"I know," Pope wrote to Caryll, August 22, 1717, "you will take part in rejoicing for the victory of Prince Eugene over the Turks, in the zeal you bear to the Christian interest, though your cousin of Oxford, with whom I dined yesterday, says there is no other difference in the Christians beating the Turks or the Turks beating the Christians, than whether the Emperor shall first declare war against Spain, or Spain declare it against the Emperor." In the published version the passage forms part of a letter to Edward Blount dated September 8, 1717, and either we must admit that it was never written to him, or believe that Caryll and Blount had each an Oxford cousin, that the poet dined with the Oxford cousin of Caryll on August 21, and with the Oxford cousin of Blount on September 7, that both these cousins made, at their respective dinners, the same epigrammatic observation in the very same words, and that the extraordinary coincidence struck Pope so little that he did not even remark upon it. Another passage of a letter to Caryll, dated September 20, [1713] reappears in a letter to Blount dated February 10, 1716. "I am just returned from the country, whither Mr. Rowe did me the favour to accompany me, and to pass a week at Binfield. I need not tell you how much a man of his turn could not but entertain me; but I must acquaint you there is a vivacity and gaiety of disposition almost peculiar to that gentleman, which renders it impossible to part from him without that uneasiness and chagrin which generally succeeds all great pleasures. I have just been taking a solitary walk by moonshine in St. James's Park, full of reflections of the transitory nature of all human delights, and giving my thoughts a loose into the contemplation of those sensations of satisfaction which probably we may taste in the more exalted company of separate spirits, when we range the starry walks above." Thus Pope, who on his return to town in September, 1713, after a week's companionship with Rowe, took a solitary walk by moonlight and meditated on the transitory nature of human delights, and the happy intercourse of spirits, was led by the power of association, after another week spent at Binfield with Rowe in February, 1716, to renew the solitary walk by moonlight the instant he returned, and indulge in the old contemplation on the transitory nature of human delights, and the happy intercourse of separate spirits. What renders more singular the second moonlight walk is that the date assigned to it was the memorable season when the Thames was frozen over, and when the quantity of snow was as unusual as the intensity of the cold. The thaw commenced the day before the fragile little bard sallied out for his stroll, and he must indeed have been lost in contemplation "of the starry walks above" not to have been checked in his moonlight rambles by the deplorable condition of the walks below. None of the phenomena which were