"HORACE avec BOILEAU;

"Vous y cherchiez le vrai, vous y goutiez le beau ; Quelques traits échappés d'une utile morale; "Dans leurs piquans écrits brillent par intervale. Mais POPE approfondit ce qu'ils ont effleuré; "D'un efprit plus hardi, d'un pas plus affuré, "Il porta le flambeau dans l'abîme de l'Etre, "Et l'homme avec lui feul apprit à fe connoitre. "L'art quelquefois frivole et quelquefois divin, L'art des vers eft dans POPE UTILE AU GENDRE HUMAIN." Voltaire, au Roi de Pruffe.

66

66

THE

WORKS

O F

Alexander Pope,Efq.

VOLUME I.

CONTAINING HIS

JUVENILE POEMS

AND

TRANSLATION S.

LONDON,

Printed for C. BATHURST, W. STRAHAN, J. and F. RIVINGTON, R. BALDWIN, W. JOHNSTON, T.CASION, T. LONGMAN, B. LAW, JOHNSON and DAVENPORT, T. DAVIES, T. CADELL, and W. and J. RICHARDSON.

M DCC LXX.

1

To the OCTAVO EDITION.

MR. R. POPE, in his laft illness, amufed himself, amidit the care of his higher concerns, in preparing a corrected and complete Edition of his writings; and, with his usual delicacy, was even folicitous to prevent any fhare of the offence they might occafion, from falling on the Friend whom he had engaged to give them to the Public .

In discharge of this truft, the Public has here a complete Edition of his Works; executed in fuch a manner, as, I am perfuaded, would have been to his fatisfaction.

The Editor hath not, for the fake of profit, fuffered the Author's Name to be made cheap by a Sub. fcription; nor his Works to be defrauded of their due honours by a vulgar or inelegant Impreffion; nor his memory to be disgraced by any pieces unworthy of his talents or virtue. On the contrary, he hath, at a very great expence, ornamented this Edition with all the advantages which the best Artists in Paper, Printing, and Sculpture could bestow upon it.

c

a "I own the late encroachments upon my conftitution make me willing to fee the end of all further care about me or my "works. I would reft for the one in a full refignation of my "being to be difpofed of by the Father of all Mercy; and for the "other (though indeed a trifle, yet a trifle may be fome example) "I would commit them to the candour of a fenfible and reflecting "judge, rather than to the malice of every fhort-fighted and ma "levolent critic, or inadvertent and cenforious Reader. And no "hand can fet them in fo good a light," etc. Lett. cxx. to Mr. W.

"I also give and bequeath to the faid Mr. Warburton, the "property of all fuch of my Works already printed as he hath writ"ten or fhall write Commentaries or Notes upon, and which I have "not otherwife difpofed of or alienated; and as he fhall publish 66 WITHOUT FUTURE ALTERATIONS."-His Laft Will and Teftament.

If the Public hath waited longer than the deference due to it fhould have fuffered, it was owing to a reafon which the Editor need not make a fecret. It was his regard to the family-interefts of his deceased Friend. Mr. Pope, at his death, left large impreffions of feveral parts of his Works, unfold; the property of which was adjudged to belong to his Executors; and the Editor was willing they fhould have time to difpofe of them to the best advantage, before the publication of this Edition (which hath been long prepared) fhould put a ftop to the fale.

But it may be proper to be a little more particular concerning the fuperiority of this edition above all the preceding; fo far as Mr. Pope himself was concerned. What the Editor hath done, the Reader must collect for himself.

The FIRST Volume, and the original poems in the SECOND, are here printed from a copy corrected throughout by the Author himfelf, even to the very preface: which, with feveral additional notes in his own hand, he delivered to the Editor a little before his death. The Juvenile Tranflations, in the other part of the SECOND Volume, it was never his intention to bring into this Edition of his Works, on account of the levity of fome, the freedom of others, and the little importance of any. But thefe being the property of other men, the Editor had it not in his power to follow the Author's intention.

The THIRD Volume, all but the Essay on Man (which, together with the Effay on Criticism, the Author, a little before his death, had corrected and published in Quarto, as a specimen of his projected Edition) was printed by him in his laft illness (but never published) in the manner it is now given. The difpofition of the Epistle on the Characters of Men is quite altered: that on the Characters of Women, much enlarged; and the Epiftles on Riches