2°'! S. No 99., Nov. 21. 'i57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



407 



1688, which gave to the worhl " Pope and the 

 Pretender." John Camden Hotten. 



Piccadilly. 



[Varhur-to7is Vindication of the Essay on Man. 

 — In Dr. Johnson's Life of Pope it is stated that 

 Warburton " From month to month continued a 

 Vindication of the Essay on Man in the literary 

 journ.'il of that time called The Republic of Letters,^'' 

 On examining the eighteen volumes of that 

 work, I am able to state that no vindication of 

 Pope or his system of Optimism is to be found in 

 it, but on the contrary a very able attack upon 

 the whole doctrine in vol. xiv. p. 254., where the 

 sentiments of the poem are said to be derived 

 from Shaftesbury, and its blemishes hinted at, as 

 from the pride and peevishness of the poet. Parts 

 of the article read amazingly like The Dialogues 

 concerning Natural Religion. On turning, how- 

 ever, to the Works of the Learned, vol. iv. p. 425., 

 vol. V. pp. 56. 89. 159. 330., the vindication in 

 question may be found. C. M. S. 



Dr. Stephen Hales (2"'' S. iv. 343.)— I can offer 

 some confirmation of L. L.'s conjecture as to the 

 relationship of William and Robert Hales to Dr. 

 Stephen Hales. Stephen Hales was a native of 

 this parish, and, as appears by the register, was 

 baptized on Sept. 20, 1677. The book also records 

 the baptism of ten other children of the same pa- 

 rents, and among them of a Robert, on Jan. 4, 

 1664, and of a William, on March 9, 1675.. On 

 referring to the only notices of Dr. Hales which 

 I have at hand, I find that while Gorton agrees 

 with the register as to the date of his birth, the 

 Eneyclopaedia Britannica places it in 1667, — a 

 date which (not to speak of other authority) is 

 evidently inconsistent with the next statement of 

 the writer in the Encyclopcedia, that he became a 

 Fellow of Benet College in 1702. 



J, C. Robertson. 



Bekesbourne, near Canterbury. 



Pope "of Gentle Blood.'" — Mr. Hunter has pub- 

 lished the 5th No. of his Critical and Historical 

 Tracts. The subject is one calculated just now 

 to attract considerable attention. It is Pope ; 

 his Descent and Family Connections. Mr. Hun- 

 ter's experience in genealogical researches is well 

 known, and the inquiry which he has instituted 

 in the work before us, namely, how far Pope was 

 justified when he speaks of his birth thus — 



" Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause, 

 While yet in Britain honour had applause,) 

 Each parent sprung," 



is one for which he is peculiarly fitted. The 

 reader cui'ious in Pope matters will of course 

 examine the details for himself. We will for the 



general reader quote Mr. Hunter's summing up 

 of the evidence which he has collected : 



" On the whole, then, it will appear that Pope descended 

 of a clerical family, the members of it being much con- 

 nected with the University of Oxford ; but that at present 

 we can trace him only to a person of bis own name, who 

 was rector of Thruxton and prebendary (if the incumbents 

 are so called) of Middleton and Ichen-Abbots, in the dio- 

 cese of Winchester : that these, being rather conspicuous 

 pieces of preferment, place him in the higher rank of the 

 clergy of his time, and seem to be but the beginning of 

 the offices he would have held in the Church, had he not 

 died in rather early life, and had not the changes at that 

 time imminent, stopped him in his course : — that, though 

 we cannot ascend beyond him on evidence that would 

 bear a close examination, there is strong presumptive evi- 

 dence that he was either identical or nearly connected 

 with an Alexander Pope of Oxford, the friend of Dr. Bar- 

 croft, and the son-in-law of the famous John Dodd of 

 Fawsley, and the father of Dr. Walter Pope, the Gresham 

 Professor, the Poet, and the miscellaneous ^¥riter, who was 

 half-brother of Dr. John Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester, 

 who married a sister of the Protector Cromwell : — that 

 there is no reason to believe, on account of disparity of 

 rank, that he was not of the same stock as the Popes, 

 Earls of Downe, but, on the contrary, that nothing can 

 be more probable than that the family tradition was cor- 

 rect, which delivered thus much and no more : — that his 

 Oxfordshire ancestors did spring, as the Earl of Downc 

 did, from people of small account living at Deddington, 

 near Banbury. 



" And that, on his mother's side, he sprang from per- 

 sons Avlio had possessed land of their own at Towthorpe, 

 in the North Riding of Yorkshire, from perhaps an early 

 period, but who, from the time of Elizabeth, were lords 

 of the manor : — that one of them who died in the reign 

 of James I. was an opulent pei'son, and intimate witli 

 some of the principal families in the county: — that ho 

 left the greater part of his possessions to his nephew, 

 William Turner, the Poet's grandfather : — that in his 

 hands the family estate did not receive any material ad- 

 ditions, and perhaps rather decayed : — that he had the 

 charge of not fewer than seventeen children, nearly all of 

 whom grew to man and woman's estate : — that of the 

 sons, two died during the Civil Wars, in which one of 

 them was slain, and the other went abroad and served in 

 the Spanish army, and at his death gave property, not 

 very inconsiderable remains of the family estate, to Edith 

 Pope, his favourite sister. 



" And that, this being the case, there is nothing of ex- 

 aggeration or of boasting, when the Poet has to meet the 

 charge of being of obscure birth, in asserting that he 

 sprang ' of gentle blood.' " 



THE DIFFICULTIES OP CHAUCER. 



" The Shippes Ilopposteries." 



The word is variously spelt in the different 

 editions : hopposteries, hopposteris, hoppostoiis, Sfc. 

 The passage runs thus : — 



" The tirant, with the prey by force yraft; 

 The toun destroied, ther was nothing laft. 

 Yet saw I brent the shippes hopposteres. 

 The hunte ystrangled with the wilde beres." 



Cant. Tales, 2017—2020. 



Hopposteres, making a double rhyme with Z»e?'^.?, 

 seems decidedly preferable to hoppostoris — buris 



