life, though by no very friendly hand.

Under the date of

November, 1713, Kennet enters in his diary:

:

Dr. Swift came into the coffee-house, and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as a Master of Requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother, the Duke of Ormond, to get a chaplain's place established in the garrison of Hull for a clergyman in that neighbourhood who had been lately in jail, and published sermons to pay fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake with my Lord Treasurer that, according to his petition, he should obtain a salary of £200 per annum as minister of the English church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the red bag to the Queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to him from the Lord Treasurer. He talked to the son of Dr. Davenant, to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book and wrote down several things as memoranda for him to do. He turned to the fire and took out his gold watch, and telling him the time of the day, complained it was very late. A gentleman said he was too fast. "How can I help it," said the Doctor, "if the courtiers give me a watch that won't go right?" Then he instructed a young nobleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope, a Papist, who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them all subscribe; "for," says he, "the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him." Lord Treasurer, after leaving the queen, came through the room beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him. Both went off just before prayers.

With the leading Whigs Pope was previously acquainted. He knew Steele, and Steele's goodness of heart and vivacity of temperament were constantly prompting him to spontaneous acts of courtesy and assistance. He had lost his office of Gazetteer (in virtue of which he claimed to be the lowest Minister of State), but the Tatler and Spectator gave him popularity, and he was then the chosen friend of Addison. Pope cultivated Steele's acquaintance, writing to him some of his careful sentimental letters, which contrast curiously with the letters addressed to Henry Cromwell. We subjoin the most poetical of these studied epistles, which was greatly admired by a former generation of readers, and must have cost the writer as much trouble as an equal number of lines in verse:—

LETTER TO STEELE.

73

July 15, 1712.

You formerly observed to me, that nothing made a more ridiculous figure in a man's life, than the disparity we often find in him sick and well: thus one of an unfortunate constitution is perpetually exhibiting a miserable example of the weakness of his mind, and of his body, in their turns. I have had frequent opportunities of late to consider myself in these different views, and, I hope, have received some advantage by it, if what Waller says be true, that

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.

Then surely sickness, contributing no less than old age to the shaking down this scaffolding of the body, may discover the inward structure more plainly. Sickness is a sort of early old age: it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state, and inspires us with the thoughts of a future, better than a thousand volumes of philosophers and divines. It gives so warning a concussion to those props of our vanity, our strength and youth, that we think of fortifying ourselves within, when there is so little dependence upon our outworks. Youth at the very best is but a betrayer of human life in a gentler and smoother manner than age: 'tis like a stream that nourishes a plant upon a bank, and causes it to flourish and blossom to the sight, but at the same time is undermining it at the root in secret. My youth has dealt more fairly and openly with me, it has afforded several prospects of my danger, and given me an advantage not very common to young men, that the attractions of the world have not dazzled me very much; and I begin, where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures. When a smart fit of sickness tells me this scurvy tenement of my body will fall in a little time, I am e'en as unconcerned as was that honest Hibernian, who being in bed in the great storm some years ago, and told the house would tumble over his head, made answer, "What care I for the house? I am only a lodger." I fancy 'tis the best time to die when one is in the best humour; and so excessively weak as I now am, I may say with conscience, that I am not at all uneasy at the thought, that many men, whom I never had any esteem for, are likely to enjoy this world after me. When I reflect what an inconsiderable little atom every single man is, with respect to the whole creation, methinks 'tis a shame to be concerned at the removal of such a trivial animal as I am. The morning after my exit, the sun will rise as bright as ever, the flowers smell as sweet, the plants spring as green, the world will proceed in its old course, people will laugh as heartily, and marry as fast, as they were used to do. The memory of man (as it is elegantly expressed in the Book of Wisdom) passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but one day. There are reasons enough, in the fourth chapter of the same book, to make

any young man contented with the prospect of death. "For honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, or is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the grey hair to men, and an unspotted life is old age. He was taken away speedily, lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul," &c. I am yours, &c.

We may conceive this letter read to the family circle at Binfield before it was despatched, and the joy and exultation with which the elder Pope listened to the pious strain of sentiment it breathes, and the choice and elegant language in which it is expressed.

Steele introduced Pope to his important and distinguished friend Addison, then unquestionably the most popular man in England. "If he had a mind to be chosen king," said Swift, "he would hardly be refused."

ADDISON.

