Page

369

† A Fragment of an unpublished Satire of Pope,

intitled, One Thoufand Seven Hundred and

Forty

+ The Plan of an Epic Poem, to have been written

in Blank Verse, and intitled BRUTUS

Preface to Homer's Iliad

Postscript to the Odyssey

379

395

445

APPENDIX.

ANECDOTES relative to Mr. John KIRLE, the Man

of Ross

475

1

EPISTLE

EPISTLE

то

DR. ARBUTHNOT.

Motto to the first edition, published in folio, 1734: " Neque fermonibus vulgi dederis te, nec in præmiis humanis fpem pofueris rerum tuarum; fuis te oportet illecebris ipfa virtus trahat ad verum decus. Quid de te alii loquantur, ipfi videant, fed loquentur tamen.”

CICERO

1

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE

FIRST PUBLICATION OF THIS EPISTLE.

ΤΗ

His paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun

many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some Persons of Rank and Fortune (the Authors of Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton-Court] to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my Writings (of which, being public, the Public is judge) but my Perfon, Morals, and Family, whereof, to those who

, Being divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake fo auk

a , last hand to this Epistle. If it have any thing pleafing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the Truth, and the Sentiment ; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious, or the

ungenerous.

Many

B 2

Many will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance but what is true; but I have for the most part spared their Names, and they may escape being laughed at, if they please.

I would have some of them know, it was owing to the request of the learned and candid Friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as free use of theirs, as they have done of mine. However, I shall have this advantage, and honour, on my side, that whereas, by their proceeding, any abuse may be directed at any man, no injury can possibly be done by mine, since a nameless Character can never be found out, but by its truth and likeness.

Pope,

Lady Wortley Montagu begins her Address to Mr. Pope, on his Imitation of the ist Satire of the Second Book of Horace, in these words:

“ In two large columns, on thy motley page,

Where Roman wit is strip'd with English rage;
Where ribaldry to satire makes pretence,
And modern scandal rolls with ancient sense :
Whilst on one side we see how Horace thought,
And on the other how he never wrote:
Who can believe, who view the bad and good,
That the dull copyist better understood
That fpirit he pretends to imitate,
Than heretofore the Greek he did translate?
Thine is just such an image of his pen
As thou thyself art of the sons of men ;
Where our own species in burlesque we trace,
· A sign-poft likeness of the noble race,
That is at once resemblance and disgrace.

Horace

}