hood was ever yet detected; and when, some years afterwards, I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard, he declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than any body else how Curll obtained the copies, because another parcel was at the same time sent to himself, for which no price had ever been demanded, as he made known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a nameless agent. "Such care had been taken to make them public, that they were sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a prey; and to Lintot, who might be expected to give Pope information of the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing; and Curll did what was expected. That to make them public was the only purpose, may be reasonably supposed, because the numbers offered to sale by the private messenger, shewed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression. "It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, and not knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion: that, when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself." Such was the artifice, which, however, was soon detected, for no man could for a moment doubt that the letters were conveyed to Curll by Pope himself, that he might have a pretence for an edition, which, being avowed by himself, would obtain the preference over every other. Could a doubt remain, it must be removed by the notes and information respecting these letters in Mr. Bowles's edition of his works. As to the letters themselves, Warton says "they are all over-crowded with professions of integrity and disinterestedness, with trite reflections on contentment and retirement; a disdain of greatness and courts; a contempt of fame; and an affected strain of common-place morality." Affectation indeed pervades the greater part of the correspondence, and those objects are mentioned with the greatest disdain, which were the objects of their highest ambition. Returning to his more original publications, Pope now issued those two dialogues which were named, from the year in which they appeared, "Seventeen hundred and thirty eight," and are among the bitterest of satires. Every species of sarcasın and mode of style are here alternately employed; ridicule, reasoning, irony, mirth, seriousness, lamentation, laughter, familiar imagery, and high poetical painting. Although many persons in power were highly provoked, he does not appear to have been very directly menaced with a prosecution; but Paul Whitehead, who about this time wrote his "Manners," and his publisher Dodsley, were called to an account, which was supposed to have been intended rather to intimidate Pope, than to punish Whitehead, and Pope appears to have taken the hint; for he discontinued a Third Dialogue, which he had begun, and never afterwards attempted to join the patriot with the poet. He had been led into this by his connection with the prince of Wales and the opposition, but he could not have long been of service to them. Had they come into office, he must have been either silent, or offensive, for he was both a jacobite and a papist. Dr. Johnson says very justly that he was entangled in the opposition now, and had forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his earlier years, uninjured and unoffending, through much more violent conflicts of faction. Ceasing therefore from politics, for which he was so unfit, he amused himself, in 1740, in republishing " Selecta Carmina Italorum," taken, without acknowledgement, from the collection called "Anthologia," 1684, 12mo, attributed to Atterbury, falsely, as Warton asserts, but justly according to every other opinion. The work however is more imperfect than it would have been had he consulted other collections of the kind. His last performance shewed either that his own judgment was impaired, or that he yielded too easily to that of Warburton, who now advised him to write the fourth book of the "Dunciad;" and in 1743 he betrayed a yet greater want of judgment by printing a new edition of the Dunciad, in which he placed Cibber in the room of Theobald, forgetting how opposite their characters were. He had before this introduced Cibber with contemptuous mention in his satires, and Cibber resented both insults in two pamphlets which gave Pope more uneasiness than he was willing to allow. The time was now approaching, however, in which all his contests were to end. About the beginning of 1744 his health and strength began visibly to decline. Besides his constant head-achs, and severe rheumatic pains, he had been afflicted, for five years, with an asthma, which was suspected to be occasioned by a dropsy of the breast. In the month of May he became dangerously ill, and on the sixth was all day delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing things as through a curtain, and in false colours, and one day asked what arm it was that came out from the wall. He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think. Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay: and being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his understanding, answered, "It has so:" and added, "I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more general friendship for mankind." At another time he said, "I have known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship than"-his grief then suppressed his voice. Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father and mother, and whether a priest should not be called; he answered, "I do not think it is essential, but it will be very right: and I thank you for putting me in mind of it." In the morning, after the priest had done his office, he said, "There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue." He died in the evening of May 30, 1744, so placidly, that the attendants did not discern the exact time of his expiration. He was buried at Twickenham, near his father and mother, where a monument was afterwards erected to him by Warburton. Some idea of Pope's character may be derived from the preceding particulars, and more may be learned from his biographers Ruffhead, Johnson, Warton, and Bowles. Many circumstances, however, still want explanation, although upon the whole we cannot be said to be ignorant of the temper and character of a man whose publications and quarrels form a great part of the literary history of the first half of the eighteenth century, and of which some notice has been taken by every journalist, every critic, and every biographer, from his own to the present times. A large volume might be filled with even a moderate account of Pope's contests, and less than such a volume perhaps would not be satisfactory. We have already copied an expression of Dr. Warton's, that Pope was invariably and solely a poet from the beginning of his life to the end; and we may add from the same elegant critic, that his whole life, and every hour of it, in sickness and in health, was devoted with unremitting diligence, to cultivate that one art in which he had determined to excel, and in which he did excel. It is not our intention, however, to expatiate on his merits as a poet. What has been advanced by Dr. Johnson and Dr. Warton must supersede all other efforts; but we may be permitted to regret that he added so little to the dignity of the literary character, and that his passions were vulgar and vulgarly expressed. Never had the genus irritabile a more faithful representative. With abundant professions of philosophy, benevolence, and friendship, he thought no display of petty revenge, and no discharge of acrimony, beneath him; and was continually endeavouring to promote his interest by quackish stratagems and idle artifices, often so poorly disguised as to expose him to immediate contempt; and all this at a time when he was confessedly at the head of the poetical list, and when his wealth was so great that he was mean enough to upbraid his adversaries for their want of it. "It would be hard," says Johnson, "to find a man so well entitled to notice by his wit, that ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In his letters and in his poems, his gardens and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or some hints of his opulence, are always to be found. The great topic of his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he reproaches his antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint, and their want of a dinner." In constitution he was constantly a valetudinarian. His person was deformed, and he was so feeble as not to be able to dress or undress himself without assistance. Such a state of body generally produces a certain degree of irritability and peevishness, which must naturally be greatly exasperated by a life of literary warfare. This was surely not the proper life for a man who, in his private habits was capricious and offensive, and who expected that every thing should give way to his humour. He was thus provoking contradictions, and risking mortifications, from which he might have been free, if he could have lived on his own ample treasures of genius and fame. But if Pope created enemies, he also conciliated friends, and had a pleasure in enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and to gain whose favour he practised no meanness or servility. It is indeed allowed, that he never flattered those whom he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem. And as, from his infirmities and his capricious habits, he must have been a very disagreeable guest, his frequent reception in the houses and at the tables of men of high rank is a proof that there was much in his character to admire or esteem, and a presumption that some of the failings which have been reported of him may have been exaggerated by his enemies. " of "A man," says hisablest biographer, such exalted superiority, and so little moderation, would naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated: and those who could not deny that he was excellent, would rejoice to find that he was not perfect." Unfortunately some of those imperfections were too obvious for concealment. Pope was, among other instances, with all his defects of person, a man of gallantry, and besides his presumptuous and ridiculous love for lady Mary Wortley Montague, carried on an intercourse with the Misses Blount, which certainly was not of the Platonic kind. From the account given by Mr. Bowles, in his recent Life of Pope, and the new Letters published in Mr. Bowles's edition of his works, no great obscurity now rests on the nature of that connection. This transient notice of the Misses Blount leads to a remark that he was not always fortunate in his friendships. Martha Blount, to whom he was most attached, deserted him in his last illness; and Bolingbroke, whom we have seen weeping over the dying bard, and pouring out the effusions of the warmest affection for the friend he was about to lose, soon employed the hireling Mallet to blacken Pope's character in the very article for which he thought him most estimable, the purity and honour of his friendships. We have already noticed this affair in our account of Mallet, (vol. XXI. p. 195,) and shall now only briefly say that, on Pope's death, it was disclosed to Lord Bolingbroke by Mallet, who had his information from a printer, that Pope had printed an edition of the Essay on a "Patriot King." But, as there has been much misconception and misrepresentation respecting this affair, we are happy to be able, in this place, to state the circumstances attending |