he had for the Life of Pope, and they will enable the admirers of that capital specimen of critical biography to appreciate his skill in forming so interesting and eloquent a narrative from such slight materials. In the Lives of Addison, Tickell, and others, he has also made use of the information these Anecdotes contain.

At a subsequent period, the late Mr. Malone was favoured with the free use of the Anecdotes, when engaged in writing the Life of Dryden, and he availed himself of the privilege of making a complete transcript for his own use; in doing this, he has not observed the chronological order of the original, but has classed the anecdotes, bringing all that related to Pope under one class, which he has called "Popiana;" disposing the others under their respective. heads. He has added to his transcript a few notes and corrections, and it was these which the late Mr. Beloe had intended to use, when he announced the work for publication some years since.

Having been favoured with a sight of this transcript, since the greater part of the present edition was printed, I am happy to observe that nothing of any material import has escaped me which had occurred to Mr. Malone; and I may add, that some obscurities have been removed, by the light which I have derived from the papers of Mr. Spence.

The manuscripts which have been used for this publication consist of one bound volume, in octavo, in which the anecdotes had been copied fair from the first loose memorandum papers; this appears to have commenced in August, 1728, and finishes in 1737. The variations of this copy I · have pointed out, and cited it as MS. B. Besides this; the anecdotes, digested and enlarged in five paper books in folio, each containing two centuries or sections, the first dated 1728, and the last terminating at Pope's death, in 1744. These have been carefully compared with the first

MS. memoranda, and with the bound MS. B. above-mentioned, and the important variations noticed.

The additional anecdotes, which I have thrown into a Supplement, were derived from some loose papers and memorandum books, and seem to evince an intention on the part of Mr. Spence of continuing the Anecdotes down to a later period. All the MSS. were in the hand-writing of Mr. Spence, and on the first leaf of the Paper Book containing the two first centuries, the following note was written by him in pencil: "All the people well acquainted with Mr. Pope, looked on him as a most friendly, open, charitable, and generous-hearted man;-all the world almost, that did not know him, were got into a mode of having very different ideas of him: how proper this makes it to publish these Anecdotes after my death.”—Beneath this is written with a pen, "Left in this drawer because so many things in them that were not enter'd in the Vellum MS."

It is obvious that one of the principal objects of this collection, must have been to record those things worthy of remark which fell from Pope in the course of familiar conversation; but it was subsequently enriched with curious particulars, gathered from the same kind of intercourse with other persons of eminence. This gives it a more miscellaneous form, and that variety, which is the very spirit of such a work, and fits it for the intended purpose, a Lounging Book for an idle hour. A complete though brief AutoBiography of Pope may be collected from it, and the most exact record of his opinions on important topics, probably the more genuine and undisguised, because not premeditated, but elicited by the impulse of the moment.

In regard to the account of the quarrel between Pope and Addison, contained in the following pages, the necessity must be apparent of examining with caution this ex-parte

evidence: I the more anxiously urge this, because I have omitted to comment upon it in the notes. It is with great pleasure I refer the reader to a spirited vindication of Addison by Mr. Bowles, in a note to the fourth volume of his edition of Pope's Works, p. 41.

In the variety of such a miscellaneous farrago, it might be expected that some trifling and unimportant matter would be found, some things too may have lost their interest by the lapse of time; but I have thought that most readers would like to make their own selection; what may be deemed frivolous and useless by some, would be considered of importance by others, and the omissions I have ventured upon, are only of such articles as were already printed by Mr. Spence himself, or which were of a nature to be totally unworthy of a place, even in a collection of this kind. After all, perhaps I have sinned in giving too much instead of too little. The notes are merely such as occurred to me in transcribing the work for the press; more time, or a more convenient access to books, would have enabled me to enlarge them, but I know not how it would have been possible to make two large volumes, as was the intention of Mr. Beloe, whose materials were not near so copious as my own. The Supplemental Anecdotes, the various additions from Memorandum Papers, and the Letters, were not in his hands, nor could he have obtained them.

I have much pleasure in being the instrument of making this curious repertory accessible to the lover of literary anecdote. From a very early period of my life, I earnestly desired to see it, and should have been grateful to any one who had placed it in my power, in a form similar to that in which I have now the satisfaction of laying it before the public.

Bushey, Herts, December 11, 1819.

OSEPH SPENCE was born at Kingsclere, Hants, on the 25th day of April, 1699. His father, whose name was also Joseph, was Rector of Winnal near Winchester, and afterwards of Ulverstoke in the same county. I believe he died in 1721. By the mother's side Spence was descended from the Neville family, she was a granddaughter of Sir Thomas Lunsford, her maiden name was Mirabella Collier.

Young Spence, whose birth was premature, and who was but a sickly boy, was taken under the protection of Mrs. Fawkener, an opulent relation, and was educated under her eye, until he had reached his tenth year, when he was sent to a school at Mortimer in Berkshire, kept by Mr. Haycock; from thence he went to Eton College, which he left in a short time, for some unknown cause; and went to that of

* There is some reason to think that he may have been disgusted with the severity of the school discipline at that time, when Dr. George was master, and Dr. Cooke (afterwards provost,) propositor. Cole, in a letter to Horace Walpole, among his papers in the British Museum, adverts to a piece of waggery on the part of Spence, which, if true, gives some colour to the supposition. He says that the vignette at the end of the 17th dialogue in the first edition of Polymetis, contains a caricature of Dr. Cooke, under the character of a Pedagogue with an Ass's head. The resemblance of Provost Cooke's features to those of the Ass, are said to have been too striking not to be instantly perceived by those who knew him. It is but justice to add, that though Cooke was a strict disciplinarian, he was nevertheless not deserving of the satire, if it is true that it was levelled at him, which, after all, when

Winchester, where he continued until he became a member of New College, Oxford, in 1720. He had been previously entered at Magdalen Hall in the year 1717. His benefactress had fully intended that he should have been amply provided for by her will, but from the neglect or delay of the person employed to draw it up, she died, in 1714, before it was executed, and Spence lost at once his friend and the prospect of succeeding to an estate of £600 a year. He was then too young to have felt his loss very poignantly, and it is said, that in his after life, he used rather to rejoice at it as an escape, saying, that it might have made him idle and vicious to have been rendered independent of exertion at that age.

In 1722 he became fellow of New College.

In 1724* he entered into Holy Orders, and took the degree of A.M. November 2, 1727. And in the succeeding year was chosen Professor of Poetry, the first day he became capable of it, by being made Regent Master.

His fellow collegian, Christopher Pitt, writing to a friend in 1728, says," Mr. Spence is the completest scholar either in solid or polite learning, for his years, that I ever knew. Besides, he is the sweetest tempered gentleman breathing." About the same time he was presented to the small Rectory of Birchanger in Essex, where he used occasionally to reside with his mother, to whom he always showed extraordinary tenderness and attention. He had now, for the first time, an opportunity of indulging in some degree his natural inclination for gardening, though he could here try his hand only in miniature, and entertained himself with forming his little plot of ground into what he called a Lizard Garden.

Toward the close of the year 1730 he received an invitation to accompany Charles, Earl of Middlesex,† and made the tour of France and Italy with that amiable young nobleman Spence's mild disposition is recollected, there may be reason to doubt. It was removed in the third edition of Polymetis, and another vignette of Hermes, the Egyptian Mercury, inserted in its stead.

* In _this_year he published a Defence of Mr. Woolaston's Notion of a Rule of our Actions.

† Afterwards the second Duke of Dorset.