""Alas, my soul! thou pleasing companion of this body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown scene? all trembling, fearful, and pensive! what now is become of thy former wit and humour? thou shalt jest and be gay no more."
— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed by J. Wright
Date
1737
Metaphor
""Alas, my soul! thou pleasing companion of this body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown scene? all trembling, fearful, and pensive! what now is become of thy former wit and humour? thou shalt jest and be gay no more."
Metaphor in Context
I was the other day in company with five or six men of some learning, where chancing to mention the famous verses which the Emperor Adrian spoke on his death-bed, they were all agreed that 'twas a piece of Gayety unworthy of that prince in those circumstances. I could not but differ from this opinion: methinks it was by no means a gay, but a very serious soliloquy to his soul at the point of its departure; in which sense I naturally took the verses at my first reading them when I was very young, and before I knew what interpretation the world generally put upon them.
"Alas, my soul! thou pleasing companion of this body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown scene? all trembling, fearful, and pensive! what now is become of thy former wit and humour? thou shalt jest and be gay no more."
(To and From Mr. Steele Nov. 7, 1712, L53, p. 103)
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abibis in loca?
Pallidula rigida nudula,
Nec (ut soles) dabis joca!
"Alas, my soul! thou pleasing companion of this body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown scene? all trembling, fearful, and pensive! what now is become of thy former wit and humour? thou shalt jest and be gay no more."
(To and From Mr. Steele Nov. 7, 1712, L53, p. 103)
Categories
Provenance
Reading in Google Books
Citation
Text from Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his Friends (London: Printed by J. Wright, 1737). <Link to Google Books>
See also earlier printings of Pope's letters. Pope famously tricked Curll into pirating his correspondence in 1735 under the title Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence for Thirty Years; from 1704 to 1734, before he issued an authorized edition of his own in 1737 as Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his Friends. See also Curll's Miscellanea of 1727 which also includes letters written by Pope to Henry Cromwell. On Pope's stratagem and the 1737 text, see Raymond Stephanson's "Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope and the Curious Case of Modern Scholarship and the Vanishing Text" Eighteenth-Century Life 31:1 (2007): 1-21. <Link to ECL>
See also earlier printings of Pope's letters. Pope famously tricked Curll into pirating his correspondence in 1735 under the title Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence for Thirty Years; from 1704 to 1734, before he issued an authorized edition of his own in 1737 as Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his Friends. See also Curll's Miscellanea of 1727 which also includes letters written by Pope to Henry Cromwell. On Pope's stratagem and the 1737 text, see Raymond Stephanson's "Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope and the Curious Case of Modern Scholarship and the Vanishing Text" Eighteenth-Century Life 31:1 (2007): 1-21. <Link to ECL>
Date of Entry
07/08/2013
