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Come thou, my Friend! my Genius! come along;

Oh, master of the poet, and the song;

And while the Muse now stoops, or now ascends
To man's low passions or their glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee, in various Nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise.
Oh! while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
Shall then this Verse to future age pretend
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?
That, ure'd by thee, I turn'd the tuneful art
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart;
For Wit's faise mirror held up Nature's light,
Shew'd erring Pride, whatever is is right.....
That virtue only makes our bliss below,

And all our knowledge is ourselves to know.

ESS. ON MAN.

LONDON:

Printed for, and under the Direction of,

G. CAWTHORN, British Library, STRAND.

M DCC XCVI.

A LETTER TO THE PUBLISHER.

Occasioned by the first correct edition of

THE DUNCIAD.

Ir is with pleasure I hear that you have procured a correct copy of the Dunciad, which the many surreptitious ones have rendered so necessary; and it is yet with more that I am informed it will be attended with a Commentary; a work so requisite, that I cannot think the Author himself would have omitted it, had he approved of the first appearance of

this Poem.

Such Notes as have occurred to me I herewith send you; you will oblige me by inserting them amongst those which are, or will be, transmitted to you by others; since not only the Author's friends, but even strangers, appear engaged, by humanity, to take some care of an Orphan of so much genius and spirit, which its Parent seems to have abandoned from the very beginning, and suffered to step into the world naked, unguarded, and unattended.

It was upon reading some of the abusive papers lately published, that my great regard to a person whose friendship I esteem as one of the chief honours of my life, and a much greater respect to truth than

to him or any man living, engaged me in enquiries of which the enclosed Notes are the fruit:

I perceived that most of these authors had been (doubtless very wisely) the first aggressors. They had tried, till they were weary, what was to be got by railing at each other: no body was either concerned or surprised if this or that scribbler was proved a dunce, but every one was curious to read what could be said to prove Mr. Pope one, and was ready to pay something for such a discovery; a stratagem which, would they fairly own, it might not only reconcile them to me, but screen them from the resentment of their lawful superiors, whom they daily abuse, only (as I charitably hope) to get that by them, which they cannot get from them.

I found this was not all: il success in that had transported them to personal abuse either of himself, or (what I think he could less forgive) of his friends. They had called men of virtue and honour bad men, long before he had either leisure or inclination to call them bad writers; and some of them had been such old offenders, that he had quite forgotten their persons, as well as their slanders, till they were pleased to revive them.

Now, what had Mr. Pope done before to incense them? He had published those works which are in the hands of every body, in which not the least mention is made of any of them. And what has he done since? He has laughed, and written the Dunciad. What as that said of them? A very

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