females attended him at night, and in the Earl of Burlington. After the first course,
morning brought him his writing-defk to bed, Pope grew fick, and went out of the room.
lighted his fire, drew on his stockings, &c., When dinner was ended and the cloth re-
which offices he often fummoned them to moved, my Lord Burlington said he would
perform at very early hours; fo that when go out and fee what had become of Pope.
any part of their other business was left un- Soon after, they returned together. But
done, their common excufe was, that they Pope, who had been cafting up his dinner,
had been employed with Mr. Pope, and looked very pale, and complained much.
then no further reprehenfion was to be My Lord asked him if he would have fome
dreaded. He ordered coffee to be made mulled wine or a glass of old fack, which
feveral times in a day, that he might hold Pope refused. I told my Lord Burlington
his head over the steam, as a temporary re- that he wanted a dram. Upon which the
lief to the violent headaches from which he little man expressed some resentment against
ufually fuffered. His hair having almoft me, and said he would not taste any fpirits,
entirely fallen off, he fometimes dined at and that he abhorred drams as much as I
Lord Oxford's table in a velvet cap; but, did. However, I perfifted, and affured
when he went to court, he put on a tye- my Lord Burlington that he could not
wig and black clothes, and had a little oblige our friend more at that inftant than
sword peeping out by his pocket-hole. It by ordering a large glafs of cherry-brandy
was difficult to perfuade him to drink a to be fet before him. This was done, and
fingle glass of wine. He and Lady Mary in less than half an hour, while my Lord
Wortley Montague had frequent quarrels, was acquainting us with an affair which en-
which usually ended in their alternate de- gaged our attention, Pope had fipped up
sertion of the house. When Mr. Pope all the brandy. Pope's frame of body did
wanted to go out anywhere in the evening, not promise long life; but he certainly
he always fent for Mrs. Blount to accom- haftened his death by feeding much on
pany him in a hackney-coach. He often high-seasoned dishes, and drinking spirits.
refided at Lord Oxford's while the family -DR. WILLIAM KING'S Political and Lit-
was abfent in the country, and whatever he erary Anecdotes of His Own Time.
ordered was got ready for his dinner. He
would fometimes, without any provocation,
leave his noble landlord for many months,
nor would he return till courted back by a
greater number of notes, messages, and let-
ters, than the servants were willing to carry.
He would occafionally joke with my lord's
domestics as well as higher company; but
was never feen to laugh himself, even when
he had fet the whole table in a roar, at
Tom Hearne, Humphrey Wanley, or any
other persons whofe manners were as ftrong-
ly tinctured with fingularity.-J. ALCOCK's
Entertaining and Inftructive Companion.
(8vo. Wolverhampton. 1779.)

Pope and I, with my Lord Orrery and
Sir Harry Bedingfield, dined with the late

VII.

Dr. Maty, in his Memoirs of the Earl of Chesterfield, gives the following curious. anecdote of Pope and Bishop Atterbury, in Chesterfield's own words: "I went to Mr. Pope one morning at Twickenham, and found a large folio Bible with gilt clafps lying before him upon his table; and as I knew his way of thinking upon that book, I asked him jocofely if he was going to write an answer to it? It is a prefent, faid he, or rather a legacy, from my old friend the Bishop of Rochester. I went to take my leave of him yesterday in the Tower, where I faw this Bible upon his table. After the firft compliments, the Bishop faid

to me, My friend Pope, confidering your Not that good fenfe alone will be sufficient; infirmities, and my age and exile, it is not for that confiderable part of it emending a likely that we should ever meet again; and corrupt text, there must be a certain fatherefore I give you this legacy to remem- gacity, which is fo diftinguifhing a quality ber me by it.-Does your lordship abide in Dr. Bentley. Dr. Clarke had all the by it yourself?—I do.—If you do, my requifites of a critic but this, and this he Lord, it is but lately. May I beg to know wanted. Lipfius, Jos. Scaliger, Faber, Is. what new light or arguments have prevailed Voffius, Salmafius, had it in a great degree; with you now, to entertain an opinion fo but these are few amongst the infinite tribe contrary to that which you entertained of of critics." that book all the former part of your life? -The Bishop replied, We have not time to talk of these things: but take home the book; I will abide by it; and I recommend to you to do so too, and fo God blefs you.

ور

VIII.

