The Wish. Written by Dr. W. Pope, Fellow of the Royal-Society

Book Description

London: Printed for Tho. Horne, 1710. [x], 32, [2]pp., 8vo. With the half-title and terminal leaf of bookseller’s advertisements. Half-title and last page a little dusty, but a pleasant, entirely untrimmed copy, unbound as issued. “The Third Edition, Being the Only Correct and Finish'd Copy” of this charming and very popular poem on growing old. In fact there were at least a half-dozen editions, broadside and pamphlet, preceding this definitive one; Thomas Horne had published it as early as 1693.Pope was an astronomer with a taste for literature. That taste is present in abundance in this edition, with its elaborate series of footnotes and parallel texts from ancient and modern writers, sometimes extending for pages after a simple stanza of the poem itself - the poem here being printed, as though canonized, in black letter. Benjamin Franklin was very fond of this “wishing song” and is said to have sung it “a thousand times when I was young.” Foxon, English Verse 1701-1750, P994.

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