hink a very weak man; and
it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. He might indeed
have been well designated as "a fiddle-faddle bit of sterling."

I have the original MS. of the two last Dialogues of the _Essay on the
Odyssey_ as written by Spence, and on the first page is the following
note:--"The two last Evenings corrected by Mr. Pope." On a blank page at
the end, Spence has again written:--"MS. of the two last Evenings
corrected with Mr. Pope's own hand, w'ch serv'd y'e Press, and is so
mark'd as usual by Litchfield."

This will elucidate Malone's note in his copy of the book, which Mr.
Bolton Corney has transcribed. I think the first three dialogues were
published in a little volume before Spence became acquainted with Pope,
and perhaps led to that acquaintance. Their intercourse afterwards might
supply some capital illustrations for a new edition of Mr. Corney's
curious chapter on _Camaraderie Litteraire_. The MS. copy of Spence's
Essay bears frequent marks of Pope's correcting hand by erasure and
interlineary correction, silently made. I transcribe the few passages
where the poet's revision of his critic are accompanied by remarks.

In Evening the Fourth, Spence had written:--"It may be inquired, too,
how far this translation may make a wrong use of terms borrowed from the
arts and sciences, &c. [The instances are thus pointed out.] As where we
read of a ship's crew, Od. 3. 548. The longitude, Od. 19. 350. Doubling
the Cape, Od. 9. 90. Of Architraves, Colonnades, and the like, Od. 3.
516." Pope has erased this and the references, and says:--"_These are
great faults; pray don't point 'em out, but spare your servant_."

At p. 16. Spence had written:--"Yellow is a proper epithet of fruit; but
not of fruit that we say at the same time is ripening into gold." Upon
which Pope observes:--"I think yellow may be s'd to ripen into gold, as
gold is a deeper, fuller colour than yellow." Again: "What is proper in
one language, may not be so in another. Were Homer to call the sea a
thousand times by the title of [Greek: porphureos], 'purple deeps' would
not sound well in English. The reason's evident: the word 'purple' among
us is confined to one colour, and that not very applicable to the deep.
Was any one to translate the _purpureis oloribus_ of Horace, 'purple
swans' would not be so literal as to miss the sense of the author
entirely." Upon which Pope has remarked:--"The sea is actually of a deep
purple in