PREFACE. THIS new edition of the LIFE OF POPE, preliminary to a reprint of his Works, has been carefully revised. Considerable additions have been made, and a better arrangement of the materials attempted. Indeed, so many new facts illustrative of Pope's literary and personal character have been brought to light within the last four or five years, that any previous life of the poet would require to be almost wholly rewritten. The Editor has availed himself of this recent information-of course specifying the authority for each fact and illustration-and he has been enabled to make some additions from unpublished sources. Further extracts are given from the Mapledurham MSS., including a few letters from Pope, Mrs. Howard, Mallet, &c. The correspondent to whom Pope addressed the "Letters to a Lady," first published by Dodsley in 1769, has been traced and found (where it is pleasant to find a new poetical association) in the family of Cowper. The "Erinna" of Pope was be aunt of the author of "The Task." Some particulars have been gleaned from the Wills in Doctors' Commons, and proof is adduced of Pope's connexion with the Grubstreet Journal, as asserted by Curll. For the private details of the poet's life, the chief authority is Spence's Anecdotes. Johnson had the use of this work in manuscript when writing his life of Pope, and Malone made extracts from it for his life of Dryden. A complete edition, however, was not printed till 1819, when it was edited and published by Mr. Samuel Weller Singer. The anecdotes are interesting and valuable; but Spence was inferior to Boswell in all the important requisites of industry, correctness, and dramatic talent in sketching character and reporting conversation. With the same opportunities as Spence, Boswell would have cleared up all the doubtful and mysterious points in Pope's life and poetry, besides giving us a copious sprinkling of the table-talk at Twickenham and Dawley, and interior glimpses of Will's or Button's coffee-houses. In one respect, however, Spence is equal to the northern biographer: he almost worshipped the object of his work, and unhesitatingly subscribed to the poet's opinions, literary and personal. All the editors of Pope have been misled in some material points by trusting to Memoirs of his Life and Writings, published in 1745, and written by William Ayre, Esq. The existence of "Squire Ayre" (as he has been called) was denied by one of his contemporaries, "J. H.," who asserted |