HE TEMPLE OF FAME

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1711.

THE TEMPLE OF FAME: A VISION.

By Mr. POPE.

8vo.

London: Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, betwixt the two Temple Gates in
Fleet Street. 1715.

This is the first edition. A second edition, which I have not seen, is
advertised by Lintot in some of the lists of his publications. Dennis,
in the Observations he put forth on the poem in 1717, asks Pope if there
are no women who are worthy to appear in the Temple of Fame, and
immediately adds, "Divers, he says, but he thought he should affront the
modesty of the sex in showing them there." The remark does not occur in
the first edition, nor in the reprints of the poem in Pope's collected
works, and it may, perhaps, have been taken from the second edition. As
the production disappointed the expectations raised by the name of the
author the sale was probably not large. The piece was included in the
quarto of 1717, and in the editions of Lintot's Miscellanies which came
out in 1727 and 1732, but was not in the editions of 1720 and 1722.
Lintot paid 32_l._ 5_s._ for the copyright on Feb. 1, 1715.

ADVERTISEMENT

The hint of the following piece was taken from Chaucer's House of Fame.
The design is in a manner entirely altered, the descriptions and most of
the particular thoughts my own: yet I could not suffer it to be printed
without this acknowledgment,[1] or think a concealment of this nature
the less unfair for being common. The reader who would compare this with
Chaucer, may begin with his third Book of Fame, there being nothing in
the two first books that answers to their title.[2] Whenever any hint is
taken from him, the passage itself is set down in the marginal
notes.[3]

Some modern critics, from a pretended refinement of taste, have declared
themselves unable to relish allegorical poems.[4] It is not easy to
penetrate into the meaning of this criticism; for if fable be allowed
one of the chief beauties, or, as Aristotle calls it, the very soul of
poetry, it is hard to comprehend how that fable should be the less
valuable for having a moral. The ancients constantly made use of
allegories. My Lord Bacon has composed an express treatise in proof of
this, entitled, The Wisdom of the Ancients; where the reader may see
several particular fictions exemplified and explained with great
clearness, judgment, and learning. The incidents, indeed, by which the
allegory is conveyed, must be varied according to the differe