[This line, which is so often quoted, with the variation--
"Praise undeserved is _Satire_ in disguise,"
is to be found in Pope's _First Epistle of the Second Book of
Horace_; where, however, we find that neither _Censure_ nor
_Satire_ is the correct reading. It is moreover, both in
Warton's edition and in the _Aldine Poets_, edited by the Rev.
A. Dyce, marked as a quotation, as will be seen in the following
extract; so that Pope, it appears, is not the author of it.
Perhaps some of our correspondents can trace the source from
which he derived it:--
"Besides, a fate attends on all I write,
That when i aim at praise they say I bite.
A vile encomium doubly ridicules;
There's nothing blackens like the ink of fools.
If true, a woeful likeness; and, if lies,
'Praise undeserved is _Scandal_ in disguise.'"]
_Passage in Cowper's "Task."_--In all early editions of Cowper's _Task_
the opening lines of the 4th book are punctuated as follows:--
"Hark! 'tis the twanging horn! O'er yonder bridge,
(That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,)
He comes, the herald of a noisy world," &c.
In modern editions, I believe universally, we find the following
corruption of the passage:--
"Hark! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge,
That with," &c.
closing with a colon or period at "bright," and {223} beginning a new
sentence with "He comes;" and thus making the poet use the vulgar
colloquialism "'tis the horn over the bridge," instead of the remark,
that the postman is coming over it.