Oct. 7. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



277 



LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7. 1854. 



POPIANA. 



" The Dunciad"—! am obliged to M. M. K. 

 (Vol. X., p. 218.) for pointing out a slip of my pen, 

 or an error of the press (most likely the former), 

 in one of ray communications, dating the edition 

 that Pope was preparing a little before his death 

 " 1744-5" instead of " 1743-4." 



1'his edition I meant to designate as that of 

 1743-4, because, by Spence's account, it would 

 seem that the JEihic Epistles (as distinguished 

 from the Essay on Man) were only distributed 

 amongst friends, and therefore probably only 

 printed in the spring of 1744, a little before Pope's 

 death ; but I have before me the Essay on Man, 

 the Essay on Criticism, and The Dunciad (four 

 books, with Gibber as the hero), handsome quartos, 

 " printed by W. Bowyer for M. Cooper, 1743." 

 They are bound in one volume, but each work 

 has a separate pagination. And it seems to me 

 that they were parts of the projected general edi- 

 tion which Pope was preparing ; and that the 

 Ethic Epistles, mentioned by Bolingbroke and 

 Spence, were another livraison of this edition, 

 which Pope was thus printing a batons rompus, as 

 he had already done the second volume of the fine 

 quarto edition of 1735, in which all the different 

 pieces have a separate pagination. The fact of 

 these important portions of a quarto edition of 

 1743 (which I have before my eyes, and of which 

 I cannot doubt that the Ethic Epistles were printed 

 as a continuation) effectually disproves Mr. Car- 

 BUTHERs' hypothesis that any sheets of that edition 

 could have been afterwards used in Warburton's 

 octavo edition of 1751, and leads me to hope that 

 a quarto copy of the Ethic Epistles with the cha- 

 racter of Atossa may yet be found. 



When Mr. Carruthers says (Vol. x., p. 239.) 

 that " the printed correspondence is conclusive on 

 the point" of there being no earlier edition of 

 The Dunciad than that of 1728, I beg leave 

 (though 1 myself incline to that opinion) to ob- 

 serve that the evidence derived from the " corre- 

 spondence" is only inferential, and by no means 

 •' conclusive." Nor do I see why inferences from 

 the correspondence are to be taken as " conclu- 

 sive" against the clear and reiterated assertions 

 of Pope's own notes and prefaces : but, waiving 

 that consideration, I would invite attention to a 

 paragraph in the Correspondence which repeats, in 

 an incidental and unpremeditated, and therefore 

 mo7-e trustworthy way, the assertion of the five 

 earlier editions. After having sent Swift the 

 quarto of 1729, he announces to him a '■'■second 

 edition in octavo:" this announcement is dated 

 Nov. 28, 1729, and is in these words : 



"The second (as it is called, but indeed tJie eighth) 



edition of TTie Dunciad, with some additional notes, &c., 

 shall be sent to you." 



That is, the second avowed edition, tke quarto of 

 1729 being the first. Where then are the six 

 others to be found ? Clearly in the fve spurious 

 editions complained of, as printed prior to that by 

 A. Dodd, 1728 ; which he reckons as the sixth, 

 the quarto as the seventh, and the octavo as really 

 the eighth. Whatever may be thought of Pope's 

 desire of mystifying the public, how can it be ac- 

 counted for that in a private letter of that late 

 date, to so confidential a friend, he should have 

 interpolated a repetition of a gratuitous and wholly 

 unimportant fable. 



The Writer or the Abtici^es, &c. has noticed 

 (Vol. X., p. 239.) a very curious variation (one of 

 those that I had already noticed, and that had 

 made me anxious to discover one of the earlier 

 copies), by which, at B. 1. 1. 104. of The Dunciad, 



"D n," which Faulkener's Dublin edition had 



filled up as " Dryden," was silly converted by 



Pope into " D ," without the final n, and then 



explained to mean, not " Dryden " but " Dennis," 

 The note in which this legerdemain was effected 

 is said by the Writer to have been " omitted in 

 Wa?-burton^s, and all subsequent editions ; " but I 

 beg leave to acquaint him, that it was omitted in 

 Pope's own fine quarto edition of 1735, and in 

 those of 1736 and 1743. I cannot for a moment 

 believe that Dryden was meant ; but, as Faulkener 

 was Swift's printer, and Swift hated Dryden, may 

 the Dean not have suggested this mode ot filling 

 up the blank? Certain it is, that the original 



D n does not fit " Dennis," and that the whole 



line was altered, and a long note added, to adapt 

 It to Dennis. The Writer says that this trans- 

 action "suggests some curious speculations with 

 which he does not trouble ' N. & Q.,' as they are 

 not connected with the immediate subject of in- 

 quiry." I hope that, by and by, he will be so good 

 as to give us his ideas on this point ; for though it 



is possible that " D n" was an error of the press, 



and that Dennis may have been originally meant, 

 Malone doubted ; and, certainly. Pope's dealings 

 with the whole passage are somewhat puzzling. C. 



Papers Quarrels. — The valuable aid which 

 " N. & Q." has given in elucidating the literary 

 and personal history of Pope, leads me to express 

 a wish, in which many share, that the able Vv^ritbe 

 OF THE Articles in the Athen^um would de- 

 vote a paper to Pope's quarrels, or at least to 

 the most conspicuous of them — say the quarrel 

 with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Mr. De 

 Quincey, in a Life of Pope contributed to the 

 Encyclopcedia Britannica, says he had prepared 

 an account of Pope's quarrels, in which he had 

 shown that, generally, he was " not the aggressor ; 

 and often was atrociously ill used before he re- 



