wever, that, if he should be pressed with want of money,
he would send to him for occasional supplies. Craggs was not long in
power, and was never solicited for money by Pope, who disdained to beg
what he did not want.

With the product of this subscription, which he had too much discretion
to squander, he secured his future life from want, by considerable
annuities. The estate of the duke of Buckingham was found to have been
charged with five hundred pounds a year, payable to Pope, which,
doubtless, his translation enabled him to purchase.

It cannot be unwelcome to literary curiosity, that I deduce thus
minutely the history of the English Iliad. It is, certainly, the noblest
version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication
must, therefore, be considered as one of the great events in the annals
of learning.

To those who have skill to estimate the excellence and difficulty of
this great work, it must be very desirable to know how it was performed,
and by what gradations it advanced to correctness. Of such an
intellectual process the knowledge has very rarely been attainable; but,
happily, there remains the original copy of the Iliad, which, being
obtained by Bolingbroke, as a curiosity, descended, from him, to Mallet,
and is now, by the solicitation of the late Dr. Maty, reposited in the
Museum.

Between this manuscript, which is written upon accidental fragments of
paper, and the printed edition, there must have been an intermediate
copy, that was, perhaps, destroyed as it returned from the press.

From the first copy I have procured a few transcripts, and shall
exhibit, first, the printed lines: then, in a smaller print, those of
the manuscripts, with all their variations. Those words in the small
print, which are given in italicks, are cancelled in the copy, and the
words placed under them adopted in their stead.

[Transcriber's Note: the "smaller print" of the original noted in
the preceeding paragraph is the doubly-indented block in the following
section.]

The beginning of the first book stands thus:

The wrath of Peleus' son, the direful spring
Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess, sing;
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain.

The stern Pelides' _rage_, O goddess, sing,
wrath
Of all the woes of Greece the fatal spring.
Grecian
That str