret, which most people love to be let into, tho' the men or the things be ever so inconsiderable or trivial.
Of the Persons it was judg'd proper to give some account: For since it is only in this monument that they must expect to survive (and here survive they will, as long as the English tongue shall remain such as it was in the reigns of queen Anne and king George,) it seem'd but humanity to bestow a word or two upon each, just to tell what he was, what he writ, when he liv'd, and when he died.
If a word or two more are added upon the chief offenders, 'tis only as a paper pinn'd upon the breast, to mark the enormities for which they suffer'd; left the correction only should be remember'd, and the crime forgotten.
In some articles it was thought sufficient, barely to transcribe from Jacob, Curl, and other writers of their own rank, who were much better acquainted with them than any of the authors of this comment can pretend to be. Most of them had drawn each other's characters on certain occasions; but the few here inserted are all that could be saved from the general destruction of such works.
Of the part of Scriblerus I need say nothing; his manner is well enough known, and approv'd by all but those who are too much concern'd to be judges.
The limitations of the Ancients are added, to gratify those who either never read, or may have forgotten them; together with some of the parodies and allusions to the most excellent of the Moderns. If, from the frequency of the former, any man think the poem too much a Cento, our poet will but appear to have done the same thing in jest which Boileau did in earnest; and upon which Vida, Fracastorius, and many of the most eminent Latin poets, professedly valued themselves.