Respecting the system of Optimism as fet forth by Pope in the Effay on Man, Warburton, amongst other things, fays: "As to the paffages of Mr. Pope that correfpond with Leibnitz, you know he took them from Shaftesbury, and that Shaftesbury and Leibnitz had one common original, Plato, whofe fyftem of the best, when pushed as far as Leibnitz has carried it, must end in fate. It is pleasant enough to fee the different taste of authors. Leibnitz, in his Théodicée Scheme, objects against Sir Ifaac Newton's theory of attraction, because on that scheme the revolutions of the celeftial orbs could not be performed without a perpetual miracle. And Mr. Baxter makes that very confideration one of the most recommending qualities of that theory, and has, you know, wrote a large book to prove that there is a perpetual miracle in the case; i. e. God's immediate power exerted in every moment of time. I have a poor opinion both of Markland's and Taylor's critical abilities, between friends; I speak from what I have seen. Good fenfe is the foundation of criticism; this is that has made Dr. Bentley and Bishop Hare the two greatest critics that ever were in the world.

What he writes to Dr. Birch on felling his library is truly Warburtonian: “I do not at all disapprove of your parting with your library. For I am fully perfuaded Mr. Pope's prophecy will be fulfilled before Will Whiston's: and that his fon Jack will fee the end of learning before the Father gets to the beginning of his Millennium. However, do not be over-hafty, for your books will fell beft when there is nobody that can understand them. That thriving auctioneer will tell you there are always the most buyers where there are the feweft readers. This is the best reafon I have why you should fufpend your project. For the reft, if you would get up into the higher forms, you must do at Lambeth what you formerly did at the CharterHoufe, learn your leffon without book. I confefs myself a dunce; I could never learn this neceffary trick, neither in youth nor age, and have thriven accordingly."

IX.

Warburton's discovering "the regularity" of Pope's Effay on Criticism, and the "whole scheme" of his Effay on Man, I happen to know to be mere abfurd refinement in creating conformities, and that from Pope himself, though he thought fit to adopt them afterwards. By this method of overlooking the plain and fimple meaning, which prefents itself at first fight (as that of good authors always does, and is the end of writing, and of words themselves, only that there is no credit to be gained in discover

Poe's Early Poems.

ing what any one else could discover) with proper talents, a good deal of imagination, and more vanity, it might clearly be fhewn I AM defirous of obtaining information that Pope's Art of Criticifm is, indeed, an concerning the first volume of verse pubEfay on Man, and his Efay on Man was, lifhed by the late EDGAR A. Poɛ, its date, really, defigned, by the deep author, for an fize, contents, etc. It appears to be a Art of Criticifm. I know that thefe would fearce book-so scarce, indeed, that Dr. not be more falfe than the affertion and Grifwold never faw it. In his memoir of fophiftry in proving the regularity of his Poe, in The Poets and Poetry of America Art of Criticism, fince he, when often (fixteenth edition, 1855), he refers to it in fpeaking of it, (before he fo much as knew the vagueft terms, "fhirking the details," as Warburton) fpoke of it always, as an "ir- the painters fay, in his customary manner. regular collection of thoughts, thrown to- It is evident that, at the time he wrote the gether as they offered themselves, as Hor- memoir, he knew nothing about it. ace's Art of Poetry was," he faid, "and Profe Writers he fays it was published written in imitation of that irregularity," in 1830. Mr. Duyckinck, in his Cyclopawhich he even admired, and faid was beau- dia, gives the date, publishers, and fize. tiful.

In his

(Hatch & Dunning, Balt. 1829. 8vo, p. 71), and, I prefume, the title, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Poe himself, in his own edition of his poetical works, devotes a portion of the volume to Poems Written in Youth, which he introduces by the following Preface:

As for his Effay on Man, as I was witnefs to the whole conduct of it in writing, and actually have his original MSS. for it, from the first scratches of the four books, to the several finished copies, (of his own neat and elegant writing thefe laft) all which, with the MS. of his Effay on Criticifm, and feveral of his other works, he gave me himself, for the pains I took in reference to the fin of plagiarism, and othcollating the whole with the printed edi- ers to the date of Tennyfon's first poems— tions, at his request, on my having propofed have induced me, after fome hefitation, to to him the "making an edition of his works republifh thefe, the crude compofitions of in the manner of Boileau's," as to this my earliest boyhood. They are printed verbatim-without alteration from the earnobleft of his works I know that he never

"Private reafonsfome of which have

dreamed of the scheme he afterwards adopt- ly edition-the date of which is too remote ed, perhaps for good reasons, for he had to be judiciously acknowledged. E. a. p.” taken terror about the clergy, and War- This Preface is characterized by Poe's burton himself, at the general alarm of its ufual mendacity. The poems are not fatalism, and deistical tendency, of which however we talked with him (my father and I) frequently at Twickenham, without his appearing to understand it otherwife, or ever thinking to alter those paffages, which we fuggefted as what might feem the most exceptionable.-Richardfoniana.

