[1] In the reprint of this preface in 1740, Pope added the words, "to Dr. Arbuthnot."
[2] In the octavo of 1735, Pope omitted the words "written, and." In 1740 he again inserted them, and omitted the words, "and designed for the press."
[3] The Messiah was first published in the Spectator, but as it was also inserted in the quarto of 1717, the poet cannot have included it among the pieces which were not contained in either the first or second volume of his works. His only other known contribution to the Spectator was a short letter in No. 532, Nov. 10, 1712, on the verses which the Emperor Hadrian spoke when he was dying. The "few Spectators" to which Pope referred have not been identified, and since he never reproduced, or particularised them, it may be taken for granted that they were of slight importance.
[4] In the edition of 1740 Pope affixed to this sentence the clause, "or make part of the Memoirs of Scriblerus, not yet printed." His enumeration of the Scriblerus among his genuine productions was doubtless the consequence of his resolution to publish it, and it accordingly appeared in 1741 in the second volume of his prose works.
[5] The passage from "I think" down to "epigrams," was left out in 1740, for Pope soon admitted into his collected works those pieces in the Miscellanies which he here said were "too inconsiderable to be reprinted."
[6] "Any" in the edition of 1740.
[7] He omitted "1717" in 1740. His insinuation that none of the other pieces ascribed to him were genuine, is in his ordinary style of equivocation, and is now known to be erroneous.