""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."
Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his Friends
Text from <u>Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his Friends</u> (London: Printed by J. Wright, 1737). &lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Letters_of_Mr_Alexander_Pope.html?id=Bl0JAAAAQAAJ">Link to Google Books</a>&gt;<br>
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See also earlier printings of Pope's letters. Pope famously tricked Curll into pirating his correspondence in 1735 under the title <u>Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence for Thirty Years; from 1704 to 1734</u>, before he issued an authorized edition of his own in 1737 as <u>Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his Friends</u>. See also Curll's <u>Miscellanea</u> 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" <u>Eighteenth-Century Life</u> 31:1 (2007): 1-21. &lt;<a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eighteenth-century_life/v031/31.1stephanson.html">Link to ECL</a>&gt;