ceived great pleasure from the poems of Mr. Pope, though they neither found nor made him a poet. He has not the enthusiastic veneration to commemorate his birth-day, as Silius Italicus did that of Virgil, according to Pliny; but he has conftantly before his eyes his volumes in his book-room, with a good print of him by Pond and Houbraken; together with a correct drawing of the villa and the grotto, which were actually taken in the life-time of Mr. POPE.

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Tis certified to me this moment by n acquaintance (whofe name I will not take the liberty to mention) that Pope, whilft living with his father at Chiswick, before he went to Binfield, took great delight in Cockfighting (a diversion the humane King of Denmark expreffed his dislike to, whilst he was amongst us); and laid out all his fchoolboy money, and little perhaps it was, in buying fighting cocks. From this paffion, but furely not the play of a child, his mother had the dexterity to wean him. A judgement is not to be formed of our infant poet's difpofition, from his attachment to this cruel, though not uncommon paftime. He afterwards found in the course of his profeffion as an author (which he faid "was a continual state of warfare upon earth," the justnefs of the line in his friend Gay's fables) that

"Wits are game cocks to one another.'

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ADDITION to Page 62.

In a note at the bottom of page 342 of Ruffhead's Life of Pope (probably from the communication of Warburton) I have just found, that Pope intended to have given a verfification of two or three of Bishop Hall's fatires, as he had done of Dr. Donne's.. "Hall being a mere academic, had not his vein vitiated, like Donne's, by living at courts and at large." In the first edition, fays the notator, which was in Pope's library, we find that long fatire, called the first of the fixth book, entirely corrected, and the verfification mended, to fit it for his ufe. He intitles it, in the beginning of his correc-, tions, by the name of Sat. Opt.

The fatires of Dr. Young must fomewhere be mentioned. Their author was always under the guidance of Pope. Young advised with him to the laft, and fent him the manufcript of the first book of his Night. Thoughts for his approbation (fays his book

feller)

feller) who earnestly recommended it for publication. What Swift faid of his Love of Fame was not unjust, "that it should have been more merry, or more fevele." (Be civil, but severe, faid old Lenthal of Burford to a counsel he employed in a particular cause.) His fatires have been called a string of epigrams. Not a grain of malignity is to be found there. The laughter of comedy now and then breaks out. The attack is rather upon folly than vice. The author was at this time a lay-man, and a man of the world; and became a candidate for a feat in parliament, upon the intereft of the famous Duke of Wharton. His fatires please better on the first than the fecond reading, and abound with lines, that feem to be written with a diamond instead of a pen.

Dr. Young fays of himself in his Night Thoughts,

"I've been fo long remember'd I'm forgot." However neglected for a long term, he was appointed to fucceed Dr. Hales, as Clerk of the Closet to the Princess Dowager.

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ADDITION to Page 86.

Dr. Moore (in his entertaining volumes of a View of Society and Manners in Italy) gives us an account of the poetical Rehearsers of that country, whofe tones and geftures are vehement and theatrical, and of the Improvifatori Poets. These performers are much admired by fome perfons at Rome, which abounds with them. For my part, fays our traveller, from the nature of the thing, I fhould imagine they are but indif ferent. It is faid, the Italian is peculiarlycalculated for poetry, and that verfes may be made with more facility in this, than in any other language. It may be more easy to find smooth lines, and make them terminate in a rhime in Italian than in any language: but to compofe verfes, with all the qualities effential to good poetry, I imagine leisure and long reflection are requifite. Indeed, I understand from those who are judges, that "these extempore compofitions of the Impro

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