It is affecting to note, through Pope's correspondence, the marked way in which his friends, the greatest, the most famous, and wittiest men of the time-generals and statesmen, philosophers and divines,-all have a kind word, and a kind thought for the good simple old mother, whom Pope tended so affectionately. Those men would have scarcely valued her, but that they knew how much he loved her and that they pleased him by thinking of her. If his early letters to women are affected and insincere, whenever he speaks about this one, it is with a childish tenderness and an almost sacred simplicity. In 1713, when young Mr. Pope had, by a series of the most astonishing victories and dazzling achievements, seized the crown of poetry; and the town was in an uproar of admiration, or hostility, for the young chief; when Pope was issuing his famous decrees for the translation of the Iliad; when Dennis and the lower critics were hooting and assailing him; when Addison and the gentlemen of his court were sneering with sickening hearts at the prodigious triumphs of the young conqueror; when Pope, in a fever of victory, and genius, and hope, and anger, was struggling through the crowd of shouting nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. 'Nephew,' said Sir Godfrey, 'you have the honour of seeing the two greatest men in the world.'-'I don't know how great you may be,' said the Guinea man, 'but I don't like your looks: I have often bought a man, much better than both of you together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas.””—Dr. WARBURTON (Spence's Anecdotes). friends and furious detractors to his temple of Fame, his old mother writes from the country, "My deare," says she, "my deare, there's Mr. Blount, of Mapel Durom, dead the same day that Mr. Inglefield died. Your sister is well; but your brother is sick. My service to Mrs. Blount, and all that ask of me. I hope to hear from you, and that you are well, which is my daily prayer; and this with my blessing." The triumph marches by, and the car of the young conqueror, the hero of a hundred brilliant victories-the fond mother sits in the quiet cottage at home, and says, "I send you my daily prayers, and I bless you, my dear." In our estimate of Pope's character, let us always take into account that constant tenderness and fidelity of affection, which pervaded and sanctified his life, and never forget that maternal benediction.' It accompanied him always: his life seems purified by those artless and heartfelt prayers. And he seems to have received and deserved the fond attachment of the other members of his family. It is not a little touching to read in Spence of the enthusiastic admiration with is well known. And a sneer of Walpole's may be put to a better use than he ever intended it for, apropos of this subject.-He charitably sneers, in one of his letters, at Spence's "fondling an old mother-in imitation of Pope!" Р which his half sister regarded him, and the simple anecdotes by which she illustrates her love. "I think no man was ever so little fond of money." Mrs. Rackett says about her brother, "I think my brother when he was young read more books than any man in the world;" and she falls to telling stories of his school days, and the manner in which his master at Twyford ill used him. "I don't think my brother knew what fear was," she continues; and the accounts of Pope's friends bear out this character for courage. When he had exasperated the dunces, and threats of violence and personal assault were brought to him, the dauntless little champion never for one instant allowed fear to disturb him, or condescended to take any guard in his daily walks, except occasionally his faithful dog to bear him company. "I had rather die at once," said the gallant little cripple, " than live in fear of those rascals." As for his death, it was what the noble Arbuthnot asked and enjoyed for himself—a euthanasia—a beautiful end. A perfect benevolence, affection, serenity, hallowed the departure of that high soul. Even in the very hallucinations of his brain, and weaknesses of his delirium, there was something almost sacred. Spence describes him in his last days, looking up, and with a wrapt gaze, as if something had suddenly passed before him. "He said to me 'What's that?' pointing into the air with a very steady regard, and then looked down and said with a smile of the greatest softness, ''Twas a vision?"" He laughed scarcely ever, but his companions describe his countenance as often illuminated by a peculiar sweet smile. "When," said Spence,' the kind anecdotist whom Johnson despised, "when I was telling Lord Bolingbroke that Mr. Pope, on every catching and recovery of his mind, was always saying something kindly of his present or absent friends; and that this was so surprising, as it seemed to me as if humanity had outlasted understanding, Lord Bolingbroke said, ‘It has so,' and then added, 'I never in my life knew a man who had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than'-Here," Spence says, "St. John sunk his head, and lost his voice in tears." The sob which finishes the epitaph is finer than words. It is the cloak thrown over the father's face, in the famous Greek picture, which hides the grief and heightens it. In Johnson's "Life of Pope," you will find described He 1 Joseph Spence was the son of a clergyman, near Winchester. was a short time at Eton, and afterwards became a Fellow of New College, Oxford, a clergyman and professor of poetry. He was a friend of Thomson's, whose reputation he aided. He published an "Essay on the Odyssey" in 1726, which introduced him to Pope. Everybody liked him. His "Anecdotes" were placed, while still in MS., at the service of Johnson and also of Malone. They were published by Mr. Singer in 1820. with rather a malicious minuteness some of the personal habits and infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked: he was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with other people at table:' he was sewed up in a buckram suit every morning and required a nurse like a child. His contemporaries reviled these misfortunes with a strange acrimony, and made his poor deformed person the butt for many a bolt of heavy wit. The facetious Mr. Dennis, in speaking of him, says, "If you take the first letter of Mr. Alexander Pope's Christian name, and the first and last letters of his surname, you have A. P. E." Pope catalogues, at the end of the Dunciad, with a rueful precision, other pretty names, besides Ape, which Dennis called him. That great critic pronounced Mr. Pope was a little ass, a fool, a coward, a Papist, and therefore a hater of scripture, and so forth. It must be remembered that the pillory was a flourishing and popular institution in those days. Authors stood in it in the body sometimes: and dragged their enemies thither morally, hooted them with foul abuse, and assailed them with garbage from the gutter. 1 He speaks of Arbuthnot's having helped him through "that long disease, my life." But not only was he so feeble as is implied in his use of the "buckram," but " it now appears," says Mr. Peter Cunningham, "from his unpublished letters, that, like Lord Hervey, he had recourse to ass's-milk for the preservation of his health." It is to his lordship's use of that simple beverage that he alludes when he says— "Let Sporus tremble !-A. What, that thing of silk, |