with minute exactness, that the peculiar mode of writing, and imperfect spelling of that celebrated poet, may be exhibited to the curious in literature. It justifies Swift's epithet of 'paper-sparing Pope[1],' for it is written on a slip no larger than a common message-card, and was sent to Mr. Richardson, along with the Imitation of Juvenal.
'This is imitated by one Johnson who put in for a Publick-school in Shropshire[2], but was disappointed. He has an infirmity of the convoilsive kind, that attacks him sometimes, so as to make him a sad Spectacle. Mr. P. from the Merit of this Work which was all the knowledge he had of him endeavour'd to serve him without his own application ; cS: wrote to my Ld gore, but he did not succeed. Mr. Johnson published afterwds another Poem in Latin with Notes the whole very Humerous call'd the Norfolk Prophecy[3].'
Johnson had been told of this note; and Sir Joshua Reynolds informed him of the compliment which it contained,
- ↑ 'Get all your verses printed fair.
Then let them well be dried;
And Curll must have a special care
To leave the margin wide.
Lend these to paper-sparing Pope:
And when he sits to write.
No letter with an envelope
Could give him more delight.'
Advice to the Grub-Street Verse-Writers.(Swift's Works. 1803, xi. 32.) Nichols, in a note on this passage, says:—'The original copy of Pope's Homer is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves.' Johnson, in his Life of Pope, writes:—'Of Pope's domestic character frugality was a part eminently remarkable . . . This general care must be universally approved: but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which perhaps in five years five shillings were saved.' Johnson's Works, viii. 312.
- ↑ See note, p. 153. Boswell.
- ↑ The Marmor Norfolciense, price one shilling, is advertised in the Gent. Mag. for 1739 (p. 220) among the books for April.
