Spence was certainly an amiable, but I think a very weak man; and
it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. He might indeed
have been well designated as "a fiddle-faddle bit of sterling."
I have the original MS. of the two last Dialogues of the _Essay on the
Odyssey_ as written by Spence, and on the first page is the following
note:--"The two last Evenings corrected by Mr. Pope." On a blank page at
the end, Spence has again written:--"MS. of the two last Evenings
corrected with Mr. Pope's own hand, w'ch serv'd y'e Press, and is so
mark'd as usual by Litchfield."
This will elucidate Malone's note in his copy of the book, which Mr.
Bolton Corney has transcribed. I think the first three dialogues were
published in a little volume before Spence became acquainted with Pope,
and perhaps led to that acquaintance. Their intercourse afterwards might
supply some capital illustrations for a new edition of Mr. Corney's
curious chapter on _Camaraderie Litteraire_. The MS. copy of Spence's
Essay bears frequent marks of Pope's correcting hand by erasure and
interlineary correction, silently made. I transcribe the few passages
where the poet's revision of his critic are accompanied by remarks.
In Evening the Fourth, Spence had written:--"It may be inquired, too,
how far this translation may make a wrong use of terms borrowed from the
arts and sciences, &c. [The instances are thus pointed out.] As where we
read of a ship's crew, Od.
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