and Hampton Court, and the greater high road of the river, it had, like all English suburban places now, its high enclosing walls that gave privacy; and the river shores had their skirting of rhododendrons and willows and great beds of laurestina, so that the weak, misshapen poet might take his walks unobserved. He had his vanities, but he did not love to be pointed at. He carried a mind of extreme sensitiveness under that dwarfed figure; and is mad-maybe, sometimes, with destiny, that has crippled him so; and bites that thin lip of his till the blood starts. But he does not waste force or pride on repinings; he feels an altitude in that supple mind of his which lifts him above the bad lines of portraits or figures. He knows that the ready hand and brain, and the faculty of verse which comes tripping to his tongue, and the wit which flashes through and through his utterance, will make for him-has made for him—a path through whatever beleaguerments of sense, straight up and on to the gates of the Temple of Fame

We have had many vain men to encounter in these talks of ours-men assured of their own judgment and taste; but not one, I think, as yet, so thoroughly and highly conscious that his cleverness and scholarship and deftness and

wit were as sure of their reward as the sun was sure to shine.

I can fancy him pausing after having wrought some splendid score of Homeric lines, which blaze and palpitate with new Greek fire: I can fancy him humming them over to himself-growing heated with the flames that flash and play in them-his slight, frail figure trembling with the rhythmic outburst, and he smiling serenely at a mastery which his will and wit have brought to such supreme pitch of excellence that no handling of English will go beyond it.

HIS LAST DAYS

I HAVE spoken of one face-I mean Lady Mary Montagu's-which used sometimes to light up the grotto of Mr. Pope, and have told you how that badly managed friendship went out in a great muddle of sootiness and rage; nor were the mud and the filth, which he used in that direction with such cruel vigor, weapons which he was unused to handling: poor John Dennis, a poet and critic of that day, had been put in a rage over and over. Lord Hervey had been scarified. Blackmore and Phillips and Bentley had caught his stiletto thrusts; even Daniel Defoe had been subject of his

sneers; and so had the bland, courteous Addison. This sensitive, weak-limbed man saw offence where other men saw none; and straightway drew out that flashing sword of his and made the blood spurt. Of course there were counter-thrusts, and heavy ones, that caused that poor decrepid figure of his to writhe again -all the more because he pretended a stoicism that felt no such attack. To say that he often made his thrusts without reason, and that much of his satire was dastardly, is saying what all the world knows, and what every admirer of his fine powers must lament. But he had his steady friendships, too, and his tendernesses. Nothing could exceed the kindly consideration and affectionate watchfulness which belonged to his protection and shelter of his old mother, lingering in that poet's faery home of Twickenham till over ninety. A strange, close friendship knit him to Dean Swift, who had seemed incapable of rallying this sensitive man's-or, indeed, any man's-affections. Pope, and Bolingbroke the brilliant and the courted—were long bound together in very close and friendly communion; the tears of this latter were among the honestest which fell when the poet died. Bishop Warburton, too, was most kindly treated by Pope in all his later years, and to

this gentleman most of his books were left. There can be no doubt, also, that the poet felt the tenderest regard for that neighbor of his, Miss Patty Blount, who had grown old beside him, and who used at times to bring her quiet face into the parlors of Twickenham. Pope in his last days would, I think, have seen her oftener-did covertly wish for a sight of that kindly smile, which he had known so long and perhaps had valued more than he had dared to confess. But in those final days she had gone her ways; maybe was grown tired of waiting upon the peevish humors of the poet; certainly was not seen by him more often than a fair neighborly regard would dictate. Yet he left her all his rights there at Twickenham, and much money beside.

They say that at the last he complained of seeing things dimly-seeing things, too, which others did not see (as the bystanders told him). "Then, 't was a vision," he said. Two days thereafter he entered very quietly upon the visions all men see after death; leaving that poor, scathed, misshapen body--I should think gladly-leaving the pleasant home shaded by the willows he had planted; and leaving a few wonderful poems which I am sure will live in literature as long as books are printed.

Τ'

CHAPTER II

HE name of Dean Berkeley-an acute and kindly philosopher-engaged our

attention in the last chapter. So did that ripe scholar and master of Trinity, Richard Bentley;1 then came that more saintly Doctor-Isaac Watts, whose Doxologies will long waken the echoes in country churches; we had a glimpse of the gloomy and lurid draperies, with which the muse of Dr. Edward Young sailed over earth and sky; sadly draggled, too, we sometimes found that muse with the stains of earth. We spoke of a Lady-Wortley Montagu-conspicuous for her beauty, for her acquirements, for her vivacity of mind, for her boldness, for her contempt of the convenances of society, and at last, I think, a contempt for the whole male portion of the human race.

Then came that keen, discerning, accom

1Whoso would take measure of his scholarly thoroughness, his reach, his pertinacity, and his capacity for striking sharp blows, should struggle through his Dissertation on Phalaris.