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[The Countess of Hertford sends the following to the Countess of Pomfret, in their Correspondence between the years 1738 and 1741, observing, "The severity of the weather has occasioned greater sums of money to be given in charity than was heard of before. Mr. Pope has written two stanzas on the occasion."]

YES!

'tis the time (I cried) impose the chain, Destined and due to wretches self-enslaved; But when I saw such charity remain,

I half could wish this people should be saved.

Faith lost, and Hope, our Charity begins;
And 'tis a wise design in pitying Heaven,
If this can cover multitude of sins,

To take the only way to be forgiven.

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.

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POPE'S INTERVIEW WITH DRYDEN. Vol. I. p. 17.-Pope, in his conversations with Spence, does not mention where he saw Dryden, According to Warburton, the boy-poet prevailed upon a friend to accompany him to town, and introduce him to Will's Coffee-house. Mr. Roscoe conjectured that the friend alluded to was Sir Charles Wogan, who, in a letter to Swift, says, I had the honour of bringing Mr. Pope from our retreat in the Forest of Windsor to dress à la mode and introduce at Will's Coffee-house." The supposition of a boy of twelve dressing à la mode, and frequenting a coffee-house, appears preposterous. Sir Charles Wogan must refer to a later period. Pope may have been taken to Will's for the purpose of obtaining a sight of Dryden, but it is as likely that he stole away from his school at Hyde Park Corner, to watch Dryden in GerardStreet, near his own door, or have seen him in the theatre, or at Tonson's shop. Pope told Spence where Dryden lived-" in Gerard Street, and he used most commonly to write in the ground-room next the street." The house is now No. 43. Mr. Singer, the editor of Spence's Anecdotes, observes that Will's Coffee-house" continued to be the resort of the wits at least till 1710; and that probably Addison established his servant Button in a new coffee-house (in Russell Street, Covent Garden), about 1712, and his fame, after the production of Cato, drew many of the Whigs thither." In one of the letters of James Moore Smythe to Teresa Blount (Maple-Durham MSS.), the writer speaks of the wits as "removed from Will's over the way," before August 13, 1713.

RAG SMITH. Vol. I. p. 22.-The person designated “Rag Smith,” who saw Pope in his fourteenth year, and predicted that he would either be a madman or a great poet, must have been Edmund Smith the poet, the friend of Addison. From his carelessness as to dress, and his odd appearance, Smith was familiarly known as Captain Rag." Pope nowhere mentions his early acquaintance, (who died in 1710, before the prediction was fulfilled,) but he was indebted

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to Smith's tragedy of Phædra and Hippolytus for several choice images and expressions transplanted into the Epistle of Eloisa.

POPE'S DAPHNE, MISS TEMPEST. Vol. II. p. 117.-This lady, whose death was commemorated by Walsh and Pope, was the granddaughter of Sir John Tempest, of Tong Hall, Yorkshire. Her father was Henry Tempest, who died before his father, in 1685. He married Alathea, daughter of Sir Henry Thompson, of Marston, county of York.

POPE'S IMITATIONS.-A periodical critic (The Scotsman) points out a passage in the Epistle of Eloisa, v. 191, which Pope had taken from Dryden,

"How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,

And love the offender, yet detest the offence ?"

Dryden, in Cymon and Iphigenia, has,

"Then, impotent of mind, with alter'd sense,

She hugg'd the offender, and forgave the offence?"

The list of imitations might easily be extended. The music of Dryden's verse seems ever to have been ringing in Pope's ears, and his picturesque expression constantly present to him in moments of composition. A collection of parallel passages was made by Gilbert Wakefield, and is published in Bowles's edition of Pope. Mr. Mitford, in a paper communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine, Oct. 1836, makes further additions of the same kind. Pope in his youth was so insatiable, and at the same time so critical a reader of poetry, that his mind was stored with the treasures of others. As an artist he delighted in new setting and polishing his poetical jewels, original and borrowed.

SOBER ADVICE FROM HORACE. Vol. III. p. 36.-In A True Character of Mr. Pope and his Writings, in a Letter to a Friend, 1716, and ascribed by Pope to Dennis, the writer refers to an imitation of Horace, "much more execrable than all his works." No copy of this early imitation has been found, but it was probably a first draft of the imitation of Horace's satire, Ambubairum collegia pharmacopolæ, &c., which was published in 1735, under the title of A Sermon against Adultery; being Sober Advice from Horace, to the Young Gentlemen about Town, as delivered in his Second Sermon. Imitated in the manner of Mr. Pope. Together with the Original Text as restored by the Rev. Richard Bentley, D.D. And some Remarks on the Version. Bolingbroke had seen the poem in

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manuscript, as appears from one of his letters to Swift, June 27, 1734, and Dodsley and Cooper included it in the small edition of Pope's Works, 1738. Curll inserted it in his collection of Pope's Correspondence, stating that it was sold to four booksellers for sixty guineas, as could be proved. The work is undoubtedly a genuine production, by Pope, though never openly acknowledged. It is flagrantly indecent-indeed, the most licentious poem of the age. One of the writers of the day, author of A Letter to Mr. Pope, occasioned by Sober Advice from Horace, &c., 1735, says, "The Sermon has done you more mischief than all the Dunciad people together; or rather they have done you none, this a great deal. To forge a note under Dr. Bentley's hand, and set his name to it, was of the same nature with Sir P. Strange's crime, and ought to be expiated by the loss of ears. What Chartres would not have done to get less than £500, you are thought to have done to get perhaps £40 or £50. Your friends are quite mute; your enemies talk on." When republished with his other works, in 1738, the notes attributed to Bentley (which are of the grossest description) were omitted by Pope or his publishers. From some lines at the commencement of the poem, it would seem to have been written shortly after the death of Mrs. Oldfield, the actress, in 1730, and after the quarrel with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Hervey; but we would gladly believe that the greater part of it was a much earlier production. We have seen Dennis's allusion to an objectionable imitation of Horace by Pope, in 1716. Jervas, in a letter undated, but from its allusions to the first volume of Pope's Homer, evidently written in June, 1715, informs Pope: "I hear nothing of the Sermon. The generality will take it for the Dean's, and that will hurt neither you nor him." This early Sermon, with additions and alterations, ('tis true, 'tis pity!) was probably the Sermon of 1735.

POPE'S STUDY AT STANTON-HARCOURT.-A drawing of the old tower at Stanton-Harcourt, in which Pope finished the fifth volume of his Homer in 1718, has been engraved as a vignette to the present volume. The tower contains three chambers, thirteen feet square, above each other. The exact height of the tower is fifty-four feet six inches. The chapel immediately under it, where the altar stands, is twelve feet square, and fifteen feet ten inches high in the centre. The arms of Harcourt and of Byron are introduced, from which we may conjecture that it was erected by Sir Robert in the reign of King Edward IV. (Skelton's Oxfordshire.)

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