I have no other pretensions to the honorable name of Editor on this
occasion, than as a faithful transcriber of the Manuscript, and a
diligent corrector of the Press, which are, doubtless, two of the very
humblest employments in that most extensive province. I have wanted
the ability to attempt any thing higher; and, fortunately for the
reader, I have also wanted the presumption. What, however, I can do, I
will. Instead of critical remark, I will furnish him with anecdote. He
shall trace from beginning to end the progress of the following work;
and in proportion as I have the happiness to engage his attention, I
shall merit the name of a fortunate editor.

It was in the darkest season of a most calamitous depression of his
spirits, that I was summoned to the house of my inestimable friend the
Translator, in the month of January, 1794. He had happily completed a
revisal of his HOMER, and was thinking of the preface to his new
edition, when all his satisfaction in the one, and whatever he had
projected for the other, in a moment vanished from his mind. He had
fallen into a deplorable illness; and though the foremost wish of my
heart was to lessen the intenseness of his misery, I was utterly
unable to afford him any aid.

I had, however, a pleasing though a melancholy opportunity of tracing
his recent footsteps in the Field of Troy, and in the Palace of
Ithaca. He had materially altered both the Iliad and Odyssey; and, so
far as my ability allowed me to judge, they were each of them greatly
improved. He had also, at the request of his bookseller, interspersed
the two poems with copious notes; for the most part translations of
the ancient Scholia, and gleaned, at the cost of many valuable hours,
from the pages of Barnes, Clarke, and Villoisson. It has been a
constant subject of regret to the admirers of "The Task," that the