"the stern Achilles

Stalked through a mead of daffodillies.”—P.

Good part of the ballad on Lechmere and Guise was written by Mr. Pope.-The ballad on the rabbit-woman, by him and Mr. Pulteney: they wrote two or three more together.-P.

When Cowley grew sick of the court, he took a house first at Battersea, then at Barnes; and then at Chertsey: always farther and farther from town. In the latter part of his life, he showed a sort of aversion for women; and would leave the room when they came in: 'twas probably from a disappointment in love. He was much in love with his Leonora ; who is mentioned at the end of that good ballad of his, on his different mistresses. She was married to Dean Sprat's brother; and Cowley never was in love with anybody after.-P.

Addison usually studied all the morning: then met his party at Button's; dined there, and stayed five or six hours; and sometimes far into the night.-I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.-P.

Addison passed each day alike; and much in the manner that Dryden did.-Dryden employed his mornings in writing; dined, en famille; and then went to Wills's: only he came home earlier a'nights.-P.

The night after King Charles the first was beheaded, my Lord Southampton and a friend of his got leave to sit up by the body, in the banqueting-house at Whitehall. As they were sitting very melancholy there, about two o'clock in the morning, they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly up stairs. By-and-by the door opened,

and a man entered, very much muffled up in his cloak; and his face quite hid in it.-He approached the body, considered it, very attentively, for some time: and then shook his head and sighed out the words, cruel necessity!' -He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come in.-Lord Southampton used to say, that he could not distinguish anything of his face; but that by his voice and gait, he took him to be Oliver Cromwell.—P.

END OF THE SEVENTH SECTION.

SECTION VIII. 1743-44.

HE idea that I have had for an Epic poem, of late, turns wholly on civil and ecclesiastical government. The hero is a prince who

establishes an empire. That prince is our Brutus from Troy; and the scene of the establishment, England. The plan of government, is much like our old original plan; supposed so much earlier: and the religion, introduced by him, is the belief of one God, and the doctrines of morality.-Brutus is supposed to have travelled into Egypt; and there to have learned the unity of the deity, and the other purer doctrines, afterwards kept up in the mysteries. Though there is none of it writ as yet, what I look upon as more than half the work is already done; for 'tis all exactly planned." It would take you up ten years?" -Oh much less, I should think, as the matter is already quite digested and prepared.*-Pope.

* The plan of this Epic, fully detailed, may be found in Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 410. It is perhaps well for Pope's reputation that he did not find leisure to carry this project into execution. Dr.

What was first designed for an Epistle on Education, as part of my essay-scheme, is now inserted in the fourth book of the Dunciad; as the subject for two other epistles (those on civil and ecclesiastical polity) will be treated more at large in my Brutus.-P.

I never save anything: unless I meet with such a pressing case, as is absolute demand upon me.

Then I retrench

fifty pounds or so from my own expenses. As, for instance, had such a thing happened this year, I would not have built my two summer-houses.-P.

I would be buried in Twickenham Church, if I should fail anywhere near it in the place where my father and mother lie. And would have no other epitaph, but the words SIBIQVE OBIIT, and the time, added to theirs.*-P.

In the list of papers, ordered to be burnt, were the pieces for carrying on the Memoirs of Scriblerus; and several copies of verses by Dean Parnell. I interceded in vain for both. As to the latter, he said that "they would not add anything to the Dean's character.”—P.

The rule laid down in the beginning of the Essay on

Warton has well observed, that so didactic a genius would probably have been deficient in the sublime and pathetic, which are the main nerves of the Epopea. That his poem would have more resembled the Henriade than the Iliad, and have shown more of the philosopher than the poet.-Editor.

* His remains were deposited in the same vault with those of his parents, to whose memory he had erected a monument with the following inscription. D. O. M. ALEXANDER POPE, VIRO INNOCUO, PROBRO, PIO, QUI VIXIT ANNOS LXXV. OB. MDCCXVII. ET EDITHÆ CONJUGI INCULPABILI, QVI VIXIT ANNOS XCIII. OB. MDCCXXXIII. PARENTIBUS BENE MERENTIBUS FILIUS FECIT ET

SIBI.

OBIIT AN. 1744, ÆTATIS 56. The last line was added after his death.-Editor.

Man, of reasoning only from what we know, is certainly a right one; and will go a great way toward destroying all the school metaphysics: and as the church writers have introduced so much of those metaphysics into their systems, it will destroy a great deal of what is advanced by them too.-P.

At present, we can only reason of the divine justice, from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it: but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.-P.

The theological writers, from Clarke down to Jacob Behmen, have all (almost equally) Platonised and corrupted the truth. That is to be learned from the Bible, as it appears nakedly there; without the wresting of commentators, or the additions of schoolmen.-P.

There is hardly any laying down particular rules for writing our language: even Dean Swift's, which seemed to be the best I ever heard, were, three in four of them, not thoroughly well grounded.*—In most doubts, whether a word is English or not, or whether such a particular use of it is proper, one has nothing but authority for it. Is it in Sir William Temple, or Locke, or Tillotson ?—If it be, you may conclude that it is right, or at least won't be looked upon as wrong.—P.

One of the greatest difficulties in our language, lies in the use of the relatives; and the making it always evident to what antecedents they refer.-Dr. Swift to Mr. Hooke.-The following is an instance of what Swift used to call the Parson's style.

"That

were not of the growth, or at least, made free of Rome."-It should be-" That were not of the growth of Rome, or at least, made free of it."-Hooke. Addition from MS. B.