[Footnote 1:  [single Product]]

[Footnote 2:  At the time when this paper was written Pope was in his twenty-fourth year.  He wrote to express his gratitude to Addison and also to Steele.  In his letter to Addison he said,

Though it be the highest satisfaction to find myself commended by a Writer whom all the world commends, yet I am not more obliged to you for that than for your candour and frankness in acquainting me with the error I have been guilty of in speaking too freely of my brother moderns.

The only moderns of whom he spoke slightingly were men of whom after-time has ratified his opinion:  John Dennis, Sir Richard Blackmore, and Luke Milbourne.  When, not long afterwards, Dennis attacked with his criticism Addison’s Cato, to which Pope had contributed the Prologue, Pope made this the occasion of a bitter satire on Dennis, called The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris (a well-known quack who professed the cure of lunatics) upon the Frenzy J. D.  Addison then, through Steele, wrote to Popes publisher of this manner of treating Mr. Dennis, that he could not be privy to it, and was sorry to hear of it.  In 1715, when Pope issued to subscribers the first volume of Homer, Tickell’s translation of the first book of the Iliad appeared in the same week, and had particular praise at Buttons from Addison, Tickell’s friend and patron.  Pope was now indignant, and expressed his irritation in the famous satire first printed in 1723, and, finally, with the name of Addison transformed to Atticus, embodied in the Epistle to Arbuthnot published in 1735.  Here, while seeing in Addison a man

  Blest with each talent and each art to please,
  And born to live, converse, and write with ease,

he said that should he, jealous of his own supremacy, damn with faint praise, as one

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint the fault and hesitate dislike, Who when two wits on rival themes contest, Approves of both, but likes the worse the best:  Like Cato, give his little Senate laws, And sits attentive to his own applause; While wits and templars every sentence raise:  And wonder with a foolish face of praise:  Who would not laugh if such a man there be?  Who would not weep if Addison were he?

But in this Spectator paper young Popes Essay on Criticism certainly was not damned with faint praise by the man most able to give it a firm standing in the world.]

[Footnote 3:  Odyssey Bk.  XI.  In Ticknell’s edition of Addison’s works the latter part of this sentence is omitted; the same observation having been made by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.]