As was explained in the Note to the Preface of the previous editions and impressions of this book, after the first, hardly one of them appeared without careful revision, and the insertion of a more or less considerable number of additions and corrections. I found, indeed, few errors of a kind that need have seemed serious except to Momus or Zoilus. But in the enormous number of statements of fact which literary history of the more exact kind requires, minor blunders, be they more or fewer, are sure to creep in. No writer, again, who endeavours constantly to keep up and extend his knowledge of.