Unfortunately a

shade of suspicion and dislike mingled with Pope's admiration of that great

man.

In commending the Essay on Criticism, Addison qualified his praise by adding that the poem contained "some strokes of ill nature;" in allusion, no doubt, to the attack on Dennis. Pope had communicated to Addison his happy conception of raising the Rape of the Lock into a mock epic by adding the machinery of the Rosicrucian system; but Addison advised him against any alteration, for that the a delicious little thing, and, "Mr. Pope," we are told,

poem in its original state was as he expressed it, merum sal. "was shocked for his friend, and then first began to open his eyes to his character." This is related by Warburton,

but Spence records no such impression on the part of Pope. If Addison gave the advice, it was doubtless given in all sincerity, for no one could have predicted that Pope's invention was to be crowned with such brilliant results. Addison was strongly averse to altering his own productions after they were published, and he was likely to counsel the young poet against making any such sweeping alteration as that which he contemplated. If there was treachery in Addison's advice, Pope himself was open to the same charge, for on the tragedy of Cato being submitted to him in manuscript, he gave an opinion that it had better not be acted, not being theatrical enough, and that Addison would gain sufficient reputation by only printing it. Here the circumstances were exactly parallel; but Addison, we dare say, as little dreamt of charging Pope with treachery, as Sir Roger de Coverley dreamt of plotting treason. Warburton, we are willing to believe, misrepresented the feeling of Pope on this occasion; and accordingly we find the latter anxious for the success of the tragedy, writing for it the prologue, which forms one of the loftiest and most finished of his smaller poems, and attending the theatre on the first representation of the drama. Shortly after the publication of Cato, Dennis attacked it in a furious and elaborate critique, and Pope seized the opportunity of revenging himself on his old antagonist. Writing to Addison he says, “It was never in my thoughts to have offered you my pen in any direct reply to such a critic, but only in some little raillery, not in defence of you, but in contempt of him. But indeed your opinion that it is entirely to be neglected, would have been my own had it been in my own case; but I felt more warmth here than I did when first I saw his book against myself, though indeed in two minutes it made me heartily merry." We may reasonably doubt the latter statement. It would have argued gross insensibility and indifference to fame-qualities directly opposed to Pope's whole character—had he then felt less for himself than for Addison,

who stood too high to be reached by the censure or the rage of a critic like Dennis. Addison must have considered the poet insincere; and the manner in which the latter replied to the attack on Cato was not calculated to remove the impression or to conciliate his regard. The satire on Dennis was entitled, "The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris on the Frenzy of J. D." It is a bitter and merciless narrative, with some passages of broad humour, but with more that is indefensibly coarse and cruel; and not one of the objections which Dennis urged against the play is controverted. The description of Dennis's apartment is the best passage in the satire, and is worthy of Scriblerus :

:

I observed his room was hung with old tapestry, which had several holes in it, caused, as the old woman informed me, by his having cut out of it the heads of divers tyrants, the fierceness of whose visages had much provoked him. On all sides of his room were pinned a great many sheets of a tragedy called Cato, with notes on the margin with his own hand. The words absurd, monstrous, execrable, were everywhere written in such large characters that I could read them without my spectacles. By the fireside lay three farthings' worth of small coal in a Spectator, and behind the door huge heaps of papers of the same title, which his nurse informed me she had conveyed thither out of his sight, believing they were books of the black art, for her master never read in them but he was either quite moped, or in raving fits. There was nothing neat in the whole room, except some books on his shelves, very well bound and gilded, whose names I had never before heard of, nor I believe were anywhere else to be found; such as Gibraltar, a comedy; Remarks on Prince Arthur; The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry: An Essay on Public Spirit. The only one I had any knowledge of was a Paradise Lost interleaved. The whole floor was covered with manuscripts, as thick as a pastry-cook's shop on a Christmas eve. On his table were some ends of verse and of candles; a gallipot of ink with a yellow pen in it, and a pot of half-dead ale covered with a Longinus.

Addison was not likely to approve of this mode of treating a critic, but he stepped out of his way to mark his disapprobation, by causing Steele to write a letter to Lintot, the publisher of Pope's narrative :

August 4, 1713. MR. LINTOT,-Mr. Addison desired me to tell you, he wholly disapproves the manner of treating Mr. Dennis in a little pamphlet by way of Dr