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write this copy of verses till after Addison's death, since so many people, and he himself for one, had seen it in Addison's lifetime.]

When there was so much talk about the Duke of Chandos being meant under the character of Timon, Mr. Pope wrote a letter to that nobleman (I suppose to point out some particulars which were incompatible with his character). The Duke in his answer said, that he took the application that had been made of it as a sign of the malice of the town against himself, and seemed very well satisfied that it was not meant for him.-Mr. Pope.

I never could speak in public; and I do not believe that if it was a set thing, I could give an account of any story to twelve friends together; though I could tell it to any three of them with a great deal of pleasure. When I was to appear for the Bishop of Rochester on his trial, though I had but ten words to say, and that on a plain easy point (how that Bishop spent his time whilst I was with him at Bromley), I made two or

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three blunders in it; and that notwithstanding the first row of lords (which were all I could see) were mostly of my acquaintance. The same.

Many people would like my Ode on Music better, if Dryden had never written on that subject. It was at the request of Mr. Steele that I wrote mine; and not with any thought of rivalling that great man, whose > memory I do, and have always reverenced! -The same.

When Dr. Swift and I were in the country for some time together, I happened one day to be saying, that "if a man was to take notice of the reflections that came into his mind on a sudden, as he was walking in the fields, or sauntering in his study, there might be several of them perhaps as good as his most deliberate thoughts." On this hint we both agreed to write down all the volunteer reflections that should thus come into our heads all the time we stayed there. We did so and this was what afterwards furnished out the maxims published in our Miscellanies. Those at the end of one vo

lume are mine, and those in the other Dr. Swift's.-The same.

Pope. I was extremely inclined to have gone to Lisbon with Lord Peterborough.— Spence. That might have done you good indeed as to your health; but it must have been a very melancholy thing for you to be so entirely, as you would have been, with a person in his condition.-Pope. That's true; but if you consider how I should have been employed all the time, in nursing and attending a sick friend, that thought would have made it agreeable.-The same.

You know I love short inscriptions, and that may be one reason why I like the epitaph of the Count of Mirandola so well.

*

Some time ago I made a parody of it for a man of a very opposite character.

"Here lies Lord Coningsby; be civil:
"The rest God knows-perhaps the devil."

The same.

My letter to Mr. Addison on a future state was designed as an imitation of the

* Johannes jacet hic Mirandola; cætera norunt
Et Tagus et Ganges, forsan et Antipodes.

style of the Spectators; and there are several cant words of the Spectator in it.The same. [As 'scale of beings,' and some others which he mentioned.]

My letters to Cromwell were written with a design that does not generally appear: they were not written in sober sadness.The same.

The piece to prove that all learning was derived from the monkeys in Ethiopia was written by me and (I think he added) Dr. Arbuthnot. It made a part of the Memoirs of Scriblerus. The design of it was to ridicule such as build general assertions upon two or three loose quotations from the ancients.-The same.

There is nothing more foolish than to pretend to be sure of knowing a great writer by his style.-The same. [Mr. Pope seemed fond of this opinion. I have heard him mention it several times, and he has printed it as well as said it. But I suppose in both he must speak of writers when they use a borrowed style, and not when they write in their own. He himself had the

greatest compass in imitating styles that I ever knew in any man; and he had it partly from his method of instructing himself after he was out of the hands of his bad masters; which was at first almost wholly by imitation. Mr. Addison did not discover Mr. Pope's style in the letter on pastorals which he published in the Guardian; but then that was a disguised style. Mr. Pope had certainly a style of his own, which was very distinguishable. Mr. Brown, in his imitation of the styles of several different sorts of poets, has pointed it out very strongly; and Mr. Pope himself used to speak of those likenesses as very just and very well taken. 'Tis much the same in writing as in painting: a painter who has a good manner of his own, and a good talent for copying, may quite drop his own manner in his copies, and yet be very easy to be distinguished in his originals.]

I began translating the Iliad in the 1712.-The same.

year

I was born in the year 1688. My Essay

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