furgeon, who was prefent, related to Dr. Hoadly, he exerted all his ftrength to throw himself out of his bed, that he might receive the laft facraments kneeling on the floor. A few hours after the priest retired, Bolingbroke came over from Batterfea, and expreffed great indignation at this tranfaction. It was in the evening of the thirtieth day of May 1744, that he had the happiness of dying with the greatest tranquillity, aged fifty-fix years.

He was interred at Twickenham, near his father and mother; and the Bishop of Gloucefter erected a monument to his memory, with the following infcrip

tion:

"ALEXANDRO POPE, A. R. M.
GUL. Epifcopus Gloceftrienfis,

Amicitia Caufâ,

Fac. cur. 1761.

Poeta loquitur.

"For one, who would not be buried in Westminster Abbey:

"Heroes and Kings, your distance keep,

In peace let one poor Poet sleep;
Who never flattered folks like you,

Let Virgil blufh, and Horace too!"

His death, though it might have been expected, was not lamented by any of his contemporary Poets, till Mr. Mafon made amends by his Mufæus.

Confidering the debility, deformity, and distortion of his bodily frame, it is rather wonderful he lived fo long. He was protuberant both before and behind;

and

and he compared himself, in his humorous account of the club of little men, to a fpider. He was fo very feeble and weak, as not to be able to drefs or undress himself without affistance; and fo fufceptible of cold, that he was not only wrapt up in fur and flannel, but was also obliged to wear boddice made of stiff canvass, closely laced about him. We must not wonder, or be disgusted, that he had much of the irritability, peevishness, and fretfulness of a constant valetudinarian.

In the intervals of ficknefs and head-ach, with which he was fo frequently afflicted, he too much indulged his appetite, and was too fond of a variety of dishes highly seasoned, and of the most poignant flavour; with which, when his stomach was oppreffed, he had recourse to ftrong liquors and drams. His conversation was not remarkably brilliant or pleasant, and no fallies of his wit or humour are recorded. It is obfervable, that he never was feen to laugh heartily. It is unpleasant to hear it said, that, in the common intercourse of life, he delighted in petty ftratagems and idle artifices, in procuring what he wanted, without plainly and directly mentioning the thing. So that he played the politician," faid Lady Bolingbroke, "about cabbages and turnips."

But whatever might be the imperfections of our great Poet's perfon or temper, yet the vigour, force, and activity of his mind were almost unparalleled.. His whole life, and every hour of it, in sickness and in health, was devoted folely, and with unremitting diligence, to cultivate that one art in which he had determined

determined to excel. Many other Poets have been unavoidably immersed in business, in wars, in politics, and diverted from their favourite bias and purfuits. Of Pope it might truly and folely be faid, Verfus amat, boc ftudet unum. His whole thoughts, time, and talents were spent on his Works alone: which Works, if we difpaffionately and carefully review, we fhall find, that the largest portion of them, for he attempted nothing of the epic or dramatic, is of the didactic, moral, and fatiric kind; and, confequently, not of the most poetic species of Poetry. There is nothing in fo fublime a style as the Bard of Gray. This is a matter of fact, not of reafoning; and means to point out, what Pope has actually done, not what, if he had put out his full ftrength, he was capable of doing. No man can poffibly think, or can hint, that the Author of the Rape of the Lock, and the Eloifa, wanted imagination, or fenfibility, or pathetic; but he certainly did not so often indulge and exert those talents, nor give fo many proofs of them, as he did of strong fense and judgment. This turn of mind led him to admire French models; he ftudied Boileau attentively; formed himself upon him, as Milton formed himself upon the Grecian and Italian Sons of Fancy He ftuck to defcribing modern manners; but these manners, becaufe they are familiar, uniform, artificial, and polished, are, for these four reafons, in their very nature unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse. He gradually became one of the most correct, even, and exact Poets that ever wrote; but yet with force and

fpirit,

fpirit, finishing his pieces with a patience, a care, and affiduity, that no business nor avocation ever interrupted; fo that if he does not frequently ravish and transport his reader, like his Master Dryden, yet he does not so often difguft him, like Dryden, with unexpected inequalities and abfurd improprieties. He is never above or below his subject. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually poffeffed, he with-held and fuppreffed. The perufal of him, in most of his pieces, affects not our minds with fuch strong emotions as we feel from Homer and Milton; fo that no man, of a true poetical fpirit, is master of himself while he reads them. Hence he is a writer fit for univerfal perufal, and of general utility; adapted to all ages and all ftations; for the old and for the young; the man of bufinefs and the fcholar. He who would think, and there are many fuch, the Fairy Queen, Palamon and Arcite, the Tempest, or Comus, childish and romantic, may relish Pope. Surely it is no narrow, nor invidious, nor niggardly encomium to fay, he is the great Poet of Reason; the First of Ethical Authors in Verfe; which he was by choice, not neceffity. And this fpecies of writing is, after all, the fureft road to an extenfive and immediate reputation. It lies more level to the general capacities of men, than the higher flights of more exalted and genuine poetry. Waller was more applauded than the Paradife Loft; and we all remember when Churchill was more in

vogue

than Gray.

We live in a reafoning and profaic age. The forests of Fairy-land have been rooted up and deftroyed; the castles and the palaces of Fancy are in ruins; the magic wand of Profpero is broken and buried many fathoms in the earth. Telemachus was fo univerfally read and admired in France, not so much on account of the poetical images and the fine imitations of Homer which it contained, but for the many artful and fatirical allufions to the profligate court of Louis XIV. fcattered up and down. He that treats of fafhionable follies, and the topics of the day, that describes present perfons and recent events, as Dryden did in his Abfalom and Achitophel, finds many readers, whofe understandings and whose passions he gratifies, and who love politics far more than poetry.

The name of Chesterfield on one hand, and of Walpole on the other, failed not to make a Poem bought up, and talked of. And it cannot be doubted, that the Odes of Horace which celebrated, and the Satires which ridiculed, well-known and real characters at Rome, were more eagerly read, and more frequently cited, than the Æneid and the Georgic of Virgil. Malignant and infenfible must be the critic, who should impotently dare to affert, that Pope wanted genius and imagination; but perhaps it may fafely be affirmed, that his peculiar and characteristical excellencies were good fenfe and judgment. And this was the opinion of Atterbury and Bolingbroke; and it was also his own opinion. See in Volume Ninth,

the