mony, (at that time copyright did not cross the Irish channel) and added it to his piracy.

But those disturbances gradually died away; and Pope was, perhaps, more than compensated for them, by forming the acquaintance of Allen of Bath, who was so much struck with the letters, even in Curll's publication, that he offered to print the genuine edition at his own expense. This was declined, and it was productively published by subscription in 1737.

Pope's feeble frame had been hitherto sustained by temperance, but he began to feel the effects of age at a period when the constitution of the wellformed is perhaps in its fullest vigor. In 1739 (he was then but fifty-one), he writes to Swift:'You compliment me in vain on retaining my poetical spirit: I am sinking fast into prose. ** **Since my protest, (for so I call my dialogue of 1738) I have written but ten lines. **** Having nothing to tell you of my poetry, I come to what is now my chief care, my health and amusement: the first is better as to head-aches, worse as to weakness and nerves. The changes of weather affect me much: the mornings are my life in the evenings I am not dead indeed, but sleepy, and am stupid enough. I love reading still better than conversation, but my eyes fail; and at the hours when most people indulge in

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company, I am tired, and find the labor of the past day sufficient to weigh me down: so I hide myself in bed, as a bird in the nest, much about the same time, and rise and chirp the earlier in the morning. I often vary the scene, (indeed at every friend's call) from London to Twickenham, or the contrary, to receive them, or be received by them.'

To this sense of growing infirmity may be traced some of the growing weaknesses of Pope's mind; his querulousness at the charges of criticism, his delight at praise, and his rapturous reception of all defenders against what he professed to name, perhaps believed, the malice of the world. But for this, he would never have leaned on the crutches of Warburton.

Time has enabled us to discover the true merits of that lofty pretender. A bold affectation of universal knowlege, which kept more timid pretenders in awe; an arrogant defiance of public opinion, which passed for originality; and a reckless use of the most violent vituperation, which repelled men of decorous minds from the encounter; had rapidly placed Warburton in a prominent point of view before the public. No man exhibited more consummate art to keep himself there. His first effort was to discover a patron, his next to make his services essential to him. His defence of the

'Essay on Man' must rank among either the most ignorant or the most unprincipled determinations to support error at the expense of truth: but it purchased the friendship of a great poet, startled at his own temerity, shrinking from the consequences, and eager to retrieve his moral name with the country. From this friendship sprang Warburton's whole fortune. Pope's introduction of him to Allen, followed by his marriage with Allen's daughter, raised him to the bishopric. Violent, bitter, and impracticable in the more obscure ranks of life and literature, he was shallow, rash, and conjectural, in the higher the • Divine Legation,' the toil of his life, remains an evidence of labor thrown away; a tissue of theories without probability, and quotations without learning. Warburton's universal insolence raises a natural hostility to his name; for every man is glad to see arrogance humbled, and presumption stripped of its prize. His doubtful integrity even in the vindication of his faith, had long made him obnoxious to the church; the unhappy selection which placed such a man in its highest ranks only rendered his disabilities more glaring; and he is now remembered, only to be spoken of with the plainness, which reserves its praise for temper, wisdom, and virtue.

A curious instance, alike of the sudden par

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tiality of Pope, and the public obnoxiousness of Warburton, was given soon after their introduction to each other. They made a tour through some of the counties; and remaining for several days at Oxford, they received an official notice of the intention to confer the degrees of doctor of divinity on Warburton, and civil law on Pope. By whom the offer to Warburton was stimulated, is not told; but the university was saved from this volunteer folly a protest was made so strongly against giving university honors to Warburton, that the notice was cancelled. Pope angrily refused the degree intended for himself; and all that alma mater obtained by this act of supererogation was a place in the 'Dunciad.'

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The poet had now reached the close of his long and prosperous career: he felt his powers gradually giving way; and with that singular good fortune, which had attended him through life, if its true name be not prudence, he resolved to spare the world the evidence of his failing genius: his future hours were to be given to the publication of his works in a corrected state. An asthma had come to add to his natural infirmities, and there were symptoms of a dropsy in the chest. He was perfectly conscious of the approaching change, and writes to Warburton in 1744, with the calmness of one, to whom the world had given all that

a wise man would desire. I own,' said he, that the late encroachments on my constitution make me willing to see the end of all farther care about me and my works: I would rest for the one, in a full resignation of my being, to be disposed of by the Father of all mercy; and for the other, (though indeed a trifle, yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candor of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic, or inadvertent and censorious reader: and no hand can set them in so good a light, or so well turn their best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess, that for some months, I have felt myself going, and that not slowly, down the hill: the rather, as every attempt of the physicians, and still the last medicines more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to serve me.'

This was but a few months before his death. From about March, he evidently felt himself sinking, yet with those alternations of hope which belong to gradual disease. A dropsy in the breast, which is my case, I know to be incurable,' said he to Warburton; and yet I frequently catch myself indulging, before I am aware, in pleasing, delusive hope.' In May, he remarked, one day, one of the things that I have always most wondered at, is, that there should be any

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