in* S. N« 69., April 25. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



325 



Apollo heard — and judg'd each Party's Plea, 

 And thus pronounc'd th' irrevocable Decree ; 

 Theobalds, 'tis thine to share what Shakespear writ, 

 But Pope shall reign supreme in Poesy and Wit." 



Note on a Passage in Caber's Letter to Pope. — 

 Every reader of the admirable Letter from Mr. 

 Cibber to Mr. Pope, when laughing at the saucy 

 retort of Cibber, and the story which he tells to 

 prove he might have turned Pope's line against 

 himself, and said — 



" And has not Sawney too his Lord and Whore," 

 has no doubt done as I have done, speculated who 

 were " the late young Nobleman who had a good 

 deal of wicked humour," and " the other Gentle- 

 man still in being" who slily seduced Mr. Pope as 

 a wit, and Colley Cibber as a laugher, to a certain 

 house near the Haymarket. As, therefore, I have 

 just learned, by two foot-notes on the passage in 

 Dilworth's Life of Pope (p 111.), that they were 

 "the Earl of Warwick" and "the late Commis- 

 sioner Vaughan," I " make a note of " it for the 

 benefit of your readers ; and venture to add as a 

 Query, Who was the late Commissioner Vaughan ? 



P. V. w. 



Pope : ^^ Wondering" or " Wandering." — Having 

 formerly been accustomed to quote the line in 

 Pope's Essay on Criticism, 1. 231. — 



" The increasing prospect tires our wondering eyes,*' — 



I have been quite startled lately by receiving the 

 correction " wandering," which sent me to War- 

 burton's edition of 1753, and to the first collected 

 edition of Pope's Poems of 1717. In both these 

 I find " wandering." But may I beg some one to 

 tell me whether there is any authority at all for 

 the word which I have quoted, written and ad- 

 mired ever since I opened my own wondering 

 eyes on hearing the stately passage in which it 

 occurs for the first time ? Lexhbebiensis. 



Pope's " Sir Balaam" — I have no doubt — 

 though of course the critics call no attention to it 

 — that many a reader has been struck by the ex- 

 treme improbability of the mode in which the poet 

 enriches his hero. It has always led me to think 

 that Pope would not have succeeded as a novelist. 

 I will just cast a glance at it : 



" Roused by the Prince of Air the whirlwinds sweep 

 The surge and plunge his father in the deep ; 

 Then full against his Cornish lands they roar, 

 And two rich shipwrecks bless the lucky shore." 



Whose father ? Balaam's, I presume we are to 

 suppose ; but we ought to have been told that he 

 was still living and was at sea, and how his death 

 was a gain to Balaam. Then whose were the 

 Cornish lands ? Balaam's I presume again ; but 



what can be more improbable than to suppose that 

 a plain, we may say humble, citizen of London at 

 that time could have possessed a landed estate in 

 so distant a county as Cornwall ? and still stranger, 

 that the wreckers on that estate would have handed 

 over their unhallowed gains to their landlord who 

 was away in London. 



His last gain was as follows : 

 " Asleep and naked as an Indian lay. 

 An honest factor stole a gem away ; 

 He pledged it to the knight, the knight had wit, 

 So kept the diamond and the rogue was bit." 

 Now it is not very likely that an Indian would 

 be lying asleep and naked with valuable jewels 

 about him, in a place to which a factor could have 

 recourse, and then it would appear that the pre- 

 text for his being bit by the knight was his not 

 having come honestly by the goods. But who was 

 to know this ? or who was to prove it ? I fancy 

 the law of England takes , no cognisance of how 

 property was acquired in another country. In 

 England the diamond was the property of the 

 factor, and the law would soon have compelled the 

 knight to disgorge. Thos. Keightlby. 



Essay on Man (2"'* S. iii. 197.) — In answer to 

 S. Wmson I will state that the pagination of the 

 four Epistles, or of Part I. and of the three 

 Epistles, is not continuous : each has a perfect and 

 separate pagination. The following is a copy of 

 the Advertisement at the end of the 4th Epistle : 



" Lately Published the three former Parts of An Essay 

 on Man. In Epistles to a Friend. Sold by J. Wilford 

 at the Three Flower-de-Luces, behind the Chapter- 

 House in St. Paul's Church- yard." 



E. O. M. 



Lord Itervey and Lady Mary W. Montagu.* 

 — Mr. Croker, in his preface to Lord Hervey's 

 Memoirs of the Court of Oeorge the Second, says 

 (p. xxxix.) : " Towards the close of 1732 appeared 

 the Imitation of the Second Satire of the First 

 Book of Horace, in which Pope attacked," &c. 

 Pope never wrote an Imitation of the Second Satire 

 of the First Book of Horace : I presume, therefore, 

 that this refers to the First Satire of the Second 

 Book of Horace, and that 1732 probably means 

 1732-3 ; for this poem was entered by Lawton 

 Gilliver at the Stationers' Hall on the 14th of 

 February, 1732-3, and was published soon after. 

 Mr. Croker, in continuation, says — " In retalia- 

 tion for these attacks, there soon appeared a 

 sharp retort, under the title of Verses to the Imi- 

 tator of Horace, which made a great deal of noise, 



* [This article, originally printed in The Athenaum of 

 the '21st March, so curiously illustrates the bibliography 

 of the Verses, ^c, and those still mysterious chapters in 

 the lives of Pope and Lady M. W. Montagu, that we have 

 taken the liberty to trajjsfer it to the columns of "N. & 

 Q,"— Ed.] 



