The works of Alexander Pope. Containing the principal notes of drs. Warburton and Warton [&c.]. To which are added, some original letters, with additional observations, and memoirs, by W.L. Bowles

With founds feraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy Victory?

O Death! where is thy Sting?

THIS Ode was written, we find, at the defire of Steele; and our Poet, in a letter to him on that occasion, says," 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'll fee, it was not fo absolutely inspiration, but that I had in my head, not only the verses of Hadrian, but the fine fragment of Sappho."

It is poffible, however, that our Author might have had another composition in his head, besides those he here refers to : for there is a close and surprising resemblance between this ode of Pope, and one of an obfcure and forgotten rhymer of the age of Charles the Second, namely Thomas Flatman; from whose dunghill, as well as from the dregs of Crashaw, of Carew, of Herbert, and others (for it is well known he was a great reader of all those poets), Pope has very judiciously collected gold. And the following stanza is, perhaps, the only valuable one Flatman has produced:

When on my fick bed I languish;
Full of forrow, full of anguish,
Fainting, gafping, trembling, crying,
Panting, groaning, speechless, dying;
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say,
Be not fearful, come away!

The third and fourth lines are eminently good and pathetic, and the climax well preferved, the very turn of them is closely copied by Pope; as is likewise the striking circumstance of the dying man's imagining he hears a voice calling him away:

Vital spark of heav'nly flame
Quit, O quit, this mortal frame !
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Hark! they whisper! Angels say,
Sifter Spirit, come away!

WARTON.

Prior also translated this little Ode, but with manifest inferiority to Pope. Pope was certainly indebted to Flatman. The plagiarism is palpable. Dr. Warton speaks with too much contempt of Crashawe, Herbert, &c. Some of Crashawe's strains are of a " higher mood;" and who can deny great merit to the author of that natural and pleasing effusion, of which Mr. Ellis, in his valuable specimens of English Poetry, has selected,

" I made a Pofy, as the day went by."

Herbert was Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and afterwards Rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury.

ESSAY

CRITICISM.

Written in the Year MDCCIX*.

• First advertised in the Spectator, No 65. May 15, 1711.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

INTRODUCTION. That'tis as great a fault to judge ill,

as to write ill, and a more dangerous one to the public, ver. 1.

That a true Taste is as rare to be found, as a true Genius,

ver. 9 to 18.