being near to London was much in society. To a Binfield friend he writes: "I have been here in a constant course of entertainments and visits ever since I saw you, which I partly delight in, and partly am tired with; the common case in all pleasures. I have not dined at home these fifteen days, and perfectly regret the quiet indolence, silence, and sauntering that made up my whole life in Windsor Forest." In another letter he gives a list of the noblemen who were his neighbours and acquaintances, and it is a noteworthy characteristic of Pope that in his frequent intercourse with the nobility and with public men there are no indications of servility. He maintained his independence, and knew his own value too well to fall into the vices of the sycophant. The poet had neither birth nor fortune to recommend him, and it was due to his genius alone that, before reaching the age of thirty, he was received on an equal footing into the first society of the land. In 1717, Pope, in a few pathetic lines addressed to Martha Blount, announced the death of his father: "My poor Father died last night-Believe, since I do not forget you this moment, I never shall." For his parents he had the deepest reverence and affection. "Whatever was his pride," says Dr. Johnson, "to them he was obedient, and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, among its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than such a son." Teresa Blount, the elder sister, and Pope had a quarrel about the close of this year, too obscure in its origin to be satisfactorily explained. A temporary reconciliation was effected, but Pope continued to regard Teresa with aversion, and did not scruple to asperse her character. And yet, at the beginning of the quarrel, he executed a deed in her favour, binding himself to pay her £40 a year for six years, unless she married during that period. The story is one of many which make Pope's social and literary career a puzzle to his biographers. And now, having been made comparatively easy in circumstances by the success of his Homer," Pope bought the villa at Twickenham, which, with its five acres of land, was to be his home and his plaything for twenty-five years. There he welcomed Bolingbroke and Swift, Congreve and Gay, Peterborough and Bathurst: "There my retreat the best companions grace, And he, whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines, Among Pope's friends and guests was Mr. Secretary Craggs, who had taken a house at Chiswick in 1717 for the sake of the poet's society, and followed him to Twickenham in 1720. Craggs had offered Pope a pension of £300 a year out of the secret service money, which he was too independent to accept. He prided him. self upon being : "Unplaced, unpensioned, no man's heir, or slave." A more distinguished associate and correspondent of Pope was Bishop Atterbury, whom Addison regarded as one of the greatest geniuses of his time, and who, in Pope's judgment, was one of the greatest men in all polite learning this nation ever had. Such estimates were in great measure due to the personal attraction exercised by the Bishop, and to the exaggeration of friendship, but his wit and eloquence were great, and the speech with which he defended himself when accused of plotting for the Pretender, made a profound impression. We now know that his declaration of innocence was false, but his earnest asseverations deceived his friends, and both Pope and Swift regarded him as an innocent man. At the trial the poet was called to give evidence in his favour, but he became nervous, and told his friend Spence afterwards: "Though I had but two words to say, and that on a plain point, how the Bishop spent his time whilst I was with him at Bromley, I made two or three blunders in it, and that notwithstanding the first row of lords, which was all I could see, were mostly of my acquaintance." "How pleasing Atterbury's softer hour! How shined the soul unconquered in the Tower!" is Pope's poetical tribute to the friend who, on bidding him farewell in 1723, presented the poet with his Bible, and counselled him to study it. The beautiful and witty Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had taken a house at Twickenham, at the poet's request. His friendship for her may be read in his letters, and his enmity in verse which was more disgraceful to the writer than to the object of his satire. But in her retaliation Lady Mary showed she could be vindictive and unfeeling, and it is no excuse for a woman that the quarrel was provoked. Before the rupture came, caused apparently by an ardour of devotion on the poet's part, which led to an "immoderate fit of laughter" on the part of Lady Mary, she had written to her sister: "I see sometimes Mr. Congreve, and very seldom Mr. Pope, who continues to embellish his house at Twickenham. He has made a subter ranean grotto, which he has furnished with looking-glasses, and they tell me it has a very good effect. I here send you some verses addressed to Mr. Gay, who wrote him a congratulatory letter on the finishing his house. I stifled them here, and I beg they may die the same death in Paris, and never go farther than your closet": "Ah, friend, 'tis true-this truth you lovers know- What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade, To sigh unheard in to the passing winds? So the struck deer in some sequestered part Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart; There stretched unseen in coverts hid from day, It was evidently time that the intercourse between Lady Mary and her admirer should cease. Pope deserved his punishment, but he felt the shame of it acutely, and it embittered his life. His irritability and self-consciousness, his eagerness for fame and his excessive sensibility, led him again and again into devious paths. The attacks which he too often provoked were returned by every garret-author in Grub Street, and Pope found his chief consolation in carrying on the combat with keener weapons than his foes. Although he affected to find his diversion in these attacks, he had not the magnanimity to despise them : "Peace is my dear delight, not Fleury's more, To follow Pope's quarrels in this brief sketch of his life is impossible, and they must be read at large in the narratives of his biographers. Some of the most notable were wholly without justification, and in others the poet's resentment was out of all proportion to the provocation he received. Yet such is the exquisite skill of the artist that he forces us to read with pleasure what at the same time we feel to be morally indefensible. Pope maintained that satire was useless if not personal. To attack vices in the abstract, he said, "without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows," and it must be remembered that to this view of his craft we are indebted for the "Dunciad," which Mr. Ruskin, with more enthusiasm, perhaps, than judgment, has styled "the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work 'exacted' in our country." The success of the "Iliad" encouraged Pope to proceed with the "Odyssey," and in this labour he was considerably assisted by two Cambridge men, Broome and Fenton. The story of this partnership is creditable neither to Pope nor to Broome. Pope translated twelve books, Broome eight, and Fenton four, but Pope induced Broome to ascribe only three books to himself, and two to Fenton, and to state, without consulting his colleague, their mutual satisfaction "in Mr. Pope's acceptance of our best endeavours." At the same time, in proof of his liberality as a paymaster, Pope stated the amount he had paid for the eight books as though it had been paid for three. could, as he once said, "equivocate pretty genteelly," but Broome, having set his name to a falsehood, had no right to complain; and Fenton's laziness or indifference prevented him from publicly exposing the lie. For the moment he was considerably annoyed, and wrote to Broome, saying, "I had always so ill an opinion of your He |