Notes and Queries, Number 25, April 20, 1850

ld 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 perhap