POPE. 



Top*, soiialdiM nullifications. The poet, therefore, carried on an 

 Alexander. j n ti, na ti- currrsponclence with her during ht>r residence 

 '""Y"*"' abroad; but on her return to England, various circum- 

 stances, both of a personal and political nature, of which 

 we have given a detailed account in her life,* excited 

 between them the bitterest enmity. 



In 1725, our author was associated with Swift and 

 Arbuthnot, in the publication of a volume of miscel- 

 lanies, chiefly of a humorous kind. In this work he 

 inserted a treatise on the Bathos, or art of sinking, in 

 which he illustrated his ironical precepts by exam- 

 ples, and gave a classification of bad poets. As various 

 living authors were distinctly ridiculed in this work, 

 be created by it a herd of enemies, who attacked him 

 by a species of abuse, which, though pushed beyond 

 Its salutary limits, could not be considered as altogether 

 unmerited. 



The war in which he was thus plunged by the infe- 

 rior wits of the day, seems to have induced him to 

 compose his Dunciad, which appeared in 1728, with 

 notes by Swift, under the name of Scriblerus ; the ob- 

 ject of which was to overwhelm all his antagonists with 

 ridicule. Many of the individuals thus brought into 

 notice would have sunk into the oblivion which time 

 soon provides for slender and presuming intellects, 

 but the enmity of their great antagonist has raised 

 them to a species of immortality, to which they were 

 scarcely entitled. Although this work is often stained 

 with coarse invective and offensive raillery, yet it 

 seems to have been composed and polished with n de- 

 gree of care that is not suited to a piece of personal 

 and temporary satire. Even Cibber, who is the hero 

 of the work, has declared that nothing of its kind was 

 ever more perfect. 



Bishop Atterbury is said to have encouraged our au- 

 thor in the exercise of this dangerous habit ; and it 

 seems to have been so congenial to his disposition, that 

 he was unable to restrain himself from introducing 

 it, even when he could not plead the apology of a pro- 

 vocation. 



In an Epistle on Taste, printed in 1731, he is sup- 

 posed to have ridiculed, under the name of Timon, the 

 Duke of Chandos, to whom he had been indebted for 

 many acts of kindness ; and though he exerted himself 

 in an attempt to repel this accusation, yet the public 

 held him guilty, and did not abate the indignation 

 with which they had visited him previous to his de- 

 fence. 



Some time before the appearance of his Dunciad, 

 our author had nearly lost his life when returning home 

 in the chariot of a friend. In approaching a bridge 

 the carriage was overturned and thrown into the river. 

 Being unable to break the glasses, which were up, he 

 would infallibly have been drowned, had not the pos- 

 tillion broke them, and dragged the poet in safety to 

 the bank. He was, however, so severely cut in the 

 hand, that he never recovered the use of two of his 

 fingers. 



Having displayed in the Dunciad the highest species 

 of talent, Lord Bolingbroke urged him to direct his 

 attention to moral subjects, for which his peculiar 

 powers seemed to be so admirably adapted. Lord 

 Bolingbroke is said to have furnished him with the 

 materials; and in 1729, he was fairly engaged in his 

 Essay on Man. Bolingbroke, in a letter to Swift, tells 



him, that Pop: 'a only complaint against the subject if, 

 that lie finds it too easy in the execution ; and Pope, 

 in writing to Swift, remarks, that the work of which 

 Lord Bolingbroke has spoken with so much partiality 

 is a system of ethics in the Iloratian way. This work, 

 which may be placed at the head of ethical poem*, ex- 

 hibits a most singular faculty for reasoning under the 

 shackles of verse, and is distinguished by the energetic 

 brevity of its style, by the condensation of its senti- 

 ments and ideas, and by the exuberant beauty of its 

 poetry. 



The success which attended his productions, seems 

 to have induced him to publish his " Imitations of Ho- 

 race," his " Moral Epistles and Essays," and other 

 works of a moral and satirical cast. 



So early as the year 1727, some juvenile letters from 

 Pope to a Mr. Cromwell, " a pedant and a beau," who 

 had been one of his early friends, were surreptitiously 

 published ; and some years afterwards, Curl the book- 

 seller, published another collection of letters, put se- 

 cretly into his hands, that had passed between Pope 

 and several of his friends. Though Pope virtually 

 denied all connexion with this work, and carried his 

 anger to such an apparent height as to have Curl sum- 

 moned before the House of Lords for a breach of pri- 

 vilege, in publishing some letters from noblemen in 

 the collection ; yet posterity seems to have fixed upon 

 him the odium of contriving the whole plan in order to 

 obtain some plausible reason for publishing a new edi- 

 tion. This edition accordingly appeared in 1737, in 

 quarto, by subscription ; and the work has been al- 

 ways deemed a great acquisition to our epistolary li- 

 terature. 



Pope had now risen to wealth, and to all the conse- 

 quence which a combination of wealth and talent 

 never fails to secure. Many of his most intimate friends 

 composed the court of the Prince of Wales, who was 

 then in avowed opposition to the measures of his fa- 

 ther's ministers. The prince honoured him by dining- 

 at his house ; and the poet was disposed in return to 

 support the political measures of his illustrious guest. 

 Under the influence of such patronage, he wrote his 

 hist two satires, entitled, Seventeen Hundred and Thirty- 

 Eight. 



In the year 1742, Pope gave to the world a fourth 

 book of the Dunciad, the object of which was to ridi- 

 cule useless and frivolous studies; and in 1743, he 

 published the whole poem complete, as a specimen of 

 a more correct edition of his works, in which he had 

 made some progress ; but which he did not live to 

 complete. 



His bodily debility was accompanied with a weak 

 state of health, and a constitutional attack of head- 

 ache, increased by a dropsy in his heart, indicated some 

 approaching change. His friend, Mr. Hooke the his- 

 torian, whom he had converted to Popery, saw that 

 his disease was mortal, and requested him to receive 

 the last sacrament. Pope replied, that though he did 

 not think the ceremony essential, yet it was proper. 

 Soon after this religious act, he became very ill, and 

 he expired on the 30th May, 17*4, in the 56th year 

 of his age. He was interred at Twickenham, where a 

 monument was erected to his memory. 



By his will, which bore the date of December llth, 

 1743, he bequeathed the liferent of his property to 



See VoL XIV. p. 660. 



