volumes. To this, I have no doubt he contributed aid.
It is certain that the fragment of an unpublished poem of Pope, copied by Malone among his anecdotes some years before, appears in that work. I have consequently omitted it in this volume. A few other memoranda of the poet, in verse, not quoted by Warton, are retained as specimens of his first thoughts. Both came from an early friend of Malone, Dr. Wilson,[1] of Trinity College, Dublin, who thus writes:—“This poem I transcribed from a rough draft in Pope’s own hand. He left many blanks for fear of the Argus eyes of those who if they may not find, can fabricate, treason. . . . It was lent me by a grandson of Lord Chetwynd, an intimate friend of the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who gratified his curiosity by a boxful of the rubbish and sweepings of Pope’s study.”
Popiana, the name given to his own collection of fragments, were embodied in two memorandum books. To these were added various loose papers, anecdotes, and straggling notes jotted down as communicated, some of which may still emerge into life from the stores of the curious. He had likewise collected three volumes of tracts, twenty-one in number, connected with the same poet, said to have contained much curious matter, and which passed into the possession of a new owner at his sale in 1818. Fresh from his own hand, cohering and shaped into form, with life breathed into them by his own kindly spirit, we should have perused the details with more satisfaction.
- ↑ This gentleman I have mentioned in a previous page; also in the Life of Goldsmith, vol. i. p. 63: Murray, 1837.
