Supplemental volume to the works of Alexander Pope; containing a considerable addition to his private correspondence. The whole accompanied by notes [by R.W. Dibdin.].

have been before used in those collections, nor to omit characteristick anecdotes which, through carelessness or misinformation, have been neglected.

One feature is preserved in this collection which has been too generally overlooked: The particular orthography of each letter has been scrupulously followed. If Shenstone could discover the character of the mind from the hand-writing, surely we may be able to learn something concerning the literary acquirements of certain individuals and the general state of knowledge at that time, by seeing the most exalted and respectable of the nobility and higher classes of society betraying symptoms of the most lamentable ignorance in the commonest branches of education. It may be objected that particular modes of spelling are peculiar to different ages; it is admitted, if those methods be consistently followed; but when we find the same word spelt in two or three ways, in the same letter, no custom, how

ever singular, can countenance it; ignorance only is the true cause.

Is there, then, no gratification in observing the present highly improved state of knowledge, and in knowing that one century has made the lower order of people in this country in some respects equal, if not superior, to those who have been the highest patrons of literature: patrons, too, who lived in an age absurdly dignified with the title of “Augustan ?”

That rigid correctness was not an indispensable qualification in Pope's time, it may be evidenced from the carelessness of many of his own letters, and, more strongly, by those of the most learned scholars of the early part of the eighteenth century; this, however, should be attributed to the laxity encouraged by the ignorance of society at large, as the manners of the most polished courtier will be eventually tainted by continual intercourse with the vulgar.

The editor has been less doubtful in print

ing the letters literally from the originals, from lately discovering that, in the collection edited by the Younger Colman, the same plan has been adopted; and he is more willing to shield himself under the authority of a precedent, than to take credit to himself for striking out a new path, whose eligibility is not yet entirely acquiesced in by the literary world.

CONTENTS.

LETTERS FROM ROWE, STEELE, JERVAS, ARBUTHNOT,

GAY, &c.

1. Sir William Trumball to Pope

II. Jervas to Pope-Proposition concerning a

jaunt into the country Vertue