SOME UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF POPE AND GAY; AND SOME MANUSCRIPT SOURCES OF GOLDSMITH'S LIFE OF THOMAS PARNELL

Abstract

LORD CONGLETON, a descendant of the poet Thomas Parnell's younger brother John, has kindly lent me a collection of manuscripts relating to the poet. Among the most interesting of these is a group of documents wrapped in a piece of white paper marked 'Letters of Pope & Gay to Dr Parnell, 1714 c where Sherburn used a printed source, these manuscripts provide some variants. The letters all seem to be entirely genuine copies of the originals. Apart from the fact that the strip of Pope's autograph attached to MS. 8 stands in some sort as security for the other transcripts,' the hitherto unpublished letters contain a wealth of references entirely consistent with each other and with known events in the lives of the correspondents and the literary history of the years I714-16, from which the letters all date. The letters all contribute something to our knowledge of Pope, Gay, or the Scriblerus Club. MS. 9 contains a copy of what is probably the earliest version of Pope's satiric poem To Mr. John Moore; MSS. 5 and 9 contain what seem to be two early references to the miscellany which Norman Ault christened Pope's Own Miscellany; MS. 3 contains a quotation from Gay's What D' Ye Call It, sent to Parnell a month before the first performance of the farce; MS. i has the earliest reference so far to the Scriblerian figure Esdras Barnivelt, who was to become the supposed author of Pope's Key to the Lock.