Page:The genuine remains in verse and prose of Mr. Samuel Butler (1759), volume 1.djvu/40

 all other writers, seem as if upon a second review he would have retouched and amended in some little particulars; and some few are left unfinished, or at least parts of them are lost or perished. This acknowledgment I think due to the poet's character and memory, and necessary to bespeak that candid allowance from the reader, which the posthumous works of every writer have a just claim to.

is, I know, a common observation, that it is doing injustice to a departed Genius to publish fragments, or such pieces as he had not given the last hand to.—Without controverting the justness of this remark in general, one may, I think, venture to affirm, that it is not to be extended to every particular case, and that a writer of so extraordinary and uncommon a turn as the author of Hudi-