’I shall be very ready and glad to contribute to any design that tends to the advantage of mankind, which, I am sure, all yours do.  I wish I had but as much capacity as leisure, for I am perfectly idle (a sign I have not much capacity).  If you will entertain the best opinion of me, be pleased to think me your friend.  Assure Mr. Addison of my most faithful service; of every one’s esteem he must be assured already.’

About a fortnight later, returning to the subject of Adrian’s verses, Pope wrote to Steele in reply to subsequent private discussion of the subject (Nov. 29): 

’I am sorry you published that notion about Adrian’s verses as mine; had I imagined you would use my name, I should have expressed my sentiments with more modesty and diffidence.  I only wrote to have your opinion, and not to publish my own, which I distrusted.’

Then after defending his view of the poem, and commenting upon the Latin diminutives, he adds,

’perhaps I should be much better pleased if I were told you called me “your little friend,” than if you complimented me with the title of “a great genius,” or “an eminent hand,” as Jacob [Tonson] does all his authors.’

Steele’s genial reply produced from Pope, as final result of the above letter to the Spectator, one of the most popular of his short pieces.  Steele wrote (Dec. 4): 

’This is to desire of you that you would please to make an ode as of a cheerful dying spirit; that is to say, the Emperor Adrian’s “animula vagula,” put into two or three stanzas for music.  If you will comply with this, and send me word so, you will very particularly oblige RICHARD STEELE.’

This was written two days before the appearance of the last number of his Spectator.  Pope answered,

  ’I do not send you word I will do, but have already done the thing you
  desire of me,’

and sent his poem of three stanzas, called THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.

  ‘Vital spark of heavenly flame,’ &c.

These two letters were published by Warburton, but are not given by Pope in the edition of his correspondence, published in 1737, and the poem has no place in the collected works of 1717.  It has been said that if the piece had been written in 1712 Steele would have inserted it in the Spectator.  But it was not received until the last number of the Spectator had been published.  Three months then elapsed before the appearance of the Guardian, to which Pope contributed eight papers.  Pope, on his part, would be naturally unwilling to connect with the poem the few words he had sent with it to Steele, saying,