old housekeeper, and two or three servants. I have room 

 for all, a heart for all, and (think what you will) a fortune 

 for all." In another letter to Swift, he says, " I wish you 

 had any motive to see this kingdom. I could keep you; for 

 I am rich, that is, I have more than I want. I can afford 

 room for yourself and two servants. I have, indeed, room 

 enough, nothing but myself at home: the kind and hearty 

 housewife is dead! the agreeable and instructive neighbour 

 is gone! yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend 

 and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have 

 lost. I have more fruit trees and kitchen garden than you 

 have any thought of; nay, I have good melons and pine- 

 apples of my own growth." In a letter to Mr. Allen, he 

 says, " Let me know your day for coming, and I will have 

 every room in my house as warm for you as the owner 

 always would be." Mr. Mathias, in his Pursuits of Litera- 

 ture, (besides expatiating with fond delight, in numerous 

 pages, on the genius of Pope,) thus speaks of him: — "Fami- 

 liar with the great, intimate with the polite, graced by the 

 attentions of the fair, admired by the learned, a favourite 

 with the nation, independent in an acquired opulence, the 

 honourable product of his genius, and of his industry; the 

 companion of persons distinguished for their virtue, birth, 

 high fashion, rank, or wit, and resident in the centre of all 

 public information and intelligence; every avenue to know- 

 ledge, and every mode of observation were open to his 

 curious, prying, piercing, and unwearied intellect. 15 * 



* Sir Joshua Reynolds used to tell the following anecdote relative to Pope . 

 — " When Reynolds was a young man, he was present at an auction of very 

 scarce pictures, which attracted a great crowd of connoisseurs and others; 

 when, in the moment of a very interesting piece being put up, Mr. Pope 

 entered the room. All was in an instant, from a scene of confusion and 

 bustle, a dead calm. The auctioneer, as if by instinct, suspended his ham- 

 mer. The audience, to an individual, as if by the same impulse, rose up to 

 receive the poet ; and did not resume their seats till he had reached the 

 upper end of the room." A similar 



