themselves now and then with poetry, rather than as poets. -P. [This was said kindly of them; rather to excuse their defects, than to lessen their characters.-Spence.]

Rochester has very bad versification sometimes.-P. [He instanced this from his translation of the tenth satire of Horace his full rhymes, &c.-Spence.]

There is no one of our poets of that class, that was more judicious than Sir John Denham.-P. [At the end of his Cooper's Hill (edition of 1709), Mr. Pope had written the following note." This poem was first printed without the author's name, in 1643. In that edition a great number of verses are to be found, since entirely omitted; * and very many others, since corrected and improved. Some few, the author afterwards added: and in particular the four celebrated lines on the Thames,

"O could I flow like thee," &c.

* Though it might be a very useful lesson for a poet, to compare those two editions more exactly; and to consider at each alteration, how and why it was altered: it may not be amiss to subjoin here, the following list of alterations in the poem.-Spence.

Edition, 1709.-Verse 12; more boundless, &c.-seven verses added instead of two bad ones.- -V. 24-26; six verses only, instead of fourteen not near so good.-V. 30--38; were scattered among others far inferior.-V. 40; four verses omitted, in which he had compared Windsor Castle to a big-bellied woman!—V. 41-48; altered for the better.-V. 55-58; ditto, ditto.-V. 77— 82; six verses, instead of eight inferior.-V. 86; two verses omitted. -V. 100-115; fifteen verses, instead of twenty-six far inferior. -V. 121; improved.-V. 127-132; altered much for the better. -V. 149-156; added.-V. 165, 166; altered.—V. 171—196; much omitted, and much added; of the Thames.-V. 217—237 ; much altered.-V. 241-300; much added of the chase.-V.307 -310; simile added.-V. 319-322; altered for the better.V. 327; six party lines omitted.-V. 342; party lines omitted. -V. 357; others, of the same kind, omitted in the close.

all with admirable judgment; and the whole read together is a very strong proof of what Mr. Waller says:

"Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot.”—P.

It was our family priest (Banister) who taught me the figures, accidence, and first part of grammar. If it had not been for that, I should never have got any language: for I never learned anything at the little schools I was at afterwards; and never should have followed anything that I could not follow with pleasure.-I had learned very early to read, and delighted extremely in it; and taught myself to write, very early too, by copying from printed books; with which I used to divert myself, as other children do with scrawling out pictures.*-P.

The Iliad took me up six years; and during that time, and particularly the first part of it, I was often under great pain and apprehension. Though I conquered the thoughts of it in the day, they would frighten me in the night.—I sometimes, still, even dream of being engaged in that translation; and got about half way through it: and being embarrassed and under dread of never completing it.—P.

If I had not undertaken that work, I should certainly have writ an epic; and I should have sat down to it with

* When Mr. Pope got into the way of teaching himself, and applied so close to it in the Forest; some of his first exercises were imitations of the stories that pleased him most in Ovid, or any other poet that he was reading. I have one of these original exercises now by me, in his own hand. It is the story of Acis and Galatea, from Ovid; and was translated when he was but fourteen years old. The title-page to this, (from his manner of learning to write,) is so like print, that it requires a good eye, and nice regard to distinguish it.-Spence.

this advantage, that I had been nursed up in Homer and Virgil.-P.

The following Epigram was made by Rowe, upon Phil. Frowd's uncle when he was writing a tragedy of Cinna:

Frowd for his precious soul cares not a pin-a;

For he can now do nothing else but Cin-na.

"I thought Rowe had been too grave, to write such things?"-He!-why he would laugh all day long! he would do nothing else but laugh.-P.

"The nobleman-look."-Yes, I know what you mean very well that look which a nobleman should have; rather than what they have generally now.-P.

The Duke of Buckingham (Sheffield) was a genteel man; and had a great deal the look you speak of.-Wycherley was a very genteel man; and had the nobleman-look as much as the Duke of Buckingham.-P. [He instanced it too in Lord Peterborough; Lord Bolingbroke; Lord Hinchinbroke; the Duke of Bolton, and two or three more. Spence.]

Mr. Pope has still a good memory; and that both of the sensible and local kind.-When I consulted him about the Hades of the ancients; he referred immediately to Pindar's second Olympic ode, Plutarch's Treatise de Iside et Osiride, the four places that relate to it in the Odyssey, (though this was so many years after he had done that translation,) Plato, Lucretius, and some others; and turned to the very passages in most of them, with a surprising readiness. "Pray what is the Asphodil of Homer ?"—Why I believe, if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards and if So, the verse might thus be translated in English :

"the stern Achilles

Stalked through a mead of daffodillies."-P.

Good part of the ballad on Lechmere and Guise was written by Mr. Pope.-The ballad on the rabbit-woman, by him and Mr. Pulteney: they wrote two or three more together.-P.

When Cowley grew sick of the court, he took a house first at Battersea, then at Barnes; and then at Chertsey: always farther and farther from town. In the latter part of his life, he showed a sort of aversion for women; and would leave the room when they came in: 'twas probably from a disappointment in love. He was much in love with his Leonora ; who is mentioned at the end of that good ballad of his, on his different mistresses. She was married to Dean Sprat's brother; and Cowley never was in love with anybody after.-P.

Addison usually studied all the morning: then met his party at Button's; dined there, and stayed five or six hours; and sometimes far into the night.—I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.-P.

Addison passed each day alike; and much in the manner that Dryden did.-Dryden employed his mornings in writing; dined, en famille; and then went to Wills's: only he came home earlier a'nights.-P.

The night after King Charles the first was beheaded, my Lord Southampton and a friend of his got leave to sit up by the body, in the banqueting-house at Whitehall. As they were sitting very melancholy there, about two o'clock in the morning, they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly up stairs. By-and-by the door opened,

and a man entered, very much muffled up in his cloak; and his face quite hid in it.-He approached the body, considered it, very attentively, for some time: and then shook his head and sighed out the words, 'cruel necessity!' -He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come in.-Lord Southampton used to say, that he could not distinguish anything of his face; but that by his voice and gait, he took him to be Oliver Cromwell.—P.

END OF THE SEVENTH SECTION.