tremely concerned, both for his very ill state of health, and the resolution he said he had taken. He thought there might yet be hopes; and went immediately to Dr. Radcliffe, with whom he was well acquainted, told him Mr. Pope's case; got full directions from him and carried them down to Mr. Pope in Windsor Forest. The chief thing the doctor ordered him, was to apply less; and to ride every day the following his advice soon restored him to his health.*P.

Mr.

It was about twenty years after this, that Mr. Pope heard of an Abbey's being like to be vacant in the most delightful part of France, near Avignon: and what some common friend was saying would be the most desirable establishment in the world for Father Southcote. Pope took no farther notice of the matter on the spot; but sent a letter the next morning, to Sir Robert Walpole, (with whom he had then some degree of friendship) and begged him to write a letter to Cardinal Fleury to get the Abbey for Southcote. (on account of our court having just then settled a pension on Father Courayer) but succeeded at last, and Southcote was made Abbot.-P.

The affair met with some delay

Waller, Spenser, and Dryden, were Mr. Pope's great favourites, in the order they are named, in his first reading till he was about twelve years old.-P.

Mr. Pope's father (who was an honest merchant, and dealt in Holland's wholesale) was no poet, but he used to set him to make English verses when very young. He was pretty difficult in being pleased; and used often to

* This was when Mr. Pope was about seventeen, and consequently about the year 1705.

-Mr.

send him back to new turn them. "These are not good rhimes;" for that was my husband's word for verses.Pope's mother.

Mr. Pope said that he was seven years unlearning what he had got (from about twenty to twenty-seven.)-He should have travelled had it not been for his ill-health (and on every occasion that offered, had a desire to travel, to the very end of his life.) His first education was at

the seminary at Twiford near Winchester.-P.

Mr. Addison wrote a letter to Mr. Pope, when young, in which he desired him not to list himself under either party: "You," says he, " who will deserve the praise of the whole nation, should never content yourself with the half of it."-P.

In speaking of comparisons upon an absurd and unnatural footing, he mentioned Virgil and Homer; Corneille and Racine; the little ivory statue of Polycletes and the Colossus. Magis pares quam similes?" Ay, that's it in

one word."-P.

There was such a real character as Morose in Ben Jonson's time. Dryden somewhere says so;* and Mr. Pope had it from Betterton, and he from Sir William Davenant, who lived in Jonson's time and knew the man. What trash are hist works taken all together.-P.

One might discover schools of the poets, as distinctly as the schools of the painters; by much converse in them, and a thorough taste of their manner of writing. (He had been just speaking of Voiture and Sarazin.)—P.

Boileau, the first poet of the French, in the same manner * In his Essay on Dramatic Poetry.-Spence.

ti. e. Ben Jonson's, as I collect from a note in MS. B.-Editor.

as Virgil of the Latin: Malherbe, longo intervallo, the second. Racine's character is justness and correctness; Corneille's, passion and life: Corneille stumbles oftener and has greater excellencies.-P.

The design of the Memoirs of Scriblerus was to have ridiculed all the false tastes in learning, under the character of a man of capacity enough; that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each. It was begun by a club of some of the greatest wits of the age. Lord Oxford, the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Pope, Congreve, Arbuthnot, Swift, and others. Gay often held the pen ; and Addison liked it very well, and was not disinclined to come in to it. The Deipnosophy consisted of disputes on ridiculous tenets of all sorts: and the adventure of the Shield was designed against Dr. Woodward and the Antiquaries. It was Anthony Henley who wrote " the life of his music master Tom Durfey;" a chapter by way of episode. It was from a part of these memoirs that Dr. Swift took his first hints for Gulliver. There were pigmies in Schreibler's travels; and the projects of Laputa.-The design was carried on much farther than has appeared in print; and was stopped by some of the gentlemen being dispersed or otherwise engaged (about the year 1715.) See the memoirs themselves.-P.

A study should be built, looking east; as Sir Henry Wotton says in his little piece on Architecture; which is good enough, at least the best of his works.-P.

The method of learning a number of incoherent words, backward or forward, by fixing them one by one to a range of pictures, very easy; but even according to G. Markham, scarce of any manner of use.-P.

That Idea of the Picturesque, from the swan just gilded with the sun amidst the shade of a tree over the water.P. [on the Thames.]

A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation robes.-Education leads us from the admiration of beauty in natural objects, to the admiration of artificial (or customary) excellence.—I don't doubt but that a thorough-bred lady might admire the stars, because they twinkle like so many candles at a birth-night.-P.

As L'Esprit, La Rouchefoucault, and that sort of people, prove that all virtues are disguised vices; I would engage to prove all vices to be disguised virtues. Neither, indeed, is true but this would be a more agreeable subject; and would overturn their whole scheme.-P.

Arts are taken from nature; and after a thousand vain efforts for improvements, are best when they return to their first simplicity.-P.

A sketch or analysis of the first principle of cach art, with their first consequences, might be a thing of most excellent service. Thus, for instance, all the rules of architecture would be reducible to three or four heads. The justness of the openings, bearings upon bearings, and the regularity of the pillars.-P.

That which is not just in buildings, is disagreeable to the eye; (as a greater upon a slighter, &c.) This he called "the reasoning of the eye."-P.

In laying out a garden, the first thing to be considered. is the genius of the place: thus at Riskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should have raised two or three mounts; because his situation is all a plain, and nothing can please without variety.-P.

I have sometimes had an idea of planting an old gothic cathedral in trees. Good large poplars with their white stems (cleared of boughs to a proper height) would serve very well for the columns; and might form the different aisles or peristiliums, by their different distances and heights. These would look very well near; and the dome rising all in a proper tuft in the middle, would look as well at a distance.-P.

Cowley's allowance was, at last, not above three hundred a year. He died at Chertsey; and his death was occasioned by a mean accident, whilst his great friend, Dean Sprat, was with him on a visit there. They had been together to see a neighbour of Cowley's; who (according to the fashion of those times) made them too welcome. They did not set out for their walk home till it was too late; and had drank so deep, that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off. The parish still talk of the drunken Dean.-P.

The Virtuoso of Shadwell does not maintain his character with equal strength to the end: and this was that writer's general fault. Wycherley used to say of him: "That he knew how to start a fool very well; but that he was never able to run him down."-P.

Gay was a great eater. "As the French philosopher used to prove his existence by cogito ergo sum, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is edi ergo est." [Congreve in a letter to Pope.]-MS. B.

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws: the difficulty is to make them effective.-The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws and consequently the greatest art of