who, curious to be informed of what he saw, addresses himself to the shepherd, to know to what superb structures these ruins belonged. The shepherd entertains him with an absurd and fabulous account of ancient times, in which there were such traces of true history, that the traveller at length discovers, by the aid of the fabulous narrator, joined to certain marks in the ruins themselves, that this was the famous Blenheim, built, at the public expense, by a warlike nation, for the Deliverer of Europe, &c. "It may be worth observing farther, that Mr. Pope once had a purpose to pen a discourse on the rise and progress of English poetry, as it came from the Provençal poets, and had classed the English poets, according to their several schools and successions, as appears from the list underneath. ÆRA I. RYMER. 2nd part, pp. 65, 66, 67, 77. 1. School of Pro- ( Chaucer's Visions, Romaunt of the Rose. vence. 2. School of Chau- T. Occleve. cer. Pierce Plowman. Tales from Boccace. 3. School of Pe- Sir Thomas Wyat. trarch. 4. School of Dante. Sir Philip Sydney. G. Gascoyn, Translator of Ariosto's Com. Lord Buckhurst's Induction, Gorboduc. clvi PLAN OF AN EPIC POEM, ETC. 5. School of Spenser, and from Italian Sonnets. ÆRA II. Spenser, Col. Clout, from the school of Ari- Ph. Fletcher's Purple Island, Alabaster, S. Daniel. Sir Walter Raleigh. Milton's Juvenilia, Heath, Habington. Translators from Edm. Fairfax. Italian. 6. School of Donne. Harrington. Cowley, Davenant. Sir John Davis. Sir John Beaumont. Cleveland. Crashaw. Bishop Corbet. Lord Falkland. THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ALEXANDER POPE, ESQ. IN the name of God, Amen. I, Alexander Pope, of Twickenham, in the county of Middlesex, make this my last will and testament. I resign my soul to its Creator, in all humble hope of its future happiness, as in the disposal of a Being infinitely good. As to my body, my will is, that it be buried near the monument of my dear parents, at Twickenham, with the addition, after the words filius fecit of these only, et sibi: Qui obiit anno 17-, ætatis ; and that it be carried to the grave by six of the poorest men of the parish, to each of whom I order a suit of grey coarse cloth, as mourning. If I happen to die at any inconvenient distance, let the same be done in any other parish, and the inscription be added on the monument at Twickenham. I hereby make and appoint my particular friends, Allen, Lord Bathurst, Hugh, Earl of Marchmont, the Honourable William Murray, His Majesty's Solicitor General, and George Arbuthnot, of the Court of Exchequer, Esq., the survivors or survivor of them, executors of this my last will and testament. But all the manuscript and unprinted papers which I shall leave at my decease, I desire may |