ON POPE. By GILBERT WAKEFIELD, B. A. Oh! while along the stream of Time thy name Say, fhall my little bark attendant fail, Purfue the triumph, and partake the gale? LONDON: PRINTED, FOR THE AUTHOR, BY A. HAMILTON: SOLD BY PAYNE, AT THE MEWS-GATE; EGERTON, PREFACE. FOR fome time paft I had cherished an agre able expectation, that the remainder of Pope's works would be configned to my care, after the new edition of his Homer, with continued notes on both Iliad and Odyffey, fhould be delivered to the public through my hands. But, in confequence of a previous agreement, unknown to me, privately contracted by Mr. Cadell with Dr. Warton, and the rapidity of the Doctor in a preoccupation of the prefs, this office has devolved upon him; a man, by elegance of taste and variety of literary information, eminently qualified, beyond all controverfy, to adorn and explain a poet, for delicacy of feeling, for accuracy of judgement, poignancy of wit, urbanity of humour, vivacity of fancy, difcernment of human character, folemnity of pathos, pregnancy of fen ́timent, rectitude of taste, comprehensive diction, melodious numbers, and dignified morality, without a rival in antient or modern times. That my rambles, however, in this province, thus intercepted, might not perish to myself, I have collected, but with ftudied brevity, my mifcellaneous remarks into this work now prefented to the reader; where what occur to the extent of my former volume, are merely fupplemental to it, that no purchaser might have occafion to complain, nor myself unreasonably fuffer by a folitary and unfupported work. These Obfervations, which are principally employed on our poet's imitations of his predeceffors, but not unaccompanied by an intermixture of other topics arifing from the fubject, will prove acceptable, I hope, in proportion to their worth, to the lovers of poetic elegance. But, in truth, both my present and paft exercitations on this poet, with the future efforts of Dr. Warton, admirable as they may be, are alike frivolous and ineffectual, if no edition of Pope be wanted, according to the profefforial edict of thofe impartial judges and fuperlative practitioners of universal literature, hight British Critics! From the formidable decifion of these mighty dictators I appeal, however, with confidence by this volume to the public. Thofe imitations, which others had before discovered, I have not been forward to repeat, from a difinclination to an unreafonable extenfion of the work: what may have been incidentally repeated, I have not appropriated with intentional |