Notes and Queries, Number 25, April 20, 1850

Spence's almost idolatrous admiration of, and devotion to, Pope, is evident from the pains he took to preserve every little anecdote of him that he could elicit from conversation with him, or with those who knew him. Unfortunately, he had not Boswell's address and talent for recording gossip, or the Anecdotes would have been a much more racy book. 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 Littéraire. 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. 3. 548. The longitude, Od. 19. 350. Doubling the Cape, Od. 9. 90. Of Architraves, Colonnades, and the like, Od. 3. 516." Pope has erased this and the references, and says:—"These are great faults; pray don't point 'em out, but spare your servant."

At p. 16. Spence had written:—"Yellow is a proper epithet of fruit; but not of fruit that we say at the same time is ripening into gold." Upon which Pope observes:—"I think yellow may be s'd to ripen into gold, as gold is a deeper, fuller colour than yellow." Again: "What is proper in one language, may not be so in another. Were Homer to call the sea a thousand times by the title of [Greek: porphureos], 'purple deeps' would not sound well in English. The reason's evident: the word 'purple' among us is confined to one colour, and that not very applicable to the deep. Was any one to translate the purpureis oloribus of Horace, 'purple swans' would not be so literal as to miss the sense of the author entirely." Upon which Pope has remarked:—"The sea is actually of a deep purple in many places, and in many views."

Upon a passage in Spence's Criticism, at p. 45., Pope says:—"I think this too nice." And the couplet objected to by Spence—

"Deep in my soul the trust shall lodge secur'd,
With ribs of steel, and marble heart immur'd,"

he pronounced "very bad." And of some tumid metaphors he says, "All too forced and over-charged."

At p. 51. Spence says:—"Does it not sound mean to talk of lopping a man? of lopping away all his posterity? or of trimming him with brazen sheers? Is there not something mean, where a goddess is represented as beck'ning and waving her deathless hands; or, when the gods are dragging those that have provok'd them to destruction by the Links of fate?" Of the two first instances, Pope says:—"Intended to be comic in a sarcastic speech." And of the last:—"I think not at all mean, see the Greek." The remarks are, however, expunged.

The longest remonstrance occurs at p. 6. of the Fifth Dialogue. Spence had written:—"The Odyssey, as a moral poem, exceeds all the writings of the ancients: it is perpetual in forming the manners, and in instructing the mind; it sets off the duties of life more fully as well as more agreeably than the Academy or Lyceum. Horace ventured to say thus much of the Iliad, and certainly it may be more justly said of this later production by the same hand." For the words in Italics Pope has substituted:—"Horace, who was so well acquainted with the tenets of both, has given Homer's poems the preference to either:" and says in a note:—"I think you are mistaken in limiting this commendation and judgment of Horace to the Iliad. He says it, at the beginning of his Epistle, of Homer in general, and afterwards proposes both poems equally as examples of morality; though the Iliad be mentioned first: but then follows—'Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem,' &c. of the Odyssey."

At p. 34. Spence says:—"There seems to be something mean and awkward in this image:—

"'His loose head tottering as with wine opprest
Obliquely drops, and nodding knocks his breast.'"

Here Pope says:—"Sure these are good lines. They are not mine." Of other passages which please him, he occasionally says,—"This is good sense." And on one occasion, where Spence had objected, he says candidly:—"This is bad, indeed,"—"and this."

At p. 50. Spence writes:—"There's a passage which I remember I was mightily pleased with formerly in reading Cervantes, without seeing any reason for it at that time; tho' I now imagine that which took me in it comes under this view. Speaking of Don Quixote, the first time that adventurer came in sight of the ocean, he expresses his sentiments on this occasion in the following manner:—'He saw the sea, which he had never seen before, and thought it much bigger than the river at Salamanca.'" On this occasion Pope suggests,—"Dr. Swift's fable to Ph–s, of the two asses and Socrates."

    S.W. SINGER.

April 8. 1850.

FOLK LORE

Charm for the Toothache.—The charm which one of your correspondents has proved to be in use in the south-eastern counties of England, and another has shown to be practised at Kilkenny, was also known more than thirty years ago in the north of Scotland. At that time I was a school-boy at Aberdeen, and a sufferer—probably it was in March or April, with an easterly wind—from toothache. A worthy Scotchwoman told me, that the way to be cured of my toothache was to find a charm for it in the Bible. I averred, as your correspondent the curate did, that I could not find any such charm. My adviser then repeated to me the charm, which I wrote down from her dictation. Kind soul! she could not write herself. It was pretty nearly in the words which your correspondent has sent you. According to my recollection, it ran thus:—"Peter sat upon a stone, weeping. And the Lord said unto him, 'Peter, why weepest thou?' And he answered, and said, 'Lord, my tooth acheth.' And the Lord said unto him, 'Arise, Peter, thy teeth shall ache no more.'" "Now," continued my instructress, "if you gang home and put yon bit screen into your Bible, you'll never be able to say again that you canna find a charm agin the toothache i' the Bible." This was her version of the matter, and I have no doubt it was the orthodox one; for, although one of the most benevolent old souls I ever knew, she was also one of the most ignorant and superstitious. I kept the written paper, not in my Bible, but in an old pocket-book for many years, but it has disappeared.