EPISTLE XV.

Page 160. This Epistle being ethical, critical, and descriptive, the Editor was in some doubt how to dispose of it. If any of its Readers should consider it misplaced here, others perhaps, may think differently. Though not without merit of its own, its principal value appears to arise from the circumstance, of having suggested to Goldsmith the idea of his Traveller.

Mr. Spence was educated at Winchester School, and was afterward a Fellow of New College. Having taken his Master of Arts degree in 1727, and acquired reputation by his Essay on the Odyssey of Pope, he was elected Poetry Professor, and held that office for the space of ten years. With the Earl of Lincoln (now Duke of Newcastle) he travelled into Italy, and there collected materials for his Polymetis. Succeeding in 1742, to the rectory of Great Horwood, a college living in Buckinghamshire, he vacated his fellowship; but was appointed professor of modern History at Oxford in the same year, and in 1754 a prebendary of Durham. He was found dead on the 20th of August, 1768, with his face in water, which as it was too shallow to cover his head, his death was ascribed to a fit. He appears to have been an elegant scholar and an amiable man.

THE END.

FUGITIVE POETRY

Mild Zephyrus the Graces leads,
To revel o'er the fragrant meads,

The mountains shout, the forefts ring
While Flora decks the purple Spring.

Vol IV. Page 4

Burney del.

London Printed for IBell British Library Strand July 241789.

Neaglesc

JOHN BELL, British Library, STRAND,

Bookseller to His Royal Highness the PRINCE of WALES.

M DCC LXXXIX.