his manuscript preface, he intimates that he would
have amused himself by writing poetry, but would have forborne to
publish what he wrote. Either he was not honest in the opinion, or he
was self-deceived. He valued his fame above all things, and left no
means untried to protect and promote it.]

[Footnote 6: As was the practice of his master Dryden, who is severely
lashed for this in the Tale of a Tub.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 7: Pope was not justified in his boast. He dropped the
practice of fulsome dedications, but he made the most of his
distinguished friends in the body of his pieces, and though no "names of
great patrons" are given in this preface, he could not abstain from
announcing in the final sentence how much they had countenanced him.
This, moreover, was to proclaim the "recommendations" he repudiated, and
in every issue of his works the preface, which contained the
inconsistency, was followed in addition by a series of Recommendatory
Poems.]

[Footnote 8: The passage in inverted commas was first added in 1736.]

[Footnote 9: One of Pope's favourite topics is contempt for his own
poetry. For this, if it had been real, he would deserve no commendation;
and in this he was certainly not sincere, for his value of himself was
sufficiently observed; and of what could he be proud but of his poetry?
He writes, he says, when "he has just nothing else to do;" yet Swift
complains that he was never at leisure for conversation, because he "had
always some poetical scheme in his head." It was punctually required
that his writing-box should be set upon his bed before he rose; and Lord
Oxford's domestic related that in the dreadful winter of 1740, she was
called from her bed by him four times in one night to supply him with
paper lest he should lose a thought.--DR. JOHNSON.]

[Footnote 10: For the next sentence the manuscript has this passage:
"But I fear it is far otherwise with modern poets. We must bring our wit
to the press, as gardeners do their flowers to the market, which if they
cannot vend in the morning are sure to die before night. Were we
animated by the same noble ambition, and ready to prosecute it with
equal ardour, our languages are not only confined to a narrow extent of
country, but are in a perpetual flux, not so much as fixed by an
acknowledged grammar, while theirs were such as time and fate conspired
to make universal and everlasting."]

[Footnote 11: In place of the remainder of the sentence he had