William Popple’s Horatian Epistles: A Selection

Here are published for the first time selections from William Popple’s Horatian Epistles, part of the complete imitations of Horace he carried out in the 1750s, but which, with the exception of only two poems, have not until very recently been printed. Popple writes under the strong influence of his admired Alexander Pope, and the majority of Pope’s Horatian imitations had been epistles. Popple’s plan committed him to completeness, so as well as the rest he imitated the five epistles imitated by Pope, making comparisons inevitable. Of the epistles in this selection, both writers imitated 1.1 and 1.7. The others included here are 1.16, 1.17, 1.19, 1.20, and 2.2.