Thomas Creech's Preface to Lucretius and John Dryden

The preface to the first edition of Thomas Creech's translation of Lucretius (1682) contains a substantial press variant: potentially offensive references to the clergy and to John Dryden were removed during printing. A letter to Creech from the Oxford scholar Edward Bernard has survived, in which Bernard advises Creech to emend his existing text and proposes an alternative (along with two other small changes to Creech's preliminaries). This article prints the relevant parts of Bernard's letter and discusses the press variants in the light of Creech's developing relationship with Dryden.