(or rather increased) as long as we stayed. Some time after, Mr. Allen came to London; and I asked Mr. Pope whether he had ever inquired into the cause of their behaviour. He had not; and I urged him to clear it up. In urging this, I used the word satisfaction. Mr. Hooke, who was by, took this in the genteel sense of the word, and imagined I would have had Mr. Pope fight Mr. Allen: which I declare was not the least in my thoughts.—It was this which Mr. gave as the cause of his estrangement from Mrs. Blount, to herself. All she wanted to know was, why they were so used.*-Mrs. B.

H.

* Ruffhead states that, " About a year before Mr. Pope's death, this lady, at the desire of Mr. Pope and Mr. Allen, paid a visit at Prior Park, where she behaved in so arrogant and unbecoming a manner, that it occasioned an irreconcileable breach between her and some part of Mr. Allen's family. As Mr. Pope's extreme friendship and affection for Mrs. Blount made him consult her in all his concerns, so when he was about making his last will, he advised with her on the occasion; and she declared to him, she would not accept the large provision made by it for herself, unless he returned back, by way of legacy, all that he had received of Mr. Allen, on any account: and Mr. Pope, with the greatest reluctance, complied with the infirmity of such a vindictive spirit. -It is certain that Mr. Pope, in this, as in the case of Lord Bolingbroke, deserved pity instead of blame. For though he had the strongest friendship and affection for Mrs. Blount, yet it was of a kind the most innocent and pure, notwithstanding what malignant or mirthful people might suggest to the contrary, either in jest or earnest. But no excuse can be made for Mrs. Blount's abuse of the influence she had over him; or for the indifference and neglect she showed to him throughout his whole last illness." Dr. Warton and Dr. Johnson state the cause of the quarrel to have been, Mr. Allen's refusal to lend Mrs. Blount his coach to carry her to mass at Bath, during his mayoralty.-From the above account, and the letters of Pope to Mrs. Blount on this occasion, it appears most probable that the quarrel lay between Mrs. Allen

T

I have a letter of Lord Bolingbroke's by me, in which he speaks of Mr. Pope as one of the greatest and the best of men.-Mrs. B.

and Mrs. Blount. These letters, which throw much light on the mysterious connexion between the poet and his mistress, are printed in the tenth volume of Mr. Bowles's edition.-Though Rope determined on never setting foot more in Mr. Allen's house, he kept up a friendly intercourse to the time of his death, and besides the pettish legacy, left him his library..-" Mr. Allen accepted the legacy, as Mrs. Blount was the residuary legatee, but gave it to the Bath Hospital; observing, that Pope was always a bad accountant, and that if to one hundred and fifty pounds, he had put a cipher more, he had come near the truth."-Editor.

SUPPLEMENTAL ANECDOTES.

FROM FIRST MEMORANDUM BOOK

FOR 1755.

HE reading of novels and eastern tales, &c. like drinking of drams.-Wine tastes like water after the latter; and the daily occur

rences of life seem quite tasteless and insipid

after being deeply engaged in the former.-Spence. The necessity of reading books obvious; for among the Turks, where reading is but little in use, they are obliged to use opiates to make them less sensible of the tedium of listless leisure.-Spence.

The brighter evergreens, which are the shades in summer, are the lights in winter.-How much worse those two forward urns look, than the two next, because they have no foliage to back them.-When the whole plan of a garden is visible at one glance of the eye, it takes away even the hope of variety.-Mr. Southcote.

Benevolence is more of a passion, than a virtue in me; and ought to be watched almost as much as a vice; to keep it either from impertinence or impropriety.-Spence.

Facardin's garden, in Count Hamilton's tale, a good deal like the description of Alcinous's, in Maundrel's Travels, p. 39.-The gardens of Damascus were numerous and well watered, p. 122, 128, 130. Maundrel was on Mount Lebanon, and mentions a tree of twelve yards six inches in girth, p. 142.-Spence.

Sir Isaac Newton's house at Coldsworth is a handsome structure. His study boarded round, and all jutting out. We were in the room where he was born. Both of as melancholy and dismal an air as ever I saw. Mr. Percival, his tenant, who still lives there, says he was a man of very few words; that he would sometimes be silent and thoughtful for above a quarter of an hour together, and look all the while almost as if he was saying his prayers: but that when he did speak, it was always very much to the purpose.— May 14, 1755.-Spence.

The pretty close, with the winding stream and spring, which we passed, is called Bucely.-The river Witham has its source (at a town of the same name) about two miles S.W. of Coldsworth: it is fed by a number of springs from Sir Isaac's hill; and meanders on (by Mr. Cholmondeley's and the Poltons) to Grantham; and goes by Lincoln and Boston into the sea. You pass close by one of these springs as you go to the house where Sir Isaac was born; with two or three ash trees, and hawthorns, about the head of it. [I would place rock work and seats there, with the following inscription: S. SUMMO IN TERRIS INTELLIGENTIE

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FONTI QUI PAULO SUPRA HAS SCATURIGINES EXORTUS EST

SUB FORMA HOMINIS NOMINE ISAACUS NEWTON."] There are some of the family buried in the churchyard.“ In memory of John Newton, sen. 1725, æt. 53; and John

Newton, jun. 1737, æt. 30." The latter of these, perhaps, the cousin to whom he left his estate there; and who run so entirely out of it, that he would have come to the parish, had he not died in so good time as he did.-Dial on the little arbour by the churchyard; "Sic transit gloria mundi." -Applied everything there to Sir Isaac.-Spence.

Dr. Warburton compared Jackson, the metaphysical part of whose works were written by Clarke; and Waterland, who borrowed so largely from Bull; to the two broom-sellers: one stole his materials, the other stole brooms ready made.

He had once a very full and free conversation with Mr. Pope, about changing his religion:* the persecution allowed and followed so much by the church of Rome, he owned looked like the sign of a false church.-The Dr. said;

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Why then should you not conform with the religion of your country?"-He seemed, in himself, not averse to it, and replied, "There were but two reasons that kept him from it one, that the doing so would make him a great many enemies; and the other, that it would do nobody else any good."-Dr. Warburton.

Mr. Pope was offered a very considerable sum by the Duchess of Marlborough if he would have inserted a good character of the duke;-and he absolutely refused it.Read his character of the Duchess of Marlborough to her, as that of the Duchess of Buckingham; but she spoke of

* Mr. Pope, in his answer to the Bishop of Rochester, says, "that when he was a boy he read over the controversy of James the Second's time; that his father had them all, and that they were the only books he had in the country; and that the effect of it was, that he was a Papist or a Protestant by turns, according to what book he read last."-Spence.