[25] See Martialis Epigrammata, book v. lii.
[26] Fénelon was Archbishop of Cambray.
[27] The Poetical Works of Gay, edited, with Life and Notes, by John Underhill, 2 vols.
'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;
Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore
From the prosaic to poetic shore.
I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'
'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties of this speech in a late ode called a Naval Lyric.'
[29] Written but not published. The earlier books of the Night Thoughts appeared in 1742, the Grave in 1743, but in a letter dated Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a friend states that the greater portion of it was composed several years before his ordination ten years previously. Southey states that Blair's Grave is the only poem he could call to mind composed in imitation of the Night Thoughts, but the style as well as the date contradicts this judgment.
[30] The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting. It is now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not Pope's. If he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse which we have from his pen.