Ambrose Philips with his red stockings lives in the poet's verse, but he did not admit the threat of chastisement, and writes that Philips never offered him any indecorum. It is not likely that Pope would have changed his course on account of a threat, for he never gave any sign of bodily fear, and was, as Mr. Swinburne has truly said, as bold as a lion."

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Among Pope's early acquaintances were the two beautiful sisters, Teresa and Martha Blount. They were girls, or little more than girls, when he first knew them, and the friendship with the younger sister continued through life. Sickly and deformed though he was, Pope had a poet's sensitiveness to female beauty, and, despite an intellectual contempt for women, understood the art of making his society agreeable to them. The sisters, who sprang from an old Roman Catholic family, resided at Mapledurham, a charming spot upon the Thames within ten miles of Binfield, and there can be little doubt that in their society some of the poet's happiest days were passed. His letters to them are filled with the fine sentiments and stilted compliments that deform all his correspondence, but in spite of many absurdities it is easy to see that Pope entertained a genuine regard for these friends of his youth. More than friendship there could not be, for with all his gallantry and protestations of love, the poet knew but too well that he was not a marrying man. Among the ailments that afflicted him from his boyhood was headache, for which, after the fashion of the day, he tried the waters of Bath, and to that beautiful town, whose circus, according to Landor, has nothing in Rome or in the world to equal it, the, poet generally returned year by year. From

Bath, on the occasion of his first visit in 1714, he wrote to Martha Blount in his highflown style, saying, "I never thought so much of yourself and your fair sister as since I have been fourscore miles distant from you. At Binfield I look upon you as good neighbours, at London as pretty kind of women, and here as divinities, angels, goddesses, or what you will. In like manner, I never knew at what a rate I valued your life till you were upon the point of dying. If Mrs. Teresa and you will but fall sick every season, I shall certainly die for you."

It is difficult to believe that any sensible woman would be gratified with such compliments, but Pope seemed to think that to flatter was to please, and Lady Wortley Montagu, whom he afterwards abused so shamelessly, must have laughed in her sleeve when, after an evening spent in her company, the poet wrote: "Books have lost their effect upon me; and I was convinced since I saw you that there is something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you that there is one alive wiser than all the sages," or again : "For my part I hate a great many women for your sake, and undervalue all the rest." This however was Pope's usual style of correspondence with his lady friends, and we rarely find in it a note of sincerity. His affectation showed itself also in the wish to be thought, to quote his own expression, "a modern rake," and he writes in 1715 of sitting up till one or two o'clock every night over Burgundy and Champagne. A very slight excess must have proved too much for Pope's weak frame, but he loved what by a strange misnomer is called "good living," and injured his health by indulging in the pleasures of the table. "The least transgression of yours,"

Swift wrote, "if it be only two bits and one sup more than your stint, is a great debauch;" and Pope's friend, Dr. King, Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, said that the poet "certainly hastened his death by feeding much on high-seasoned dishes and drinking spirits." King did not set Pope a good example. He is said to have devoted his life to scholarship and literature, but he was also addicted to drinking, "and could not write till he was reasonably flushed."

""Twas from the bottle King derived his wit,
Drank till he could not talk and then he writ,"

is the comment passed upon him by Christopher Pitt. There were few of Pope's friends who did not live too freely, and shorten their lives in consequence. Arbuthnot, the wittiest and one of the humanest of men in Swift's judgment, if we may believe Lord Chesterfield, died of gluttony. Parnell died from hard drinking before he was forty; Gay lived too luxuriously, and died at forty-four; Fenton, who assisted Pope in his translation of the "Odyssey," is said to have "died of a great chair and two bottles of port a day;" Steele frankly acknowledged his excesses in the same way, and even Addison, by the admission of his greatest admirers, yielded to this fatal habit, and died in his forty-eighth year of asthma and dropsy.

In 1708, Pope's good friend, Sir William Trumbull, advised him to translate the "Iliad." The suggestion proved a fruitful one. In October, 1713, the poet issued his proposals for translating the poem, and invited subscriptions; and bitter as was the political feeling of the time, Whig and Tory united in promoting the undertaking. Swift, who seems to have become acquainted with

с

Pope in that year, called him the best poet in England, and was zealous in obtaining subscriptions, saying, "The author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.” The translation was announced to appear in six volumes, at one guinea a volume, but, large though the sum was, five hundred and seventyfive subscribers were obtained, and "as many of them," Mr. Courthope observes, "entered their names for more than one copy, he must have found himself in anticipation the possessor of nearly, if not quite £4,000." Swift, who had been in London since 1710, supporting the government of Harley and Bolingbroke as no government, before or since, was ever supported by a man of letters, introduced Pope to the ministers, and did his utmost to promote his interests, but the year in which the first volume of Pope's "Homer" appeared, the ministry for which Swift had done so much had fallen from power, and he had retired in disgust to his Irish deanery. change in the political world did not affect Pope. His translation, which, as the great critic Bentley told him, was a very pretty poem, but not Homer, proved so brilliant a success, that on the completion of the "Iliad" and the “ Odyssey," the poet had made a profit of about £9,000. He had also, in Johnson's judgment, "tuned the English tongue." The tune is not one that will satisfy an ear accustomed to the divine harmony of Milton or to the music of Coleridge and Shelley, and it needs no great critical sagacity to detect a thousand faults in a version which by general consent has failed in representing the original. At the same time, it would be idle to deny the merit of a translation which, despite its conventional diction, is readable throughout, and

The

carries the reader so smoothly along the road that he does not feel the fatigue of travel. Southey considered that Pope had done grievous harm to English poetry by his "Homer," since, while other versions are as unfaithful,

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none

was ever so well executed in as bad a style." Like Campbell and Rogers, he greatly preferred Cowper's translation as truer to the original and purer in diction, and he was right in doing so, but of the two Pope's being the more vigorous will always be the more popular. The six volumes of the "Iliad " were published in the course of five years (1715-1720), and with the final volume appeared a dedication to Congreve. Two days after the issue of Pope's first volume, a translation of the first book appeared from the pen of Tickell. According to the report of Gay, Addison called this translation "the best that ever was in any language," and then the rumour got abroad that Addison had had a hand in the work himself. On more than one occasion, as already stated, Pope's jealous suspicions had been excited against Addison, and it appears to have been at this time that he wrote the famous satire published after Addison's death in the "Epistle to Arbuthnot." Pope affirmed that he sent the character of Atticus to Addison at the time, and that, to quote his words, "he used me very civilly ever after." But this is probably one of the many false stories which the poet concocted for the benefit of his reputation. Addison had praised Pope's translation warmly in the "Freeholder," and there is no reason to suppose that he knew of the verses or that his praise was not sincere.

In 1716, while engaged upon the "Iliad," Binfield was exchanged for Chiswick, and the poet