Copy 1, Volume 1
The works of Alexander Pope, esq. with notes and illustrations by himself and others. To which are added a new life of the author, an estimate of his poetical character and writings, and occasional remarks / by William Roscoe. Esq.
- Alexander Pope
- Date:
- 1824
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The works of Alexander Pope, esq. with notes and illustrations by himself and others. To which are added a new life of the author, an estimate of his poetical character and writings, and occasional remarks / by William Roscoe. Esq. Source: Wellcome Collection.
465/698 page 419
![: : A { 1733.] LIFE OF POPE. | 419 Yet in his Life of Pope (p. 101) he has himself al- lowed that a story so base, ought not, for a moment, to be admitted on the evidence of Walpole, (who has related it) and in his Vindecatzon, he indignant- ly disavows his ever having charged Pope with such an offence.* “To how casual a beginning,” says Spence, “we are obliged for some of the most delightful things in our language.” This reflection was sug- gested to him by the following anecdote which he has given in the words of Pope. “ When I had a fever one winter in Town, that confined me to my room for five or six days, Lord Bolingbroke, who that lay on the table, and in turning it over, dipped on the first Satire of the second book, ‘Sunt quibus in satird, &c. He observed how well that would hit my case, if I were to imitate it in English. After he was gone, I read it over ; trans- lated it in a morning or two, and sent it to the press in a week or a fortnight after ; and this was — the occasion of my imitating some other of the Satires and Epistles afterwards.”+ This imitation of the first Satire of the second book of Horace appeared in 1738, in folio,f under * But.see the late Mr. Gilchrist’s second answer to Mr. Bowles, p. 6, &c.; and Mr. Bowles’s Vindication, p. 9. + Spence’s Anec. p. 297. ‘Singer’s ed. + “London: printed by L. G., and sold by A. Dodd, near Temple Bar; E. Nutt, at the Royal Exchange; and by the Booksellers of London and Westminster : 1733.”](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33092060_0001_0465.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
