This levity, to call it by its flightest name, I wish to confider, though it is no palliation, as palpable and grofs affectation, from which he was in no instance free *.

It may seem strange that fuch language could be endured; but we muft confider the character of the times. As to the Ladies, they were probably proud (particularly Martha) of the attentions of so celebrated a poet, and allowed the licentiousness of his expreffions, that they might boast the honour of his correfpondence.

In many inftances he appears to have felt a fort of libertine love, which his paffions continually prompted him to declare; but which the conscious nefs of his infirmities, and we ought to add his moral feelings, corrected and reftrained.

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If these and other parts of his character appear lefs amiable, let the reader conftantly keep in mind the phyfical and moral caufes which operated on a mind like his let him remember his life, one long disease," the natural paffions, which he must have felt in common with all the world, difappointed: his tenderness thrown back on his heart, only to gather there with more force, and more ineffectual

wishes :

*With regard to fome few compofitions admitted into this edition, which were undoubtedly written by Pope, I have wished to avoid either extreme: not to admit what would be a difcredit, nor to reject what readers in general would wifh to fee in a complete edition of his works.

wishes his confined education, intrusted chiefly to those who were themselves narrow-minded*: his being used from the cradle to liften only to the voice of partial indulgence; of tenderness, almoft maternal, in all who contemplated his weakness and his incipient talents f.When he has duly weighed these things, and attended to every alleviating circumftance that his knowledge of the world, or his charity, may fuggeft, then let him not haftily condemn what truth compels me to state; but let him rather, without prefuming on his own virtues, lament the imperfection of our common nature, and leave the judgment to HIM, "who "knoweth whereof we are made, who remembereth we are but duft."

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* I hope this will not be thought illiberal, when it is remembered how much he offended fome of his own persuasion, by the praise of Erafmus, in the Effay on Criticism.

Whatever might have been his defects, he could not be faid to have many bad qualities, who never loft a friend, and whom Arbuthnot, Gay, Bathurst, Lyttelton, Fortefcue, and Murray, esteemed and loved through life.

h 2

POSTSCRIPT.

TO the names of those to whom I am indebted for any communications, I ought to have added that of the Rev. Mr. Bannister. His Notes, in the fifth and fixth volumes, are marked with his name, as are the respective communications of all those who have been before mentioned. The account given me of Mrs. Thomas, in Vol. vii. as copied from a MS. by my friend D. P. Okeden, I have fince found in print but the book is obfcure; and as I can trace no authentic source from which this part is derived, I think it probable that the fame MS. furnished the information to the publisher.

Mr. Rogers lent me his copy of Warton's edition of Pope, with manufcript remarks in pencil by Steevens. These are constantly marked by his name.

For all obfervations without fignature, I rely on the reader's candour.

In the Life, I have been led into a mistake, from following a date of Johnson, though I have been in general attentive to this material part of biography, The first Imitation of Horace I have dated 1731, instead of 1733, when it was published. The Imitation addreffed to Bolingbroke (" Prima dicte mihi") was

written

written in 1737, foon after Bolingbroke left England, not before. The additional letters were neither procured nor arranged by me, except the letter of Pope to Mrs. Price, that of Martha Blount, and that of Pope, in the Life, to Christopher Smart.

If it fhould be thought I have in fome places spoken too harfhly of Pope's conduct, I can only fay, I fhould not have confidered myself an honest man if I had fpoken otherwise.

BREMHILL, Jan. 25, 1807.

WM. LISLE BOWLES.