What tender passions take their turns, What home-felt raptures move? His heart now melts, now leaps, now burns, With rev'rence, hope, and love. CHORUS. Hence guilty joys, distastes, surmises, Fires that scorch, yet dare not shine! Sacred Hymen! these are thine. 40 $5 ODE ON SOLITUDE.' HAPPY the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Blest, who can unconcern'dly find Hours, days, and years slide soft away, In health of body, peace of mind, accident, and which I find by the date was written when I was not twelve years old), that you may perceive how long I have continued in my passion for a rural life, and in the same employments of it." For the variations of this version from the above text, see Vol. VI. p. 82. THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL. [WRITTEN 1712.] THIS Ode was first published in its present form in an 8vo edition of Pope's Works published by Lintot in 1736. In 1737 a letter was published in Roberts's edition of Pope's Works, written, as it was stated, by Steele to Pope, and dated December 4, 1712, in which the writer requests Pope to make an Ode as of a cheerful dying spirit, that is to say the Emperor Hadrian's ‘Animula vagula, blandula,' put into two or three stanzas for music. Pope's reply, which is without date, is also given. He says; "I do not send you word I will do, but I have already done the thing you desire of me. You have it, as Cowley calls it, just warm from the brain. It came to me the first moment I waked this morning; yet you will see it was not so absolutely inspiration, but that I had in my head not only the verses of Adrian, but the fine fragment of Sappho." Thus it appears, at first sight, that the Ode was first published by Pope in 1736, and that in the following year an indirectly authoritative account was given of its history. But as a matter of fact Pope himself never avowed the authorship either of the Ode or of the letters. The former was inserted in what was merely a reprint of Lintot's old copyright poems; the latter were not included either in the autho rised 4to edition of the correspondence published in 1737 or in that of 1741. Yet Pope of course furnished the publishers in each case with their materials, and the reason of his secrecy and indirectness is now apparent. On the 12th June, 1713, he had written a letter to Caryll, enclosing three versions of Adrianis Morientis ad Animam': "I desire," he says, "your opinion of these verses, and which are best written." One version was Prior's; another was the poem beginning "Ah fleeting spirit!"; the third was the first draft of "Vital spark," and ran as follows : 1. Vital spark of heavenly flame, 2. My swimming eyes are sick of light, The lessening world forsake my sight, A damp creeps cold o'er every part, Nor moves my pulse. nor heaves my heart, The hovering soul is on the wing, Where, mighty Death? oh where's thy sting! 3. I hear around soft music play, Till the last trumpet rends the ground, Many years later, at some period after 1730, the poet perceived that his paraphrase might be improved, and he altered the Ode to its present form, a signal proof of his art and judgment, of which he might well have been proud. Unfortunately his vanity made him anxious to exhibit his finished version to the world as the birth of sudden inspiration, and, in order to produce his effect, he as usual had recourse to elaborate fraud. If the letter to Caryll had been the only evidence that the Ode in its present form was not "warm from the brain," he would no doubt have inserted the fictitious letter to Steele in the authorised volume of correspondence published in 1737. But he was confronted by the difficulty that the verses in their original form had already been printed in Lewis's 'Miscellany' of 1730, so that if any one who had read them there were to find the letter to Steele in the so-called genuine correspondence, suspicion might have been awakened. The Ode and the correspondence with Steele were therefore introduced to the public by the backstairs; the poet, no doubt, calculating that he should afterwards be able to find an opportunity for embodying both with his acknowledged works. ODE. I. VITAL spark of heav'nly flame! II. Hark! they whisper; Angels say, Steals my senses, shuts my sight, Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? III. The world recedes; it disappears! Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O Grave! where is thy Victory? O Death! where is thy Sting? 5 10 15 ADRIANI MORIENTIS AD ANIMAM.' TRANSLATED. Aн, fleeting spirit! wandering fire! No more a pleasing cheerful guest ? To what dark undiscovered shore ? Thou seem'st all trembling, shivering, dying, And wit and humour are no more. It is an open question whether Pope was the writer of these verses. As has been already said, the first occasion on which we find them is in the letter to Caryll of the 12th July, 1713, in which Pope states that each of the versions enclosed was by a different hand. Mr. Dilke considers that this establishes the fact that "Ah, fleeting spirit" was not written by Pope; but though we know that one of the versions was Prior's, the author of the third is unknown, and the poet, with his love of mystification, may have had reasons for wishing to mislead Caryll. He certainly caused the verses to be printed in the surreptitious volume of correspondence published by Curl in 1735, where they appear after the prose translation of Hadrian's lines which Pope contributed to the “Spectator" of Nov. 10, 1712. On the other hand, they are omitted in the authorised edition of 1737. This manœuvre may be explained in one of two ways. If the verses were not written by Pope, he may have furnished Curll with them, for the purpose of quoting them as a proof of the untrustworthy character of his edition in the event of the genuineness of the correspondence being called in question. But I am inclined to think that he himself wrote the lines, and was originally in doubt whether they or the first draft of "Vital Spark" were the better. Caryll's opinion seems to have inclined him to the latter, which he sent to Lewis's "Miscellany" in 1730. Perhaps, however, he still doubted, and thought that "Ah, fleeting spirit" had sufficient merit to warrant its publication through the agency of Curll. Afterwards the happy improvements in "Vital Spark" occurred to him, and were printed in 1736. There could no longer be any question of its superiority to "Ah, fleeting spirit;" he therefore suppressed the latter, when reprinting his prose translation, in the authorised edition of 1737, and composed the fictitious letter to Steele for Roberts's edition, to raise the belief that the improved version of the "Dying Christian" was a flash of genius. 5 |