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 Ruffnead, 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 VOL. XXV. N

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 valgar 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 sa 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. "A man," says his ablest biographer, "of 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

it on unquestionable authority, that of a gentleman to whom the following particulars were more than once related by the late earl of Marchmont, and who, besides the obliging communication of them, has conferred the additional favour of permitting us to use his name, the RIGHT HON. GEORGE ROSE.

"The Essay (on the Patriot King) was undertaken at the pressing instance of lord Cornbury, very warmly supported by the earnest entreaties of lord Marchmont, with which lord Bolingbroke at length complied. When it was written, it was shewn to the two lords, and one other confidential friend, who were so much pleased with it, that they did not cease their importunities to have it published, till his lordship, after much hesitation, consented to print it; with a positive determination, however, against a publication at that time, assigning, as his reason, that the work was not finished in such a way as he wished it to be, before it went into the world.

"Conformably to that determination, some copies of the Essay were printed, which were distributed to lord Cornbury, lord Marchmont, sir William Wyndham, Mr. Lyttelton, Mr. Pope, and lord Chesterfield; one only having been reserved. Mr. Pope put his copy into the hands of Mr. Allen, of Prior Park, near Bath, stating to him the injunction of lord Bolingbroke; but that gentleman was so captivated with it as to press Mr. Pope to allow him to print a small impression at his own expense, using such caution as should effectually prevent a single copy getting into the possession of any one, till the consent of the author should be obtained.

"Under a solemn engagement to that effect, Mr. Pope very reluctantly consented: the edition was then printed, packed up, and deposited in a separate warehouse, of which Mr. Pope had the key.

"On the circumstance being made known to lord Bolingbroke, who was then a guest in his own house at Battersea with lord Marchmont, to whom he had lent it for two or three years, his lordship was in great indignation; to appease which, lord Marchmont sent Mr. Grevenkop (a German gentleman who had travelled with him, and was afterwards in the household of lord Chesterfield when lord lieutenant of Ireland,) to bring out the whole edition, of which a bonfire was instantly made on the terrace at Bat tersea."

This plain unvarnished tale, our readers will probably think, tends very much to strengthen the vindication which Warburton offered for his deceased friend, although he was ignorant of the concern Allen had in the matter; but it will be difficult to find an excuse for Bolingbroke, who, forgetting the honourable mention of him in Pope's will, a thing quite incompatible with any hostile intention towards him, could employ such a man as Mallet to blast the memory of Pope by telling a tale of "breach of faith," with every malicious aggravation, and artfully concealing what he must have known, since lord Marchmont knew it, the share Allen had in the edition of the Patriot King.

Of the editions of Pope's works, it is unnecessary to mention any other than those of Warburton, and Johnson (the poems only), Warton, and the recent one by Mr. Bowles, which contains many additional letters and documents illustrative of Pope's character and connections. 1

1

POPE (Sir THOMAS), founder of Trinity college, Oxford, was born at Dedington, in Oxfordshire, about the year 1508. His parents were William and Margaret Pope, the daughter of Edmund Yate, of Stanlake, in Oxfordshire. She was the second wife of our founder's father, and after his death in 1523, was again married to John Bustarde, of Adderbury, in the same county, whom she survived, and died in 1557. The circumstances of the family, if not opulent, were "decent and creditable."

Thomas was educated at the school of Banbury, kept by Thomas Stanbridge, of Magdalen college, an eminent tutor, and was thence removed to Eton college, from which he is supposed to have gone to Gray's Inn, where he studied the law. Of his progress at the bar we have no account; but his talents must have discovered themselves at an early period, and have recommended him to the notice of his sovereign, as in October 1533, when he was only. twenty-seven years old, he was constituted by letters-patent of Henry VIII. clerk of the briefs of the star-chamber. at Westminster, and the same month received a reversionary grant of the office of clerk of the crown in Chancery. Of this last he soon after became possessed, with an annual fee of twenty pounds from the hanaper, and also a robe with. fur at the feast of Christmas and Pentecost, from the king's

1 Johnson, Warton, and Bowles's Lives.-D'Israeli has an excellent chapter on Pope's Quarrels in his "Quarrels of Authors."-Biog. Brit. &c. &c. &c.

t