"printed verbatim without alteration from the early edition"-nor have we any reafon to think them "the crude compoftions of his earliest boyhood." He was at leaft eighteen when they were printed— rather a late period in a man's life to be confidered his "earliest boyhood!" Why he should say the date was too remote to be judiciously acknowledged," I can not fee: the more remote he could make it the

66

better, if he really thought the poems dis-
creditable to him. He knew that he was
guilty of falfehood when he penned that
preface, but he ran the risk of detection,
trufting to the chance of his firft volume
never turning up against him. What it
really contained, I know not; his fecond
volume, or what he calls a fecond edition
of the firft, is before me: Poems by Edgar
A. Poe. Tout le Monde a Raifon.-Roche-
foucault. Second Edition. New York:
Published by Elam Bliss. 1831. It is a
presentation copy, bound up with two other
early volumes, by then prominent Ameri-
can poets.
The original fize (the volume
has been cut down in the binding) I take
to have been a 12mo, or fmall 12mo, of
It
124 pages, probably bound in boards.
is dedicated to "THE U. S. CORPS OF CA-
DETS," of course of West Point, which Poe
was then about to leave. The Dedica-
tion is followed by an Introduction in the
fhape of a letter, of 17 pages, dated West
Point, 1831, and addreffed to Mr.

infinite conception. Mufic, when combined with a pleafurable idea, is poetry; mufic without the idea is fimply mufic; the idea without the mufic is profe from its very definiteness."

After the profe Introduction, or letter, comes an Introduction in verse, consisting of 66 lines. The first and fourth ftanzas, or divifions, of this poem, are fimilar to the piece which Poe afterwards christened Romance, and printed among his Poems Written in Youth. The third ftanza is remarkable as fhowing his pfychological tendencies, and as forefhadowing the clafs of compofitions in which he afterwards delighted, and on which his reputation chiefly refts:

"For, being an idle boy lang fyne,
Who read Anacreon, and drank wine,
I early found Anacreon rhymes
Were almoft paffionate fometimes-
And by ftrange alchemy of brain
His pleasures always turn'd to pain-
His naïveté to wild defire-

His wit to love-his wine to fire-
And fo being young and dipt in folly
I fell in love with melancholy,
And used to throw my earthly reft
And quiet all away in jest-

I could not love except where Death
Was mingling his with Beauty's breath-
Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny

Were stalking between her and me.”

The next poem is To Helen, a charming

an enigmatical "Dear BThis letter is fmart, but fomewhat flippant, not to fay impertinent. The affured young poet goffips about his art, as fuch, gentry will, and is fevere on two of his elder brethren, Coleridge and Wordfworth, thẻ former of whom he fneers at, preferring Macpherson to him, or rather Temora to Peter Bell. One paffage of the letter is curious little cabinet-piece, which he afterwards reas containing a definition of poetry, fimilar touched, and printed among his youthful to that afterwards adopted by Poe, and in- poems. Then comes frafel. This he fifted upon with vehemence and ingenuity: retouched, expanding it from 44 lines, its "A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to original length, to 51, and printing it among a work of science by having, for its imme- the poems of his manhood. This is foldiate object, pleasure, not truth; to ro- lowed by The Doomed City-58 lines, afmance, by having its object an indefinite terwards fhortened 5 lines, and printed inftead of a definite pleasure, being a poem among his later poems, as The City in the only fo far as this object is attained: ro- Sea. Fairy Land, the next piece, consists mance prefenting perceptible images, with of 64 lines, the last 24 of which he afterdefinite, poetry with indefinite fenfations, to wards expanded into 46, and printed, with which end mufic is an essential, fince the the fame heading, among his early poems. comprehenfion of sweet found is our most Here is the cancelled portion :

1