Page:Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).pdf/3

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HE following Observations having met with a more favourable reception than so hasty an Essay had any title to claim, I have endeavoured to render them less imperfect by a revisal, and by adding such new remarks as a more attentive examination of a very copious subject has suggested.

In the discussion of any other question, I should have treated the gentlemen whose arguments I have endeavoured to confute, with that ceremonious respect to which Literature is entitled from all her sons. “A commentator (as the most judicious critick of the present age has observed) should be grave;” but the cause of Rowley, and the mode in which it has been supported, are “too risible for any common power of face.”

January 31, 1782.