ame,' &c.

These two letters were published by Warburton, but are not given by Pope
in the edition of his correspondence, published in 1737, and the poem
has no place in the collected works of 1717. It has been said that if
the piece had been written in 1712 Steele would have inserted it in the
_Spectator_. But it was not received until the last number of the
_Spectator_ had been published. Three months then elapsed before the
appearance of the _Guardian_, to which Pope contributed eight papers.
Pope, on his part, would be naturally unwilling to connect with the poem
the few words he had sent with it to Steele, saying,

'You have it (as Cowley calls it) just warm from the brain. It came to
me the first moment I waked this morning. Yet, you will see, it was
not so absolutely inspiration, but that I had in my head not only the
verses of Adrian, but the fine fragment of Sappho, &c.'

The &c. being short for Thomas Flatman, whose name would not have stood
well by that of Sappho, though he was an accomplished man in his day,
who gave up law for poetry and painting, and died in 1688, one of the
best miniature painters of his time, and the author of 'Songs and
Poems,' published in 1674, which in ten years went through three
editions. Flatman had written:

'_When on my sick-bed I languish,
Full of sorrow, full of anguish,
Fainting, gasping, trembling, crying,
Panting, groaning, speechless, dying;
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say,
"Be not fearful, come away_!"']

[Footnote 4: From Thomas Tickell.]

* * * * *

No. 533. Tuesday, November 11, 1712. Steele.

'Immo duas dabo, inquit ille, una si parum est:
Et si duarum paenitebit, addentur duae.'

Plaut.

_To the_ SPECTATOR.

_SIR,_

'You have often given us very excellent Discourses against that
unnatural Custom of Parents, in forcing their Children to marry
contrary to their Inclinations. My own Case, without further Preface,
I will lay before you, and leave you to judge of it. My Father and
Mother both being in declining Years, would fain see me, their eldest
Son, as they call it settled. I am as much for that as they can be;
but I must be settled, it seems, not according to my own, but their
liking. Upon this account I am teaz'd every Day, because I have not
yet fallen in love, in spite of Nature, with one of a neighbouring
G