Jan. 29. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



113 



" Whereupon he w"" others who had thovergyght of 

 that worke, procured a warrant from the Counsaiie to 

 take of the heades vppon London Bridge and make 

 cuppes thereof, whereof they dranke and founde some 

 reliefe, althoughe the moost of them dyed." 



This is supposed to have been about 1560 or 

 1561. Thomas Lawhence. 



Ashby-de-la- Zouch. 



INEDITED POEM BY POPE. 



(Vol. vii., p. 57.) 



This, which is headed "Note," ought to have 

 been headed Query : and it affords an instance of 

 ignorance on the part of some of our correspon- 

 dents ; and of, I fear I must add, inattention on 

 that of our worthy Editor, which I think it right 

 to notice as a warning to all parties for the future : 

 and I appeal to the candour of our Editor himself 

 to give my protest a place. 



The first step in this curious affair is to be found 

 in " N. & Q.," Vol. ii., p. 7., where " the Editor of 

 Bishop Warburtons Literary Remains" produced, 

 as attributed to Mr. Charles Yorke, a kind of 

 epitaph of sixteen lines, beginning — 



" Stript to the naked soul, escaped from clay." 



That the " editor of Bishop Warburton's Lite- 

 rary Remains" and his friend " an eminent 

 critic," should have been at a loss to know where 

 these well-known verses were to be found, and 

 should have countenanced their having been 

 Charles Yorke's, seems the more wonderful : for 

 the verses are given in Warburton's own letters as 

 Pope's, and were printed near a hundred years 

 ago in Ruffhead's Life of Pope, as Pope's ; and 

 in the MS. copy furnished by Mr. Yorke, they are 

 marked as " Mr. Pope's." 



The next error is, that this mention of Mr. 

 Yorke's name — though his MS. bore the name of 

 Pope — seems to have given i-ise to the idea that 

 he was the author, which Lord Campbell has so 

 fully adopted as to have reprinted, in his Lives of 

 the Chancellors (vol. v. p. 428.), the verses as the 

 composition of Charles Yorke. 



We next find in " N. & Q.," Vol. iii., p. 43., a 

 reply of W. S. to the Query of Warburton's 

 editor, stating " that the verses were by Pope" 

 and lately republished in a miscellany by James 

 Tayler, with a statement that they were not inserted 

 in any edition of Pope's works. The foct being, 

 that they have been inserted in Warton's edition, 

 1797 ; and in Bowies', and in all subsequent edi- 

 tions that I have seen : and it seems strange that 

 W. S. did not take the trouble of verifying, by a 

 reference to any edition of Pope, the statement 

 that he quoted. 



Next we have, in the same (3rd) volume of 

 " N. & Q.," a communication from Mr. CRossLEr, 



which states correctly all the foregoing circum- 

 stances, with the addition, that the verses appeared 

 as Aaron Hill's in an edition of his works as early 

 as 1753. Thence arises another discussion ; were 

 they Pope's or Hill's ? Roscoe thought they were 

 Hill's ; Mr. Crossley thinks they were Pope's. 

 I think, both from external and internal evidence, 

 that they were not Pope's. But that has little to 

 do with my present object, which is to show how 

 often the matter has been already discussed in 

 " N. & Q." I must observe, however, that Mr. 

 Crossley has fallen into a slight anachronism. 

 He says that the verses were " transferred from 

 Ruffhead into Bowles' edition ; " whereas they, 

 as I have stated, were transferred into Warton's 

 many years earlier. 



After all this disquisition comes a recent Num- 

 ber of " N. & Q.," of which a column and a qvxii-ter 

 is wasted by a correspondent A. T. W., who con- 

 fesses that he (or she) has not a modern edition 

 of Pope within reach, and begs to know whether 

 these verses (repeated in extenso) " have been yet 

 introduced to the public?" 



Surely " N. & Q." should beware of correspon- 

 dents that write to inquire about Pope, without 

 having an edition of his works; and I cannot but 

 wonder that this crambe, which had been served 

 up thrice before, and so fully by Mr. Crossley, 

 should have been recocta, and introduced as a new 

 theme, entitled to a special attention. C. 



GIBBERS "lives OP THE POETS. 



(Vol. v., p. 161.) 



Allow me to draw your attention to a curious 

 letter which I transcribe, with reference to the 

 above. It appears to have escaped the notice of 

 Mr. Croker, although it corroborates his state- 

 ments. It was written by the bookseller himself 

 who published the Lives, and would seem to set 

 the matter as to their authorship completely at 

 rest. Griffiths appears to have been also the editor 

 of the Monthly Review ; and Cartwright, the in- 

 ventor of the power-loom, to whom the letter is 

 addressed, to have been one of his contributors. 



"MR. GRIFFITH tO MR. CARTWRIGHT. 



« Turnharn Green, 16th June [1781?]. 

 « Dear Sir, 

 " I have sent you a feast ! Johnson's new volumes 

 of the Lives of the Poets. You will observe that 

 Savaj;e's Life is one of the volumes. I suppose it is 

 the same which he published about thirty years ago, 

 and therefore you will not be obliged to notice it 

 otherwise than in the course of enumeration. In the 

 account of Hammond, my good friend Samuel has 

 stumbled on a material circumstance in the publication 

 of Gibber's Lives of the Poets. He intimates that 

 Gibber never saw the work. This is a reflection on 

 the bookseller, your humble servant. The bookseller 



