ABSTRACT
The ‘Epigram Upon Two or Three’ was first published on 3 December 1713. There is no evidence of the period of composition, beyond the fact that it must have been circulating amongst Pope’s acquaintance before publication, because it was alluded to by ‘Alexis’ (Henry Moore) in flirtatious correspondence with Teresa Blount on 30 September 1713 (see Mack 1985: 865n and Rumbold 1989: 61). The poem first appeared anonymously in the second edition of Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, which is dated ‘1714’ on the title page but was advertised as ‘Published this day’ in The Englishman on 3 December 1713. The poem occupies the verso of a duplicate leaf with the page numbers 321 and 322 (the first page of the text of Windsor-Forest, also added to this edition, is also numbered 321); on the recto is printed a further poem ‘Upon a Girl of Seven Years Old’. Neither carries an indication of authorship. In several surviving copies the leaf has been removed, leaving a stub (Ault 1949: 34; TE, VI.104–7); the reasons for this are not clear. In April 1714 the ‘Epigram’ was included and ascribed to Pope by John Oldmixon in his Poems and Translations. By Several Hands . Presumably in response to a query about the appearance of the poem in this collection, Pope wrote to Caryll on 19 November 1714, transcribing it and explaining its inclusion in the following terms: ‘The thing they have been pleased to call a Receipt to make a Cuckold, is only six lines which were stolen from me, as follows’. Caryll’s transcript of Pope’s letter is preserved in the British Library (Add. MS 28618, fol. 41r; Corr., I. 267).
